Repricer: Setting your minimum and maximum price

Every reprice rule needs a minimum and a maximum sales price. Those two values are the range the repricer is allowed to move in: your price will never drop below your minimum and never rise above your maximum. The quality of your repricing therefore depends directly on the quality of these two formulas.

A minimum price of "price + 10%" is quick to set up, but it rarely covers your actual costs. Include every cost element that comes with a sale: shipping, handling, returns, VAT and commission.

Go to:

• Where do you set your price boundaries?
• Which costs belong in your minimum price?
• Building your minimum price formula
• What about your maximum price?
• Commission per marketplace
• Check your formula before you synchronise
• Things to watch out for

Where do you set your price boundaries?

Open your reprice rule and go to the Default price boundaries tab. Here you fill in:

• Minimum sales price (required)
• Maximum sales price (required)
• Default formula for 'Set my sales price to' (optional)

That last one is optional, but you can only save the tab once every scenario in Scenarios and actions has an action for your sales price. If you do fill in the default formula, all your scenarios will use it until you untick Use default formula in a scenario and enter your own.

Would you like to see your boundaries back per product?

Enable the Create attributes for calculations option in the Basic settings. EffectConnect then creates channel attributes for the minimum price, the maximum price and the calculated price.

You build your formulas in the Formula Builder. Type @ followed by (part of) the name of a price element and select it, or click it in the Components to use in formula list.

The first time you add an attribute, the slide-out asks whether it's a numeric value (for example 1.21 or 1.1) or an amount (for example a purchase price or shipping costs), which currency applies, and whether the amount is in decimals or euro cents. So a VAT rate or a percentage-based markup is a numeric value, not an amount.

🔗 For more on building formulas, read Repricer: Formula Builder.

Which costs belong in your minimum price?

Go through these elements and decide which ones apply to your assortment. Anything that doesn't come from your source system or an additional data source can be set up in a custom attribute and used as a price element in your formula.

• Purchase price — what it costs you to buy the item, optionally including transport or customs costs.
• Margin / markup — a fixed amount, a percentage, or both. Want to work with tiers (for example a 2 euro markup up to 10 euro purchase price, 1.50 euro up to 20 euro, and 10% above that)? Use two custom attributes: one with the fixed markup and one with the percentage factor. Give products that already receive a fixed markup the value 1 in the percentage attribute.
• Shipping costs — these differ per product. Base your custom attribute on a source value you already have, such as weight, parcel size or delivery time. Do you also sell via LVB and should the repricer take that into account? Put that condition at the top of your custom attribute: condition blocks are processed in order of priority, so otherwise your regular shipping costs will already have produced a hit.
• Handling and packaging costs — packing an order costs time and materials. Include this as one element or split it up.
• Return and refund costs — return processing, return shipping and refunds. Often an average across your assortment, but you may want a higher cost component for categories with a high return rate.
• Advertising costs — do you advertise on a marketplace? Then include those costs on the products they're made for.
• Overhead costs — for example marketing or distribution costs, usually as a factor (1.09 for 9%). Note: overhead is not margin.
• VAT — where VAT goes in your formula depends on the preceding elements: were they already including or excluding VAT? Also check whether you have products with a reduced and a standard rate.
• Marketplace commission — see Commission per marketplace.

Building your minimum price formula

Brackets determine the order of calculation and keep your formula readable. Calculation runs from the inside out: in ((1+2)*2), 1+2 is calculated first and that result is then multiplied by 2.

Say you want to include these elements: purchase price, a fixed margin, a percentage margin, shipping costs, handling costs, VAT and the bol commission. Build it up step by step:

1. Purchase price and fixed margin together: (Purchase price+Fixed margin)
2. Add the percentage margin: ((Purchase price+Fixed margin)*Percentage margin)
3. Add shipping and handling: (((Purchase price+Fixed margin)*Percentage margin)+Shipping costs+Handling costs)
4. Add VAT (if all preceding elements exclude VAT): (((Purchase price+Fixed margin)*Percentage margin)+Shipping costs+Handling costs)*1.21
5. Add the fixed commission: ((((Purchase price+Fixed margin)*Percentage margin)+Shipping costs+Handling costs)*1.21)+Commission (fixed amount)
6. Factor out the commission percentage: (((((Purchase price+Fixed margin)*Percentage margin)+Shipping costs+Handling costs)*1.21)+Commission (fixed amount))/(1-(Commission percentage/100))

With these values:

The formula works out like this:

• (10.00 + 1.50) = 11.50
• × 1 (percentage margin) = 11.50
• (2.99 + 0.50) = 14.99
• × 1.21 (VAT) = 18.14
• 1.03 (fixed commission) = 19.17
• ÷ (1 − (15/100)) = ÷ 0.85 = 22.55 euro

This is your minimum sales price: you won't offer your product below this amount. Unless, of course, your markup/margin, costs or commission change.

