If you’ve ever baked cookies, you know that the most important part of the process is the beginning. Getting the right ingredients—and the right amounts—is really what makes those discs of pleasure so good. The same thing goes for building an Insite Commerce platform. It’s all in how you set up the code.

But wait a minute—before we go into the specifics of how to set your Insite Commerce pricing matrix, let’s discuss why we even need it.

The Foundation of Price
When it comes to B2B commerce, we all know the only constant is change. Because of this axiom, any digital pricing protocol has to be based on the correct parameters. Pricing bases like: Customer-centric, Product-centric, demographic-oriented, quantity of purchases, etc.

Insite Commerce allows the developer to set these parameters to whatever magical mix your business needs. And it does this through a list of rules based off whichever of those variables you choose. But before we dive into these rules, we have to adjust the settings from default to manual controls:

UseBasicPricing is the “hands free” setting. You’ll want to change this setting to FALSE if you hope to evoke any of your own rules. Don’t fret about the ERP_PricingStoredProcedure. This is a historic setting that pulls old pricing. It’s only used when website setting is “Legacy”. Now that that’s done, let’s look at the various parameters we have to work with.

Pricing Matrix Rule types:
• Customer – Rule for all products as they apply to the selected customer only.
• Customer/Product – For products containing part numbers entered in the Product field by the customer.
• Customer/Product Price Code – For specific customer record and code for price level on products.
• Customer Price Code/Product – Rule is applicable to products that match the entered product part, for all customers.
• Customer Price Code/Product Price Code – Rule for all products that match pricing code for all matching customer price codes.
• Customer Price Code – Rule applicable to all products associated with matching customer pricing codes.
• Product – For any product that matches the product part number entered in the product field.
• Product Price Code – Selects only the products that match the pricing code of the entered information.
• Product Sale – pricing rule applicable to specific products.

Putting it all together
Now that you have an understanding of each principle that could govern your pricing matrix, it’s time to build the matrix.

Oh, one more thing: as we go through these paces, all values are case sensitive.

The Pricing Matrix you use has to have a base-line to draw and compare your rules to. For this reason, the values for Currency Code and Unit Of Measure should always be the same as what you’ve selected for Record Type. In our example here, the selected Record Type is “Customer” and the values in the Currency Code and Unit Of Measure fields both match that.

Once the pricing rule has been selected and applied, the matrix will pull the proper quantity-break row to calculate the price. It’s important to note that if no pricing matrix is found for a selected object, it will default to the Product Price List Price. In other words, each individual quantity-break line stands on its own relative to the calculations.

As you are setting up the matrix, your Currency Code should populate the currency table for every instance where price values are represented and for every matrix record. Be sure to enter exactly what you put in the currency table to ensure that the matrix recognizes the match. It might be a good idea to sketch out what you’ve got to input just to make sure you catch everything. Like most things digital, GIGO is still alive and well.

As the matrix calculates your prices, it is guided by the content in the fields, so, the value of the amount applied will be set against the Adjustment Type: Amount or Percent. Just be aware that the results will be different if the Adjustment Type is “percent”.

By setting the right foundation, your Insite Commerce pricing matrix will serve you well. Like those cookies, the end result is all a matter of adding the right ingredients. Double check your fields and follow your plan, and your website’s eCommerce platform will pull in business better than ever before.

P.S. – Interested in my complete Insite pricing matrix document? Please leave your info below and we’ll be in touch.