Making Client Level Pricing Easy

Not knowing about the price level feature, Ruby had set up multiple inventory items for the same product. She had a logical item organization, creating an item to identify each client and, then, creating subitems with the customer based prices. I was impressed by the way she had used subitems to group these products by customer, making sure it was easy to accurately select the item with the right pricing for the client.

Being able to help people identify and avoid problems is like being a detective because clients sometimes can’t foresee the how well laid plans can go awry. This created problem with keeping track of inventory counts. I didn’t realize the problem, however, until I reviewed the list of inventory items and discovered that there were duplicate items in the item list.

Normally, QuickBooks would catch this but, because the duplicates were subitems of different items, the issue was undetected. Ruby didn’t know to ask and I was fortunate enough to stumble across it. At this point we began talking about being able to use QuickBooks "price levels", which could be defined for specific items and assigned to each client with special pricing. By separating the pricing issue from the inventory issue we were able to substantially reduce the item list and eliminate the problem of keeping up with inventory counts.

Here’s how you activate price levels:

1. Select Edit/Preferences from the menu bar at the top of your screen.
2. Select Sales & Customers
3. Select the Company Preferences tab
4. Check the box that says "Use Price Levels" and click OK

Here’s how you set up price levels:

1. Select Lists/Price Level List from the menu bar at the top of your screen.
2. Click Price Level at the bottom of the list and click New or Edit Price Level.
3. Enter the name of the new price level.
4. Choose the price level type, which can be either Fixed % or Per Item.

Note: The Per Item price level is only available if you have QuickBooks Premier or higher.

• If you choose fixed percentage, you can increase or decrease prices on all items by a fixed percentage. You can also round sales prices up to the whole dollar, if you have set this Company preference when you elected to use price levels.
• If you choose per item, you have the flexibility to set the dollar amount prices of individual items for different customers or jobs.
• For fixed percentage price levels, choose whether to increase or decrease and enter a percentage.

or

• For per item price levels, either enter the new price in the Custom Price column, or choose one or more items from the list and click the Adjust Selected Prices button to adjust the prices in bulk.
• For per item price levels, the currency of the price level must match the currency of the foreign customer for whom you want to set the custom price for. Create a per item price level for each foreign currency as needed.

Note: Fixed percentage price levels are not based on currency and are available for all customers.

Click OK to go back to the price level list.

I have displayed below an example of the price level options for QuickBooks Pro followed by one for QuickBooks Premier and higher versions

Here’s how you assign a price level to a customer:

1. Select a customer or job for editing
2. Select the "Additional Info" tab
3. Select from the price levels to have created displayed the drop down list or add a new price level.

That’s all there is to it.

Robert Guild is certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor in Austin, TX who conducts CPE courses for CPAs and individual training and group classes to QuickBooks users.  His company Accounting Insight maintains a sixteen station QuickBooks lab, providing hands on training.  You can contact him directly at rguild@accountinginsight.biz or follow him on twitter at QBPro