ChannelEngine: pricing

About this article

This article provides an overview of ChannelEngine's pricing features, helping you efficiently manage, automate, and optimize your product price offers across all connected channels.

Table of contents

Introduction

Price attributes in your product feed

Price attributes on channels

• Mappings step
• Advanced pricing features

Working with discounts

FAQs

Introduction

Before creating a product feed or adding products and channels on ChannelEngine, decide which price attributes to set for your products.

ChannelEngine offers advanced pricing features like price rules and repricing, each requiring specific price attributes. Every sales channel also has its own price attribute requirements. At minimum, you must define the base price and minimum price, usually including tax unless stated otherwise.

ChannelEngine supports two pricing versions: pricing v1 (soon to be deprecated) and pricing v2. See the links below for details on each version's features.

Pricing v1:

1. ChannelEngine: price rules v1
2. ChannelEngine: currency conversion
3. ChannelEngine: repricing v1
4. ChannelEngine: competition statistics

Pricing v2:

1. ChannelEngine: price rules v2
2. ChannelEngine: repricing v2
3. ChannelEngine: competitor history
4. ChannelEngine: marketplace fees
5. ChannelEngine: promotions

Price attributes in your product feed

In your product feed, you normally map the following price attributes:

• Price - required; your base selling price including VAT, which you use when the product is sold directly on your webstore. This should include your own profit margin, but it does not have to include the channel's commission or your own fees.
• Catalog price - the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP); not mandatory, but is useful if you want to use from-for prices on channels that support this feature.
• Purchase price - the price you pay your supplier for the product. This price is useful if you use ChannelEngine's repricing feature on your channels but want to keep a minimum margin on your products. This purchase price, if available, is also used to calculate a margin on ChannelEngine, which can be used in business rules. Exclude tax.
• Min. price - the minimum price at which you sell the product and are still profitable, including VAT.
• Max. price - the maximum price at which you can sell the product and still be competitive, including VAT.

While it is not mandatory to map all of these price attributes in your product feed, it is recommended. Mapping more attributes lets you better calibrate your exported price by offering precise inputs for price rules and repricing.

It is possible to store additional prices on a product. For example, if you want to use different prices on each Amazon EU marketplace, store them as separate attributes in your product feed or API request to ChannelEngine. 

Price attributes on channels

To export your prices to your channels, map your price attributes on each respective channel, in both the Mappings and Pricing steps.

Mappings step

In the Mappings step, map your price attributes. The following attributes may appear on your channel:

• Price before (re)price rules - (if using pricing v1) define the selling price before any other price rules or repricing mutations take effect. To learn more about this attribute, check out ChannelEngine: why are my price rules not applied?.
• Allow promotion below min price - (if using pricing v2) indicate if you allow discounts to fall below the minimum price that you define. 
• Flip protection time - (if using pricing v2) define how long your price holds before repricing the offer, on channels that support repricing. 
• Repricer strategy - (if using pricing v2) define which repricing strategy to use on channels that support repricing.

Advanced pricing features

In the Pricing step on a channel, map your regular price per product, and set up advanced pricing, including repricing rules and promotions/discounts.

Pricing v1

In Pricing, Price rules, configure rules to adjust the price of a product sent to a channel. E.g.: subtract a certain amount or convert to a different currency.

If using repricing, in Pricing, Reprice rules, configure rules to automatically adjust prices based on competitor prices.

Pricing v2

In Pricing, Price rules, map each channel-specific price attribute in separate tabs. Map the following to price values to each price attribute, at a minimum:

• Base price - this can be the Price from your product feeds or a price that you calculate with the built-in price rules. 
• Min. price - your minimum selling price, which you can define via your product feed or with the built-in price rules.  

If the channel supports repricing, configure reprice exclusion rules to create exceptions to your overall repricer strategy in Pricing, Reprice exclusion rules.

Additionally, set up time-bound promotions in Pricing, Promotions, and manage marketplace fees in Pricing, Marketplace fees.

Working with discounts

Indicate how to export your discounted prices in two ways:

1. Timebound - to timebox when your discounted price is exported to the channel, set up a promotion in Promotions.
2. Indefinite - when you save a discounted price as your Base price in Price rules - as a product selection override, ChannelEngine sends your discounted price for a selection of products indefinitely, or until you manually remove the override.

Step 1: choose your discount type

• Timebound (temporary) - create your discount in Pricing, Promotions, using explicit start and end dates.

  NB: if start/end dates are also available in the channel's Offer mappings, make sure to mirror the exact same dates there.

• Indefinite (permanent or manual) - create your discount in Price rules applied to a specific product selection. This allows you to manually control when the discount starts and ends.

Step 2: set up strikethrough pricing

To display a "slashed" original price next to your sale price, keep these rules in mind:

1. Map the base price - most channels require a comparison price (RRP, MSRP, or List price) set up in Mappings.
2. Beat the base price - the active selling price that you configure in the Pricing step must always be lower than the base price.
3. Channel rules apply - the channel ultimately decides whether to show the strikethrough. As a rule of thumb, your product usually needs to be listed at the higher baseline price for at least 90 days to qualify, though this varies by platform.

FAQs

My prices are not being exported, or the wrong price attribute is exported, instead of the value from a custom attribute. What is wrong?
One of the most common causes of errors in price exports is typos in the attribute values. These types can range from a comma when the attribute expects a dot or spaces before or after the value. E.g.: "Value": "32.95 ".

When should I use the Min. price or the Commercial min. price?
Use the Min. price when you want to ensure profitability because it reflects the minimum amount needed to achieve your desired profit. Use the Commercial min. price when you need to adhere to supplier restrictions that forbid lowering the price below a certain point.

How does ChannelEngine determine when the marketplace fulfillment price is used, e.g. Quantity price 1- FBA on Amazon?
When ChannelEngine exports an offer as FBA, the FBA price is exported; when the offer is exported as FBM, your regular price is exported.

Is the Price before (re)price rules field completely gone?
If you use pricing v2 on the channel, Price before (re)price rules is no longer visible in Mappings; you do not map this attribute in the Mappings step if you use pricing v2.