How to set pricing & discounting rules


Setting up pricing and discounting rules enables the end user to better manage customer accounts, and stock items.  Rules are restrictions or qualifiers that qualify the rule, and they are only applied if that condition is met.  You can create and set, specific rules for stock item costs and descriptions which are linked to individual customers.  As well as set parameters for when these price and discount rules will be automatically applied.

Managing pricing and discounting rules across multiple customer accounts and stock items can sometimes get quite complicated and tricky to keep on top of.  SQLWorks has made this process easier to set up, control and manage giving you greater flexibility and accuracy ensuring rules are adhered to across the whole of your customer portfolio.

The pricing and discount summary page gives managers and admin personnel the ability to view all rules that have been created, as well as the control to amend and save at a top level, which will automatically apply these rules across the platform.

The module can be found on the main nav bar under the Products Extras section.  The rules can be viewed on multiple tabs, and pricing rules can be imported and exported in bulk quickly and efficiently using an xls or csv file.  Discounting rules can be applied as line discount or an order discount, giving you the flexibility and control to apply rules at various stages of the ordering process.

Price & discount tab

Alternatively, rules can be viewed and managed from the Sales Ledger or Stock Ledger.  In both ledgers the Price & Discounts tab can be found in the top section of the window.  The rules listed apply specifically to the sales account or stock item selected and can be added, deleted and edited from this tab.  Once added the rules are linked to the corresponding ledger automatically and any order created that meets the criteria of one of these set rules, will adjust automatically..

Examples of the different types of rules that can be applied:

  1. Qty or value price breaks to reduce cost for higher value orders
  2. Limited time promotions
  3. Discounts by brand or other custom fields
  4. Specific prices or discounts by delivery site or currency
  5. Order level discounts based on value
  6. Customer specific part names & descriptions
  7. Priority based rules for complex ordering systems
  8. Rules targeting categories of SL account or product
  9. Separate rules for trade or retail customers
  10. Combinations of all of the above

To use customer specific part names & description to search for the item when creating a new customer order it is slightly different, using the customer lookup icon – as shown below.  Part names and descriptions automatically adjust on the item line once the criteria of a rule is met.

customer lookup

For more information, please see our full guide on Pricing and discounting features, or contact our team today.

Did you Know? Quoting Tips

quoting tips

Quoting a customer can be a delicate process, and sometimes you need to be able to issue a quote with detailed options. We’ve collated a few handy tips to help your sales team build the perfect SQLWorks quote.

If you’re putting together a more complex quote, it can sometimes be useful to give a customer options. You can create these by right-clicking on the line numbers on the left of each quote line, and selecting ‘Choose Option Group’ to place groups of lines under ‘Option 1’ ‘Option 2’ subheadings (1.)

These options are normally alternatives to each other, so you typically won’t want SQLWorks to total them together. You can remove the overall total by switching to the to ‘Extras and Project’ Tab in the top right of the quote header, and unchecking the ‘Print Totals’ checkbox (2.) This will remove the ‘grand total’ from the bottom of the normal quote template (please note that if you exclude VAT you’ll need to include an amendment to this effect, as depending on your settings, the total VAT may no longer be visible.)

If you need to include sub-total lines instead for each option group, the easiest way is to add a sub-total line at the end of each group. By right clicking on the grey background of any given line, you can choose ‘Toggle Line Type’ to change a line to display the sub-total of the group immediately above it, to be hidden or to become a comment line without any costs (3.)

The area around the line number will change to a different colour to reflect the line type (1), and the quote template will change to incorporate the new line type. This is useful to help keep your quote clear and tidy – to add a running sub-total, line gaps or comments.

With these extras it’s easy to build more complex quotes from SQLWorks, and give customers an informative choice.

A Quick Disclaimer: if you have a custom quotations window for your company/organisation, one or more of these quoting tips features may be disabled. If you need them – speak to the SQLWorks team!

Did you Know? Debt History

Debt History

SQLWorks makes it easy to look back through the debt history of a given customer – using the Sales Ledger ‘Debt History’ tool.

By clicking on the ‘Debt History’ Tab within a chosen company’s Sales Ledger account you can view a summary of aged debt over the past 9 months, using data from your past invoicing.

The ‘Turnover’ and ‘Profit’ Tab display each month’s turnover and profit from that company’s sales account over several years.

The ‘Balance’ tab collates every dated invoice and credit note to build a cumulative running total of a company’s credit history, displayed in both sterling and foreign currency, and as a graph.

For a range of graph options, highlight the table you wish to illustrate, right click and select ‘Graph [Profit/Turnover]’ or click ‘Enlarge’ to enlarge the balance history graph.

SQLWorks supports line, bar and pie charts, in both conventional and accumulated displays – providing different ways to illustrate a customer’s past purchasing.

 

For help managing customer accounts with SQLWorks – contact our team today by clicking here.

Did you know? Stock by Account

Stock by account

It’s often useful to be able to see what a company has been quoted for, ordered, or has been invoiced for, over a longer period of time.

