Two price lists - Trade & Retail

[graphicz]

My understanding is that Actinic runs on one price list and that customer groups have discounts applied (ie: x0.66)

My client has been told by support that Actinic can run two price lists if you add columns to the actinic access database

1. How do I run separate trade and retail price lists?

2. If this means manipulating the actinic.mdb is this a recommended thing to do and is it supported by Actinic?

Thank you.

[bentleybloke]

There's a good guide in help.

Help > Contents > Discounts > Customer Groups

[Duncan Rounding]

I don't know what support are referring to. It is not recommended nor supported to touch the database at all. I am surprised that they suggested modifying the database.

You can uncheck 'Generated' and enter a price manually for the product price for a particular customer group. That price can be set manually in the Actinic database.

[graphicz]

Thanks Jonathan and Duncan.

I didn't think Actinic would support messing with the mdb!

Per product you can specify trade price in 'Products' 'Prices'

On hierarchical export the Trade price is on the line below the product:

Product, 39, Digital Camera
Price, Trade, 2640

Can I have a flat file for import (to change prices) with the retail price in one column and the trade price in another????? That is, what column headings would be needed?

Thanks

[NormanRouxel]

Unlikely for two reasons:

1) The only fields available for flat file importing are described in the Help under - Valid Fields For Importing. Trade isn't one of them.

2) I don't think there's a "Trade" price as standard in Actinic. It's likely that you've created a "Trade" price yourself.

Hierarchical importing will be required.

[graphicz]

Sorry Norman, I had omitted to say that I had created the customer group 'Trade'.

The lines i wish to import simply are

Header:Price Customer Group Price
Price Trade 12345

[NormanRouxel]

That's definitely a Hierarchical Import. The Price, Trade, 12345 line would have to come after the Product line to be set for that product.

You could look into using the Flat File Converter (documented in the Help) as this may be able to create the hierarchical structure you require from a flat file with a Trade column.

[graphicz]

Creating a separate ‘Trade’ Price List in Actinic.

Creating a separate ‘Trade’ Price List in Actinic.

Whatever you do in Actinic - Take a snapshot first! Then you can restore if it all goes horribly wrong!

This is posted not as an authoritative guide but as my experimenting so far and it is for you to try out and improve upon.

Note: This is for those who want to specify their trade prices per product or per group of products. In the example I use a global calculation to generate trade prices, this is just for this example, if that is all you want to do you can do this quite happily in Actinic.

In Marketing Customer Groups create a new customer group called ‘Trade’

Export your products as a hierarchical file.

Copy the ‘Header:Product’ row and paste into a new file.

Sort the hierarchical file by column A and copy only the ‘Product’ rows to the new file starting in the row below the headers.

Delete all columns except Header:Product, Product reference, Short description and price.

Add a new column after price and call it Trade price.

Fill in all your trade prices. If you want to do it as a calculation of retail use something like =D2*0.7 and drag that cell down the whole column. Then copy, paste special, values.

Really the whole point of this exercise is for those who want to specify their exact trade prices rather than just multiplying by a fraction which can be done quite happily within Actinic

Remember that Actinic likes prices in pence so you may need to do =ROUND(E2,0) or similar to round to a whole value removing any decimal places.

Create a column to the left of column A (becomes a new column A).

Type 1 in the top cell and 2 in the cell below. Select both cells and drag down the column to create a column with 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... etc

Copy this column and paste it in the cell below the column so you have a column with 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... etc 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... etc

Sorting by this column will put a space, an empty row, between each row.

Click on the top value of the trade price column then click the bottom value, and ‘Cut’. Now click on the empty cell below the top value in the Trade price column and click ‘paste’. Your trade prices are now all one row down from the other product details.

In the cell under Header:Product type Header:Price
In the cell under Product Reference type Customer Group
In the cell under Trade Price type Price

Delete the words Trade Price. (Don’t delete the cell!)

Delete the contents of column A - the 1122334455 ...etc.

Type 1 in the top cell and 2 in the cell below. Select both cells and drag down the column to create a column with 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... etc

Sort the data by column B.

Go to the bottom cell of column B that has something in it - it should mostly be the word product.
Type Price.
In the cell to the right type Trade
Select both cells and drag down to duplicate until you reach the cell next to the final value of column A.
Sort by column A
You should have something like this:



Now you can delete column A.
Save the excel file then save it as a CSV file. Now close excel.

Take a snapshot from your site, (you may wish to try this on a dummy site first, download Actinic and install it on another computer to play with!)

File, Import, Hierarchical, select file location, select Update (Very important! DO NOT select ‘replace’.)

Click next and next. Actinic should sort the mapping out for you. Next again and specify a file where the errors can go if there are any.

I have to say that you do this at your own risk, hence the suggestion to try it on a dummy site first.

Have a happy and peaceful Christmas.