This allows you to automatically populate user group prices onto products without having to type them in individually, by applying a % discount off the retail prices (normal price and special price). The discount used for the calculation is stored on the User Group record. 


Pre-planning & testing
We can create a clone of your site and you can test the impact of the changes there first. This is particularly useful if you are standardising user group pricing where there has previously been a wide fluctuation in administering prices. By taking and comparing price exports before and after the change you can determine how much has changed before applying the same process to your live site.

Multistore
Multistore already has the feature to apply a discount to a group which is set up in User Group Manager on the replica site. You should not switch on this feature unless you deliberately wish to use these features instead, in which case you should remove the Multistore discount and turn on Trigger Product Events in the API Advanced settings. However this requires testing beforehand to ensure there are no compatibility issues between both features. 


Set Up

Discuss this feature with your account manager & check for licence costs before proceeding.

  • Go to Admin > Site Settings >  Prices & VAT 
    • Tick: Enable Automatic Group Pricing
    • Tick: Include Product Options - if you want to change product option prices as well
  • Go to Export Manager > Product Price Columns NEW - set Show Group / Show Options / Show Auto Discount columns to Yes and run the export. Save this file in case prices need to be reverted back, name it such as "Pre-change Product Prices [add date]".

    It can be re-imported in Import Manager if a reversion is needed. In Step 2 select Product Price Columns NEW and select the file to reimport eg "Pre-change Product Prices [add date]"

    Imports & Product Bundles
    Please note, any bundle products with price sync (indicated by the "Bundle Price Sync" column in this export) cannot have their prices updated from this file because their prices are built from the sum of the bundles components.


  • Customer Communication
    Inform customers you are proceeding with a price change by setting a site-wide message via Site Update Banner e.g. "NOTE: A price update is currently in progress across the site."

    If preferred, you could also put the site in Enquire Only mode whilst making the price changes, via Site Settings > General > Core Details > Only Allow Enquiries on Products

  • Add % discounts for calculating the new prices in User Group Manager.

    Editing each user group in turn, set the discount reduction percentage in the section Automatic Pricing > Automatic Price Percent Reduction field eg 30 for 30%.  

    Other setting choices:
    Blank — disables auto pricing for this group. Any existing auto-generated prices will be kept but converted to regular manually-editable prices.
    0 — removes all auto-generated group prices for this group entirely.

    Click Save and a message will be displayed advising the prices are being recalculated and saved.

    Once it is completed the user group name on the product record will be greyed out and the prices can't be updated directly any more. 

    Additionally, you can add an override percentage on the product for this user group, for example they get more or less than their standard discount level. 


    If you set the Override to 0 then it will suppress the group price line completely and the Retail price would then be used for that customer (assuming the customer is only in one group, otherwise it will use the lowest price it can find from any other user groups the customer happens to be in). You can clear that override on the product record by scrolling to the bottom of the prices table where you will find it, else use Batch Products Processor.


    Restricted Products / using only Retail prices for specific customers
    If you have restricted or private label products that only one customer ever buys, you will likely only have set up a Retail price and not a group price. In this case, to prevent a dealer price being generated with a discount, set the Dealer Override field to 0 (either on the product edit screen or Batch Products Processor).

  • Perform a sanity check on the prices e.g. export the prices and check them, then move to the next group. 

    Regenerate All Automatic Group Prices
    Within User Group Manager there is a facility to regenerate all the prices for all groups in one go. Be sure to have set up the discount percentages on each group first.


  • Once everything is checked and completed, turn off the site-wide banner via Site Update Banner. 
    If relevant, turn off Enquire Only mode via Site Settings > General > Core Details > Only Allow Enquiries on Products.

  • If operating other sites via multi store which receive price updates from your master store, you may need to do a Force Push to update them - particularly if you have turned off the price sync temporarily and can then turn it back on again afterwards.

  • Batch Products Processor
    You can set Max Discount % & Dealer Override % for particular products to achieve more fine-tuned control of discounts on selected products. These fields are also displayed on the product record > Prices & Delivery tab.

    Max Discount is the most discount a product can have applied, capping whatever is set in the user group %. Dealer Override ignores both the dealer percentage and Max Discount and applies the percentage entered here. It will show the ID of the User Group in brackets e.g. Dealer Override (2) will apply to the user group with an ID of 2, Dealer Override (3) will apply to user group ID=3 etc.

    Note: entering 0 deletes the user group price entirely rather than creating a 0% one, so those customers would then see the retail price.

  • Entering New Products
    The group prices will be populated from the Retail price when you add a new product.

  • Product Price Import
    A price import will trigger running automated price discount.