SQLWorks provides a useful summary of this information under each company’s ‘Stock by Account’ table.

Opening a company’s Sales Ledger Account in SQLWorks and clicking the ‘Stock’ Tab in the main window will display a table that breaks down a company’s stock data by month. Users can choose the financial year to observe, filter by Product, Stock Group or more, and choose to count the number of quotes, orders or invoices.

This is a useful feature for repeat customers, providing a quick and easy summary of activity on a customer’s sales account over the course of 12 months. For a more detailed list of stock or custom items quoted, ordered or invoiced, click the ‘Detail’ tab and specify the date range with which to search that company’s sales account.

Either table can also be exported to Microsoft Excel if needed, so that SQLWorks can always report your sales account activity in the way that is most convenient for you.

 

Contact our SQLWorks team for more information: 01271 375999 

Fact Sheet: Quoting

Fact Sheet Quoting

SQLWorks Accounts includes a line by line quoting tool which allows you to build custom sales quotes.

Quoting can be accessed from a company’s sales account within your SQLWorks Sales Ledger (1) in the main Navigation bar under the ‘Quotes’ Tab. Here your quotes for the selected company are listed in date order, with details of lines inside the quote previewed in the table below.

Create a new quote by clicking the ‘New Quote’ (2) button, which opens the quoting window. The details of the selected company are listed at the top of the quoting window (3), with the first line of the quote listed in the panel below. You can populate your quote with extra lines by right clicking this panel and clicking ‘Add new Line’, change the order in which lines appear or make amendments.

If using SQLWorks Stock, saved stock items can be quoted for from the dropdown list on the left of each quote line, or type in the free form text box to add custom items such a labour or other extra costs. If your stock items have default costs saved, these are automatically entered as the RRP, unless you specify different amounts and margins.

SQLWorks allows you to add multiple quote ‘options’ by right clicking the digit on the far left of each line, assigning each quoted item to a group. This is useful for putting quote options; ‘Option 1’, ‘Option 2’ etc. for a potential customer to choose between.

The command buttons at the top of each quote allow you to ‘Preview’ or ‘Print’ a quote for sending, ‘Halt’ a quote into your ‘Halted Items’ for further work later, ‘Save & Close’ the quote as it stands or ‘Cancel’ your changes.

Right clicking a quote opens up options for using that quote, including printing, emailing, duplicating or splitting a quote. By duplicating a quote you can work with multiple saved revisions, and splitting a quote allows SQLWorks to cross-check a quote against your Stock Ledger, fulfilling and order based only on what you currently have in stock.

Once your quote has been printed or emailed out to a customer, that quote is locked to everyone but your company’s SQLWorks administrator, exactly as the customer received it.

Your quotes will be made into to a formal PDF format which includes your company details and logo, and is designed by the SQLWorks team to match the formats of your existing company documentation and letterheads.

If your quote has been accepted, right-clicking and selecting ‘Send Quote to Order’ (or ‘Send Quote to Invoice’) will then move your quote on to the next stage of the sales process without the need to re-key any of the line items.

 

Contact Lineal today for more information on SQLWorks quoting: 01271 375999

Fact Sheet: Sales Ledger

fact sheet sales ledger

SQLWorks Sales Ledger is your main accounting ledger for your quotes, orders, refunds and sales transactions with other companies.

Sales Ledger can be opened under the ‘Accounts’ heading in the main NavBar (1) and includes a full suite of accounting tools. Any company from your Companies List can be given a Sales Ledger account – appearing in the Sales Ledger List (2) for further use.

From here you can prepare quotes, log orders and more, before sending out any invoices and receiving payments from a given company. As you complete sales, your sales move from left to right – starting as disbursements, leads or quotes, becoming orders, and then transactions. The Sales Ledger information for a company is displayed in the Main Window, with ‘Quotes’, ‘Orders’, ‘Transactions’ and more available by clicking the Tabs on the lower right panel (3).

SQLWorks allows you to keep a close track of money owed, customer debts and credit: you can set a Credit Limit for each business along with precise payment terms, deadlines, known company directors, and instruct SQLWorks to email or print invoices as needed. Any custom settings for a given company also allows you to customise SQLWorks reports to reflect this.

Track aged debt with payment terms, turnover, profit, balance history, debt days, stock items bought and other enquiries, all from the account activity section of any given company in your Sales Ledger. If you need to transfer data, electronic data interchange (EDI), allows a user to export orders, or import invoices from other digital sources.

The SQLWorks team can also configure your Sales Ledger to more closely match your sales – adding automatic adjustments for discovered stock, setting up cash account sales or more uncommon types of invoices if needed.

Every financial entry (invoice, receipt or credit note) is linked directly by a nominal code category to your nominal code category, so SQLWorks always gives an accurate, real-time reflection of your current sales finances in your Nominal Ledger.

 

Contact us today about accounting with SQLWorks: 01271 375999 or www.sqlworks.co.uk/contact-us