Setting portal pricing rules

  1. Open the Portal Parameters form.
  2. Select the Pricing Rules tab.
  3. Specify this information:
    Pre-calculation Rules
    Specify your preference regarding pre-calculation pricing. For multi-site implementations, pre-calculation prices are taken from all sites in the portal site group, so pricing options must be specified in all sites, and the entries must be the same across sites.

    These are general explanations of the pricing rules. For more detailed information, see Portal pricing rule detail.

    • Use live pricing: When you select this option, only live pricing is used on the portal. The Portal Pricing Pre-Activation and Portal Pricing Activation utilities are not needed to activate prices but can be used to empty out the item_portal_price (batch) table if pre-calculated pricing was used in the past.

      This option is best when the number of items, customers, sites, and currency codes exposed to the portal are very large, or when almost every customer/item combination has a customer contract or pricing formula, causing the pre-calculation utility to take longer than is manageable.

      Live pricing makes prices immediately available on the portal, so if you have items for which you need time to evaluate prices, you should make those items inactive for the portal until the prices are ready.

      When you use this setting, the option to sort by price is not included on the portal Products page. Portal users can sort by only item number or item description.

    • Pre-calculate generic prices only: This is a combination of pre-calculated pricing and live pricing. Customer contract, price formula, or generic prices minus customer/item discounts will all be live prices. Prices coming from the Item Pricing form must be pre-calculated using the utility. We recommend that you test the utility in your environment to make sure this is a suitable option.

      When you use this setting along with the Show list price as unit price display rule, the option to sort by price is included on the portal Products page. When this setting is used with any other display rule, portal users can sort by only item number or item description.

    • Pre-calculate all prices: For this option, all prices must be pre-calculated using the utility. This option is best when the number of customers, items, sites, and currency codes is not large or when most item prices are generic prices.

      When you use this setting, portal users can sort by price, item number, or item description on the portal Products page.

    Display Rules
    Select a display-rule option. This is needed only in the Primary Site. These are your options:
    • Show list (generic) price as unit price: This option shows only the list, or generic, price for each item.

      When this rule is selected, the price displayed on the portal is the list price; however, when a portal user adds an item to the cart, the customer-specific price is used instead of the list price, if a customer-specific price exists.

    • Show customer-specific price: This option shows only the customer-specific price for each item. List prices are never displayed on any portal page and are never used when items are added to the cart.

      When you use this setting, prices and pricing options cannot be displayed before the portal user logs in, so items cannot be added to the cart in pre-login mode.

      If you have a pricing structure in the back office that causes the list price for any portal-enabled items to be lower than customer-specific pricing, you should choose this option.

    • Show customer-specific price or list price: This option shows the customer-specific price if one is available. Otherwise, it shows the list price, if available.
    • Show both list price and customer-specific price: This option shows both the list and customer-specific prices, along with a You Save amount for each item.
  4. Optionally, you can select to display the item unit price only upon request. This is needed only in the Primary Site. If this option is selected, prices are calculated and displayed on the portal only when a portal user clicks the View Price link for an item. This option can be used with pre-calculated pricing and live pricing.
  5. Click Save.