Pricing Paper
Contents
Overview
For years, paper pricing in Morning Flight was linked to volume. The price you quoted your customer depended on the size of the order you placed with your vendor. Was it for less than a carton, a full carton, or so many cartons the commission alone would buy the sales rep a weekend in Vegas?
Later we opened the Morning Flight Forum and discovered that most printers now pay the same price no matter how much paper they order on any given day. That's true at least here, in the U.S., though I suspect a nice discount might still be on the table if the order was large enough.
That kind of pricing policy may not make sense from a marketing perspective, but happily, we don't make the rules. Our job is to make sure Morning Flight can deal with them.
Pricing Options
All paper categories let you enter paper costs per 1,000 sheets, in three different quantity brackets. The number of cartons in the final bracket is user adjustable, and each paper item can have its own custom markup. Starting with version 13.1, all three categories now offer a check box to prevent paper from being priced in broken reams or partial boxes of envelopes.
Custom and in-Stock paper add another layer of flexibility. There you can enter costs either per 1,000 sheets or per 100 lbs (50 kg when the program is set for metrics). For bracket configuration, you have a choice of cartons only, weight only, or cartons up to a full carton, and beyond that by weight.
In the window below, left-clicking within the red circle will increase the number of cartons, right-clicking will lower it. Clicking anywhere else in the area pointed to by the arrow will change the bracket configuration. Be sure to match up your configuration with how the paper is sold by your vendor. Entering a cost for 100 lbs. when your entry is set for 1,000 sheets will get you a bad price in a hurry.
What the Buttons do
The Manual Price button has a single function - it makes all cost fields available for entry. It also has two simple rules:
•The cost in the multiple carton bracket can't be higher than what's in the full carton bracket;
•The cost in the full carton bracket can't be higher than what's in the broken carton bracket.
The One-Price button restricts entry to the full carton cost field and automatically updates broken carton and multiple carton costs to be the same as the full carton cost. With One-Price in effect, only the full carton cost can be changed.
The Auto-Price button also restricts entry to the full carton cost field and automatically updates broken carton and multiple carton costs to approximated values based on ratios used by major paper vendors. With Auto-Price in effect, only the full carton cost can be changed.
Because the program has no way of knowing what's actually in your vendor's price book, Auto-Price costs are estimates. Likely to be good enough for 500 letterheads but not for 10,000 catalog sheets. To fine-tune, first click the Auto-Price button, then the Manual-Price button, then make the adjustment.
Clicking the Color button will price in-Stock color paper the same as white.
The color button is found only in the in-Stock window. With the other three buttons, it's either manual, auto-price, or one-price. Only one can be active at a time. The entry method in use is displayed at the bottom of the window. It's attached to the paper item to which it applies, but can be changed during edits.
See also