bol: how to set up volume discounts

Table of contents

Introduction
Set up a volume discount on ChannelEngine

• Example
• Set up a percentage-based volume discount

Introduction

With the bol V3 API, you can set volume discounts. Volume discounts allow you to offer customers a lower unit price when they buy larger quantities of a product.

You can configure up to four order quantity ranges. One of these must be for a quantity of one, which represents the regular selling price. The remaining ranges can define discounted prices for higher quantities.

Using volume discounts is optional. You can set two, three, or four ranges in total, or choose not to use this volume discounts at all.

Each volume discount consists of a quantity and a unit price. The quantity represents the minimum number of units a customer must order to receive the specified unit price.

Set up a volume discount on ChannelEngine

Pricing v1

To set up volume discounts in pricing v1:

1. On ChannelEngine, open your bol channel.
2. Go to Mappings, Offer mappings and access the optional attributes.
3. Quantity discount settings are configured in pairs – the minimum quantity and the corresponding unit price. To export a volume discount, you must map both values. If you map a minimum quantity, you must also map a unit price – and vice versa.
   
   
4. Once you set up discounts, click Save. 

Pricing v2

To set up volume discounts in pricing v2:

1. On ChannelEngine, open your bol channel.
2. Go to Mappings, Offer mappings and access the optional attributes.
3. Quantity discount settings are configured in pairs – the minimum quantity and the corresponding unit price. To export a volume discount, you must map both values. If you map a minimum quantity, you must also map a unit price – and vice versa.
4. Map your minimum quantities under Offer mappings, and click Save.
5. To map the corresponding unit prices, go to Pricing, Price rules. Once done, click Save.
   
   NB: if you want to set up a percentage-based volume discount, you can set it directly on the Price rules tab. To do this, add price rules on top of your original prices. E.g.: to add or extract a certain percentage, apply the Add percentage price rule. To learn more, check out the article ChannelEngine: price rules v2.

The new discounts are exported during the next scheduled Export offers to channel task, and should become visible on bol within 15 minutes. 

If volume discounts are not set up correctly, the offers are not be exported. You will see validation errors for the affected products on the Listed products and Validation and feedback tabs.

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

• Set quantities in increasing order. If the minimum quantity set for discount 1 is 10, the minimum quantity for discount 2 cannot be lower than 10. E.g.:
  3 | 6 | 10 = correct
  10 | 3 | 6 = incorrect
• Set prices in decreasing order. If the price for discount 1 is 9.99, the price for discount 2 must be lower than 9.99. Using the same price across different ranges causes errors and prevents your offer from being updated.
  12.99 | 9.99 | 8.99 = correct
  10.99 | 10.99 | 9.99 = incorrect
  8.99 | 9.99 | 11.99 = incorrect
• Ensure the prices represent actual discounts. The higher ranges must have lower prices as it is supposed to be a discount. E.g.:
  25.00 | 23.50 | 21.95 = correct
  21.95 | 23.50 | 25.00 = incorrect
• Do not set the 'Price before price rules' lower than the price for discount 1. This may lead to unexpected behavior, especially if you use repricing that allows the regular price to drop below the discounted price.
• Format the prices correctly. Prices must be properly formatted as decimal values. E.g.:
  30.25 = correct
  30 . 25 = incorrect (spaces make the value unparseable)
• Keep the maximum quantity between under 24. Values above 24 cause the offer export to fail. Ensure that all quantity values remain within the 1-24 range.

Example

On ChannelEngine

To set up a volume discount for a Belgian beer package:

• Set the regular price of the beer package to EUR 19.95.
• Add a quantity discount so that when a customer buys two or more packages, the price per package is EUR 18.99.
• Add a second discount range so that when a customer buys four or more packages, the price per package is EUR 17.99.
• There are no additional ranges beyond four packages – so no discount mapping is required.

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

On bol

Set up a percentage-based volume discount

Pricing v1

To set up a percentage-based discount for volume pricing, you can use price rules.

1. Go to Pricing, Price rules, and click Add to create a new price rule.
2. Create a dedicated Output for this rule avoid conflicts with your regular pricing.
   • Do not set the Output to Price.
   • To add a new Output attribute, click Add next to the dropdown.
   • Use a distinctive name to identify this price rule.
     

     

3. If you apply rounding, make sure the range is not too broad. E.g.: if your original price is 10.99 and you add two rules to apply discounts of 6 % and 8% with rounding to the nearest .95, both round to 9.95.
4. Click Save.
5. Go to the Offer mappings tab and find the Quantity discount price attribute. In the dropdown, select your newly created price rule output.

   

6. The discounted prices should now appear in the mapping grid. Click Save to save the offer mappings.