Automatic pricing saves a lot of time: you set a rule once, and thousands of supplier products get your price. But a rule has to protect your margin as well as your time. Small details, such as rounding or what happens without competitors, can take more profit in a month than you would expect.
This article covers two pricing principles we follow: prices only ever round up, and the minimum profitable price is always protected.
Rounding only goes up
Tidy prices such as 13.00 or 13.90 sell better than 12.37, so a pricing rule lets you choose how to round. What matters is that rounding never lowers a price:
| Rounding | Calculated price | Final price |
|---|---|---|
| To a whole euro (X.00) | €12.32 | €13.00 |
| To ten cents (X.X0) | €12.32 | €12.40 |
| To X.90 | €12.95 | €13.90 |
A price that already ends as required is kept. Any other goes up to the next allowed ending. Some rounding options used to go to the nearest value, so 12.95 could become 12.90. That is five cents on one product, but across thousands of products and hundreds of orders a month it adds up to a noticeable amount that quietly left your margin.
The minimum profitable price is always protected
When your pricing takes competitors' marketplace prices into account, the rule has a minimum profitable price formula: the supplier price, the marketplace commission, shipping and the smallest profit you want to make. The price never drops below it, even when a competitor sells cheaper.
What matters most is what happens when there are no competitors, or none of them has the product in stock. Then:
- if the main formula's price is below the minimum profitable price, it is raised to that minimum;
- if it is above, it is kept; the price is never lowered just because there are no competitors.
This avoids selling at a loss without any competition simply because the main formula was built for a different market.
See where a price comes from
The product page shows the value of the minimum profitable price formula next to the final price. When a price looks odd, you see at once whether it came from the main formula, the rounding or the profitability floor.
Rules by category, supplier or price
One rule for the whole catalog is rarely enough. Electronics take a smaller markup than decorations, and cheap products need a higher percentage than expensive ones. You can limit rules with conditions: category, supplier, brand, price range. A priority decides which rule applies when several match. The rule edit page is split into clear parts: which products, which formula, sale, price protection and competitors.
Prices refresh every hour
When a supplier's price changes, your price is recalculated by the same rules and updated in your store and on marketplaces every hour. We set up the rules with you when we connect your suppliers, and you can change them yourself later. See the plans on the pricing page, or write to us with any questions.