bol: how to set up volume discounts

Table of contents

Introduction
Set up on ChannelEngine
Example
Use a percentage-based discount

Introduction

With the introduction of the bol V3 API, bol has added the option to set volume discounts. With volume discounts, you can offer the customer a lower price per item when buying more items. This can be set up to a maximum of 4 order quantity ranges (volume discounts), one of which has to be quantity '1' (your regular selling price).

The maximum is 4 different order quantity ranges, but you can also choose to have only 2 or 3 ranges in total (or not use volume discounts at all - it is a completely optional mapping). Every volume discount is a combination of quantity and unit price, where the quantity acts as a minimum order quantity for the specified price.

Set up on ChannelEngine

To set up volume discounts:

1. On ChannelEngine, go to bol, and on the Mappings tab click Offer mappings.
2. Navigate to the Optional settings. The quantity discount settings come in pairs: first the minimum quantity, then the price per unit for that quantity. If you map a minimum quantity, you must also map a price and vice versa in order for the volume discount to be exported.
   
   
3. Once you have set up the discounts, click Save (blue button) to save the volume discount. In the next scheduled export offers to channel task, the new discounts will be exported and become visible on bol (usually within 15 minutes).

If you do not set up the volume discounts correctly, your offers will not be exported and you will see (validation) error(s) for the affected products in both the Listed Products and the Validation & Feedback tabs.

To set up volume discounts correctly, take the following into account:

• The quantities that are set, must be in increasing order - if the minimum quantity set for discount 1 is 10, the minimum quantity for discount 2 cannot be lower than 10 (like 6). For example,
  3 | 6 | 10 = correct
  10 | 3 | 6 = incorrect
• The prices that are set, must be in decreasing order - if the price for discount 1 is 9,99, the price for discount 2 must be lower than 9,99. Equal prices for each tier will result in errors when processing by bol and result in your offer not being updated.
  12.99 | 9.99 | 8.99 = correct
  10.99 | 10.99 | 9.99 = incorrect
  8.99 | 9.99 | 11.99 = incorrect
• The higher tiers should have sensible (lower) prices as it is supposed to be a discount - for example:
  25.00 | 23.50 | 21.95 = correct
  21.95 | 23.50 | 25.00 = incorrect
• The 'Price before price rules' cannot be lower than the first tier price - it could have undesirable effects if you have a repricer listing active that allows the regular sales price to go below the discount price.
• The prices must be formatted correctly - as your input has to be parsed to a decimal value, please make sure the input is formatted properly. So 30.25 is correct, 30 . 25 has unparseable spaces and will result in no volume discount being exported.
• The maximum quantity of discount products must be between 1 and 24.
  All values higher than 24 will result in a failing offer export for this product. For example, in the following screenshot the prices are not formatted correctly and will not be exported as volume discounts to bol.
  

Example

On ChannelEngine

For example, to set up a volume discount for a Belgian beer package:

• The regular price of the package is EUR 19.95.
• If a customer buys 2 or 3 packages, they pay EUR 18.99 per package.
• If a customer buys 4 or more packages, they pay EUR 17.99 per package.
• There is no higher tier/volume discount.

On ChannelEngine, this example is set up as displayed in the following screenshot:

1. If a customer buys 2 (or 3) packages, they pay a price of 18.99 per package.
2. If a customer buys 4 or more packages, they pay a price of 17.99 per package.
3. No higher tier, so no mapping.

On bol

Use a percentage-based discount

If you want to use a percentage-based discount for your volume discount, you can use the price rules for that.

An example of how to set this up can be found below:

1. Go to the Pricing, Price rules and click Add to create a new price rule for this discount. We recommend to create a new specific Output for this price rule, to prevent mixing up this price rule for your regular pricing (for example, don't set the Output to Price). Add a new Output attribute by clicking Add behind the dropdown. We also recommend to use a name distinctive for the purpose of this price rule.
   

   

2. Make sure that if you apply rounding, this doesn't include a too big range. For example, if your price is 10.99 and you add 2 rules for a discount of 6 % and 8% and make them round to the nearest .95, they will result in the same result (9.95).
3. Click Save.
4. Go back to the offer mappings, navigate to the Quantity discount price column and click the dropdown arrow. Your newly created price rule should be displayed at the bottom.

   

5. If you click your new price rule, you should see the newly discounted values in the mapping grid.  Save the mappings and the discount should be applied after the next offer export to bol.