Selling products for highest price paid

If a customer places an order for a product and has historically paid a higher price than the price that defaults in Sales Order Entry, you can set system options to force the higher price for that product and customer. This ensures that the customer is not offered the product at a price less than they are accustomed to paying, and you receive the highest margin on the sale. This may also encourage customers to agree to a contract price to receive a better price in the future.

To implement the Highest Price Paid pricing search, you must set two options in SA Administrator Options-Documents-Sales Orders: Months History and Exclude Level 2. These options define the number of months of sales history to search for the highest price, and whether to exclude Price Type Level 2 sales in the search.

The Highest Price Paid search is not conducted if the original default price was determined using a contract price. A contract price is a Price Type level 1 (Customer/Product) PD Pricing Setup record. The contract price is not changed by the Highest Price Paid search. Additionally, if you use Price Type level 2 pricing records (Cust/Prod Price Type, Cust/Prod Line, Cust/Prod Cat, or Cust/Rebate Type), and the Exclude Level 2 option is selected, any prices that originally default on the sales order line using level 2 pricing records are not overridden by the highest price paid.

If you use promotional pricing, you still have the option to choose between the promotional price and non-promotional price. The non-promotional price reflects the highest price, if it applies. If you do not have permission to select a promotional price (the Access Promo Price in OE option in SA Operator Setup-Entry Options is not selected), the Promo Price Default selection in SA Administrator Options-Documents-Sales Orders determines the price to use: Lowest, Promo, or Regular. This automatic selection may result in the promo price instead of the highest price being selected.

You can override contractual level pricing with multiple level price search. This pricing search can conflict with the Highest Price Paid search. We recommend you select one method or the other, not both.

When a sales order line price is replaced with a higher price by this search, the order number, suffix, and line number are stored on the new order line. In addition, the Price Origin Code is set to “H”. This code is displayed in Sales Order Inquiry and Sales Customer Pricing Inquiry. To prevent the highest price search in Sales Customer Pricing Inquiry, select Return/Ignore Highest Price.

Run the Sales Order Master List Report to see the Highest Price Order and Line that affected the Highest Price calculation. This is printed under the Original System Line Data section.

Calculating highest price

The highest price is retrieved from non-return lines for a product with the same unit of measure on invoiced (Stage 4 or 5) sales orders with an invoice date that falls within the number of months you specify for the Months History option. If the highest price is higher than the current default price (obtained using the standard pricing routine), the higher price defaults in the Price field in Sales Order Entry. Correction Orders (CR) and Return Merchandise (RM) orders are not included. Any lines where the product was returned at a later date are also excluded. If an order has corrections against it for the same product, and an invoice is tied to the correction type at the order header, those lines are ignored during the search.

The calculation also restricts the search to orders for products based on the Pricing By Region and Pricing By Warehouse settings in SA Administrator Options-Documents-Sales Orders. If you select Pricing By Region, the search excludes any orders where the shipping warehouse is not in the selected pricing region. This is based on the Price/Rebate Region setting in Product Warehouse Description Setup. If you select Pricing By Warehouse, the search excludes any orders that are not in the selected warehouse. If you select both options, the Pricing By Warehouse option takes precedence. If you are using special price costing, the search is also limited to the same Special Price Rec # on the line.

If you select a substitute or supersede product, the Highest Price Paid search is conducted against the replacement product, not the original product.

Nonstock and catalog products also qualify for the Highest Price Paid search.

Previous Prices inquiry

The Previous Prices inquiry in Sales Order Entry-Pricing provides a list of the previous prices paid for the selected customer and product. The Highest Price Paid search uses a similar search method, but offers the benefit of automatically defaulting the highest price paid in Sales Order Entry.