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Main Menu | Setup | Pricing Setup | Pricing Families

Concepts
You may find occasions where the price of an item is dependent not on the quantity ordered in one line item, but on how many are ordered in the entire order. For example, an offset printer might give a discount based on the total number of business cards printed, even if they are for different people. The order may be entered as several lines (one for each business card), yet the price is based on the quantity of items in that price family.
Pricing families provide you with a way to group products into a family. You can then use the information from the entire group in your pricing calculations.
|| The ability to search through every other line item can be computationally intensive when the number of line items in an order starts to grow. If most of your orders contain more than ten line items, you may want to use this feature in moderation. || CFL Functions to Understand
|| Function || Parameters || Returns… ||

FamilyVariableTotal VariableName Total value (sum) of the variable in all line items in the same Pricing Family in the current variation.
IsAssignedToParent “VariableName” True if the Variable is assigned to the product, otherwise returns False. Note: Using this function without quotes around the variable name will not generate an error, however, the variable will be automatically added to the product.
IsAssigned “VariableName” True if the Variable is assigned to the product, otherwise returns False. Note: Using this function without quotes around the variable name will not generate an error, however, the variable will be automatically added to the product.
ParentVariableValue “VariableName”, DefaultValue Value of the parents' variable name VariableName if the Variable is assigned to the parent product. If the product is not a child product or the Variable is not defined in the parent, the function returns the DefaultValue. Note: This function works without quotes around the variable name, however, the variable will be automatically added to the product
VariableTotal VariableName Total value (sum) of the variable in all line items in the current variation

Pricing Family Screen
Figure 13 1 Pricing Family Screen
* Family Name Enter a name for this pricing family. Examples could be Business Cards, Copies, Large Format, Letterhead, etc.
* Description Enter a description to explain the purpose of the pricing family.
Effective Use
The need for pricing families arose from situations where a user wanted to discount based on the total volume in an order vs. the line item volume. Example: Printing 100 Coroplast signs on a flatbed but you have them split into two separate line items in Control:
Note: This feature is only available in Control Customizable. Out-of-the-Box versions of Control do not support this capability.
Example:
Line 1: 50 Coroplast signs with one phone number printed on them.
Line 2: 50 Coroplast signs with a different different phone number printed on them.
In this example you want the discount that is applied to the line items to reflect that the customer is ordering a total of 100 Coroplast Signs.
Question:
When setting up a pricing family you will want to consider which products you want as part of the pricing family. In this example we're just dealing with Coroplast however you may wish to include other products in the same family when you're calculating your discounts.
Summary of Setup:
In this situation let's assume we have a Coroplast Product named “Sheet Print - Coroplast” and that we want to discount based on the total area of all the line items that are in the Pricing Family of “CoroPlast Sheet”.
To complete this setup we'll need to complete the following tasks:
# Create a new variable and specify a formula that calculates the total area.
# Create a new discount table and associate the new variable with that table.
# Modify the built-in discount formula on the product.
# Link the new variable to the product.
# Test our changes.
Setup Steps:
# Create a new variable with the values listed below.
Name: CoroplastFamily
Type: Number
Unit Type: Area
Units for Entering Values: Sq. Foot
Units for Displaying Values: Sq. Foot
Default: Change option to Use Formula and type in FamilyVariableTotal(TotalArea)
# Create a new discount table with the values listed below.
Discount Table Name: Coroplast Family Discount
Variable: CoroplastFamily
Units: Area
Table Values: Insert the values of area and percentage discounts you wish to apply when those area thresholds are met. The table should look similar to the example below, although your individual values and discounts may be different.
||~ CoroplastFamily || Discount ||

0 0
10 5
20 10
100 15

- Create a new pricing family.

  1. Edit the product Sheet Print - Coroplast and modify the following settings.
    • Pricing Family: Set to Coroplast Family
    • Built In Discount: Set to the formula below.
PreDiscountPrice * DiscountValue(“Coroplast Family Discount”)%
  1. Test your pricing family discount.
  1. Create a new estimate, add the line item Sheet Print - Coroplast and specify a quantity and size that will fall within the range of area values specified in the table we created above. Note down the price when you added this line item.
  1. Clone the line item and note the price should now be reduced by the amount of the discount that was calculated by the increase in total area. If you want to verify the calculations you'll need to break out a pen and paper to calculate your actual total area to help arrive at your cost, then locate effective discount based on your total area to arrive at your final price.

Common uses for family pricing include:

See Also