Auto pricing guide

This document was created to help you understand how ServiceDesk prices parts.

The ultimate purpose is to help you get precisely the prices you want in every circumstance and with minimum fuss.

We’ve gone to great pains to create a pricing system that will accommodate every situation and every user preference and simplify actual usage.

The “Catch 22” is that, to accomplish the above, the underlying system has to embrace a bit of complication.

Here are some of the facts it has to deal with:

1. Many, if not most, users prefer to price special order parts differently than stocking parts;

2. Many (but not all) stocking parts are “commodity items” and regularly feature markups many times greater than is otherwise typical;

3. While it’s nice to have “fixed” internal prices for stocking parts, it’s also nice to be able to change those prices via some automated (or semiautomated)mechanism;

4. Most servicers find that “Published Prices” (aka manufacturers suggested retail or List) do not provide sufficient markup and regularly price their parts higher;

5. A minority of servicers prefer to price at List;

6. Many servicers (and dealers) wish to give differing levels of preferential pricing to particular customers;

7. There are several different operational circumstances where auto pricing is potentially involved, each with its unique concerns and;

8. Warranty service is a whole other ball game.

There are four pricing inputs available in ServiceDesk:

This system creates a sell-for price based on a formula-based markup from wholesale/cost. The MarginPlanner form (Shift-F10) is used to specify the markup curve that’s wanted for each of the six “Tiers.”

The idea of Tiers is to accommodate different customers for whom you may wish to give varying levels of preferred pricing. If you want to price for any customer for an other-than-default Tier, you’ll need to have a QuickEntryTemplate for the customer to do so. Each QuickEntryTemplate includes a box where you may specify the Tier you wish to use for that customer. You may also use this box (instructions are right next to it) to specify a markup basis other than a MarginPlanner Tier, such as straight-percent markup from cost, for example, or straight-percent discount from otherwise standard retail.

In the absence of any explicitly designated markup scheme for a customer(and in any circumstance where the price is to be calculated based on markup from cost), the system defaults to the MarginPlanner Tier 1 curve for SpecialOrder parts and MarginPlanner Tier 6 curve for Stocking parts.

For stocking parts, the MasterPartsPlan includes a column wherein you’re expected to provide the price you intend to charge in standard retail sales.

Having these as independent listings (i.e., not just relying on the MarginPlanner) is essential because so many stock parts need human input (based on knowledge of market conditions, etc.) to price optimally. In addition, servicers often receive huge discounts by purchasing stocking parts in volume and most likely wish to pocket the increased margin rather than whittling it away via an auto-price system.

When adding new listings to the MasterPartsPlan, users (in the appliance service industry) may take advantage of a drop-down that pulls data from our SmartParts system. The system can include a retail price insertion upon selecting items from the drop-down. Depending on the circumstances, the price as inserted may or may not be optimum.

The MasterPartsPlan also includes mechanisms to auto-insert and auto-update all its price boxes. Items can be specifically included or excluded in the action; updating can be based on percent changes or newly published SmartParts data and according to any of the Tiered MarginPlanner curves.

At present, “Published Price Data” refers exclusively to SmartParts. If, in the future, we can acquire similar data for industries outside the appliance area, we are most anxious to do so.

SmartParts data includes exhaustive parts/price listings for all the major appliance manufacturers and several in the less-major category, including Thermador/Bosch, Sub Zero/Viking, Dacor, and Fisher Paykel.

The data is kept reasonably current.

Sometimes, there’s no one better to determine a sell-for price than the owner/manager. While seeking to relieve you of the burden of regularly doing this (via the pricing engines above-discussed), we don’t take the option away from here. Some mechanisms will allow you to price based on immediate judgment whenever you wish.

Now that you know the pricing inputs, the next question is how, where, and how they are applied.

We’ll use a chart to communicate this.

Before you look at the chart, one more note: As previously discussed, though most servicers feel that published list prices are too low, there’s a minority that wants to charge just that. To accommodate those “low-priced nice guys,” we’ve added a checkbox in the MarginPlanner form. It’s labeled “Where possible (and where a Markup Tier or MasterPartsPlan price is not explicitly indicated) defer to Published Price.”

The following charts show several treatments, depending on whether “Standard Scheme” or “DeferToPublishedPricing” applies. This difference depends on whether the above-described checkbox in the MarginPlanner form has been checked.

Note: In the FinishedForm context, if you want to know what pricing strategy was used in any particular instance, you can float your mouse pointer over the top of the box that contains the inserted price. A tooltip will appear, explaining the underlying cost and the pricing strategy.