Prices are not typed in from memory. When you pick a product and quantity on a sales or purchase order, QTRACA works out the price for you from the agreements you have set up — contracts, promotions, price lists, standard prices — and records which one decided it, so the question “why was this priced at that?” is answerable months later.
You can always overtype the resolved price. This is a starting point, not a straitjacket.
Where to find it: Price Lists under Setup → Orders in the main menu.
How a selling price is decided
Working down this list, the first match wins and the search stops:
| # | Source | When it applies |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Customer contract price | A rate agreed with that specific customer for that product, in force on the order date. The most recently effective one wins. |
| 2 | Promotional price list | Any price list flagged as a promo whose dates cover the order date. |
| 3 | The customer’s price list | The list named on the customer record. |
| 4 | The account default price list | Your general list, for customers who have not been given one of their own. |
| 5 | The product’s sell price | The fallback held on the product itself. |
How a buying price is decided
Purchase orders follow their own, shorter ladder:
- Supplier contract price — a negotiated rate for a period. The most recently effective agreement wins, and the quantity break is then chosen within it.
- The supplier’s catalogue cost for that product.
- The product’s unit cost as a fallback.
Why a line was priced that way
Every resolved price keeps a trace of the decision — not just the winner, but the steps that were tried and why they were passed over. A line priced from a promotion records the promotion; one that fell through to the product’s standard price records that nothing else matched. Where a quantity break applied, the trace names the break that was reached.
This is what turns a pricing query from an argument into a lookup.
Price lists
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Code / Name | How you identify the list. |
| Currency | The currency its prices are stated in. See the warning below. |
| Promo | Marks the list as a promotion, which lifts it above ordinary lists in the order above. |
| Priority | Separates lists competing at the same level. |
| From | The date the list becomes effective. Until that date arrives the list is ignored completely — so you can load next season’s prices weeks ahead and they switch themselves on. |
| To | Promotional lists only. A regular list is open-ended and the system will refuse an end date on one, answering “only applies to promo price lists; regular lists are open-ended”. |
| Active | Switch a list off without deleting it or its history. |
Prices change by starting a new list, not by closing the old one. Give the new list a From date and load it whenever you like — it sits dormant until that date, then takes over, because where two lists compete the one that came into effect most recently wins. Last season’s list needs no attention at all; it simply stops being the newest.
This is why regular lists have no end date. An open-ended list that is superseded is the normal, tidy state of affairs — not something left half-finished.
A price list must match the customer’s currency. If a customer is set to one currency and the list that would price their order is in another, the system stops and tells you rather than quietly converting. Converting would invent a price nobody agreed. Fix it by giving the customer a list in their own currency.
Quantity breaks
A price list line can hold a ladder of quantity breaks — buy more, pay less per unit — edited as sub-lines of the price they belong to, rather than as separate records to keep in step.
The break is chosen from the quantity on the order line, so changing the quantity re-prices the line. That is the intended behaviour, and it is why the price may move after you correct a quantity.
Contract prices
Contract prices are agreements with one party, sitting above the general lists.
- Customer contract prices take precedence over every price list, including promotions — a negotiated rate is a commitment, and a general promotion should not override it.
- Supplier contract prices do the same on the buying side. The product picker on a supplier contract price is scoped to that supplier’s products, and the unit defaults to the product’s receipt unit.
- Both are dated, and the most recently effective agreement wins — so renegotiating is a matter of adding the new rate, not editing the old one.
A sales contract can also carry its own agreed unit price on each line. That price is used by the orders the contract releases; leave it blank and the ladder on this page applies instead.
Things to know
- Sell-side lists are for what you sell. Buying prices live on supplier products and supplier contract prices, not on sales price lists.
- Resolution happens when you pick the product and quantity, using the order’s date. Back-dating an order can therefore change the price it resolves.
- An overtyped price stays overtyped. The system does not quietly put its own answer back.