Re: how to handle changing prices

  Fernando <spamers_at_must.die> wrote:
> Hi!
> What's the best design to handle changing prices for products?
> O:-) Different customers will have different discounts, prices may
> change for special offers, etc...
> Changing a price shouldn't affect previous orders of that same
> product, besides, I need to audit those changes.

I don't believe there is one single standard which is applicable to everyone. You've pretty well stated your needs, so you'll need to figure it out from there.

The first thing to do is to figure out what criteria controls individual prices. For example, if you need specific prices for different customers, you may want to determine that each inventory item has different price types (such as R for retail, W for wholesale) and then your price table will be controlled by inventory item and price type, such as:

Stock Number
Price Type
Price

If, however, you need different prices for different currencies for different customers, you may need something like this:

Stock Number
Currency
Price type
Price

Or, if everyone has the same price, you may need to have:

Stock Number
Price

And separately, in your customer table, define the discount percent that applies to each particular customer.

Or, perhaps you need some combination of these?

Finally, you'll need to copy the price criteria (whatever it is) from the price table to the order detail table (for each item on the order) so that if the price table changes, you can go back to the order detail table to see which prices were used at the time the order was placed.

Sorry this isn't more help; There just isn't one answer that works for every situation.

--Kevin
kevin_at_precisonline.com
http://www.precisonline.com
http://www.precisonline.com/gold.htm

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Before you buy. Received on Sun Feb 27 2000 - 00:00:00 CET