Activating prices

This task is needed only if you are using some or all pre-calculated pricing.

Also, if you used some or all pre-calculated prices in the past and later changed the rule to use all live pricing, the Pre-Activation and Activation utilities should be executed to empty out the pricing batch table.

Prices must be pre-activated, by site, for each site included in the Customer Portal site group. These proposed prices can be reviewed and updated, and when they are final, they must be activated from the Primary Site for use on the Customer and Reseller portals. Depending on your business processes, a different person may perform pre-activation for each site in your Customer Portal site group; however, price activation should be controlled by one person who logs in to the back office for the Primary Site.

Log in to a site in the Customer Portal site group.
Open the Portal Pricing Pre-Activation form and specify a starting and ending item number for which to activate prices. The first time you activate prices, you may prefer to leave the Starting Item and Ending Item fields blank, so prices are created for all items. Later, if you change pricing for a particular set of items, you can specify just that range of item numbers.
Click Process. A background task is submitted. The status of the background task is displayed on the Background Task History form, Task Messages tab.

Open the Portal Pricing Review form to review the pricing records and error messages if any problems occurred. It is recommended, but not required, that errors be corrected during pre-activation. These are descriptions of possible errors:


Error message	What to do
This item will be calculated as an Include Tax in Price item. or This item is flagged as an Include Tax in Price item.	Make sure the Include Tax In Price field on the Customers form for a specific customer matches the Include Tax In Price field on the Customer Contract Prices form for that same customer and a specific item. Both must be selected or cleared.
Unable to determine List Price for (item number).	Evaluate the item and its price on the Item Pricing form. If there is no price for the item, create one and then try running Portal Pricing Pre-Activation again. If the error remains, it is most likely a software error, and you will need to contact us for help.
Unable to determine Customer Price for (item number).	Verify the item on the Items form, the customer record on the Customers form, and that all needed conversion records exist on the Unit of Measure Conversions form between the customer's unit of measure for the item and the base unit of measure for the item.
Unable to determine Break Quantity and Break Prices for (item number).	Verify the break quantity pricing on the Item Pricing, Price Formulas, and Customer Contract Pricing forms for the given item.
List Price for (item number) could not be converted to customer currency.	Verify that valid rates exist on the Currency Rates form for all supported portal currencies and for the base currency of the current site.
Customer Price for (item number) could not be converted to base currency.	Verify that valid rates exist on the Currency Rates form for all supported portal currencies and for the base currency of the current site.

If you had errors, run the Portal Pricing Pre-Activation utility again. Repeat until no more corrections are needed.
When prices are ready for use on the Customer Portal, communicate to the person who activates prices that your site prices are ready. If you are that person, continue with the next step.
Log in to the portal Primary Site and open the Portal Pricing Activation form.
Perform one of these steps:
- To activate prices for all sites at once, leave the Site field blank.
- To activate prices for one site, select that site in the Site field.
Select Preview and click Process. Committing prices is prevented if any price configuration errors occur during preview. Errors are displayed in the grid and can include these problems:
- Pricing is not enabled for default pricing site. This means the Portal Pricing Enabled field on the Items form has not been selected for the item in its default pricing site.
- Default pricing is not defined. This means the Portal Pricing Site field on the Items form has not been selected for the item in the Primary Site. All items that are active for the Customer Portal must have a default pricing site.
Correct any errors found and run the preview again until no more corrections are needed.
Select Commit and click Process. A background task is submitted. The status of the background task is displayed on the Background Task History form, Task Messages tab. Prices are activated for use on Customer Portal and their status is changed from Next to Current on the Portal Pricing Review form.