What about your maximum price?

The maximum price often gets less attention, while it matters just as much. You don't want to price yourself out of the market: even if your offer stays online, a price that's too high affects your conversion, and marketplaces can take an offer offline if the price is no longer market-relevant.

What works well: take your minimum price formula as a basis and only change the margin components. For example, create the attributes Max fixed margin and Max percentage margin alongside your minimum margin attributes:

((((Purchase price+Max fixed margin)*Max percentage margin)+Shipping costs+Handling costs)*1.21+Commission (fixed amount))/(1-(Commission percentage/100))

With a max fixed margin of 5.00 and a max percentage margin of 1, this formula results in 27.53 euro.

Selling on bol and want to tie your maximum price to the price stars?

Use Bol 2 star price (STAR 2), the highest price at which your product is still displayed, combined with MINNOTZERO. If there is no star price, the value of that element is 0; MINNOTZERO ignores that 0 and falls back to your own formula.

Besides MIN and MAX, the Formula Builder also offers ABS, AVG, CLAMP and MINNOTZERO. Always use price elements that can be 0, such as the star prices and the price of the next most expensive seller, inside a function.

Commission per marketplace

Bol supplies two commission elements you can use directly in your formula:

• Commission (fixed amount) (CA) — the fixed commission contribution, including VAT
• Commission percentage (CP) — the commission percentage, including VAT
• Threshold amount for reduced bol commission (DB) — the maximum price at which a product can be offered to qualify for a reduced commission

If a commission discount is active, bol processes it in the fixed commission amount itself, so you don't need to set anything up for it. As a result, the fixed commission amount can be negative; combined with the unchanged percentage, the calculation still works out correctly.

Amazon, Kaufland and other marketplaces

For these channels you supply the commission yourself:

• One fixed commission amount for your whole assortment? Enter that amount directly in your formula.
• One commission percentage for your whole assortment? Enter that percentage directly in your formula (for example 15 for 15%).
• Does commission differ per category? Create a custom attribute holding the amount or percentage per category (or per group of categories with the same commission) and use that attribute as a price element. Always fill in a value under else that works as a safe fallback.

Bol margin optimisation

With Bol margin optimisation (previously called Danger Zone), EffectConnect uses the commission rates to automatically calculate whether your calculated repricer price also gives you the highest margin. If a slightly lower price with a lower commission yields more margin, the price is adjusted, for example from 20.01 euro to 19.99 euro. Your default minimum and maximum price formulas still apply: if your minimum price doesn't allow 19.99 euro, the repricer won't go there either. You can set deviating formulas for this scenario if you want to.

🔗 For more on the settings per scenario, read Repricer: Basic settings & Scenarios.

Check your formula before you synchronise

• Live example — the Formula Builder shows the result of your formula straight away. For bol, you'll also see the commission values here.
• Test calculation — when you change an existing formula, you can run a test calculation first. Happy with it? Click Copy changed formula to current formula, apply the change and save the entire reprice rule.
• Two statuses — Calculation status only lets the repricer calculate. Only with Synchronisation status enabled are the calculated prices exported to the marketplace. Useful if you want your new boundaries to run along quietly first. Also check your price priorities in the channel settings.
• Logs — in the repricer dashboard you can search by EAN or apply filters and see per product how the calculation was built up. You'll find the same logs on the product page under Prices.

Things to watch out for

Every price element you use needs a value for every product in the rule. If a value is missing, the calculation fails for that product. When working with custom attributes, always fill in a fallback value under else.

If the same EAN exists more than once in EffectConnect with different purchase prices, the repricer may calculate with a different purchase price than you expect. Check this before setting up your price boundaries.

We can't determine your ideal formula for you in advance, that depends on your assortment, your costs and your strategy. Would you like to look at it together? That's what a Reprice consultation is for: we go through your setup and configure the repricer with you.

You can also reach us any time, no strings attached:

📩 Email us at support@effectconnect.com

💬 Contact us via chat or give us a quick call