Is there such a thing as a price group extension to choose a customer field for price?

[kayakbabe]

I need to be able to use both legacy and new price groups at the same time too. Same issues you mentioned in your 10-18 posts. Luckily we are requiring login to even see any pricing, so our customers can’t have stuff in their baskets unless they have already logged in.

I did see in the docs that Bill’s module let’s you “ set a fixed price vs a percentage for products that do not have attributes.” None of our products have attributes... but still we need old and new price groups to work... so Bill’s module is not a consideration.

Kelly


basically I need to alter the base_price which the legacy price groups do... and unfortunately those aren’t really a module. While the new price groups are modules... so Kent is working on an idea that he and I cooked up. I’ll let you know if it works.

What did did you end up doing for your situation?

[delcorsets]

Kelly, not sure if this would be something you'd want to look into, but we used to use a module of Bill's called Price Group Manager. It allows you to set price group discounts/markups in a variety of ways... one being fixed price.

We stopped using it because it only works with Legacy Price Groups, and I really wanted to switch all of our price groups and volume pricing to the new price group types. Below are some of my notes about how we used to use it before switching to the new Price Group types

Price Group Manager

- Override normal Price Group Price. Set advanced Price Group Price on a product level based on Discount, Markup, or Fixed Price.

- Has to be set on each individual product page

- Different discounts can be assigned for each Price Group for the same product.

- Products can be removed from selected Price Groups in the module admin on each product page.

- Volume Pricing (EP Volume Pricing module) will work on top of the Price Group price.

I've attached a screenshot below:

Screen Shot 2019-04-24 at 8.10.18 PM.png

[kayakbabe]

I tested "legacy price group product discount" and it does work...

But the difference is with new price group product discount, I DO NOT have to assign ALL the store products.

With the old legacy price group product discount, I DO have to assign ALL the products and any new products added in the future.

***And I can't have a fixed price with either one. Which is what I really need***

I guess what I want is a specific sale price, that applies to all products unless excluded AND works like the legacy product discount in that it affects the CTGY, PROD templates (and the others that display price) and not just the basket prices.

It appears to me the NEW price group product discount only affects the basket prices, it doesn't change the PROD, CTGY, PLST display of prices... I've played with the price display settings PROD and there is no effect for the new price group (there is an effect for the legacy though).

[lesliekirk]

Legacy price groups did/do allow you to assign a negative % effectively allowing you to increase a price.. but the templates are not designed to let it display if that new price is higher than the base price of the product. It always worked in the past.. and we used it. We didn't know it has been "broken" until just now. and I haven't played with the legacy price group in Miva 9 to know if they play nice with the new types of price group/coupons if a legacy group is assigned a negative % (to increase price).

Kelly, you said it worked in the past. Out of curiosity, when did it stop working?

[kayakbabe]

removed

[kayakbabe]

Legacy price groups did/do allow you to assign a negative % effectively allowing you to increase a price.. but the templates are not designed to let it display if that new price is higher than the base price of the product. It always worked in the past.. and we used it. We didn't know it has been "broken" until just now. and I haven't played with the legacy price group in Miva 9 to know if they play nice with the new types of price group/coupons if a legacy group is assigned a negative % (to increase price).

I really don't understand why miva limited it to not allow negative percentages. There are a lot of use cases where an increase is useful.

[delcorsets]

Kelly, I agree that would be a great improvement. In the same vein, it would also be a great improvement to allow a negative discount value for Product Discount price groups (to essentially create an upcharge.) Similar situation where Miva does not allow a value that is negative to be used.

Psydde

[kayakbabe]

I reread what you wrote. And also saw the price group "specific sale price" feature. BUT you can't have a specific sale price higher than the retail price. the store refuses to apply the sale price in that case. Also you couldn't have different custom prices for different groups.

I think if that specific sales price were fixed so that it could charger higher if a store owner wanted.. and also have multiple sale prices assigned to different price groups.. then this would work.
it would be adminable by someone with product edit rights. I think I"ll list this under bugs... since technically you can create many price groups.. and they don't have their own specific sales price.. they have to share just one sale price.. that doesn't seem right. ALSO I think we should be able to set a higher sale price if we want to. We should have control!

Kent, I still want to talk to you via email.

[Kent Multer]

Well yes, the best solution depends on factors like how many products are involved, how often you update them, who does the updates, etc. OK, we can continue this privately.

[kayakbabe]

I did see that module. The specific price module isn't feasible for several reasons.

1. I don't need specific prices for specific customers (I do see it can do it via price group).
2. I need pricing to be adminable from the product admin by an employee with limited access to the admin (not a full super admin).
3. We change individual products very frequently and having to upload a .dat text file every time a product changes would be really unwieldy and not the best use of a server admin's time.
4. FTP is disabled on our servers for increased security so ftp'ing a text file to update prices isn't going to happen.
5. Not to mention that using a text file instead of having the data in the database along with the rest of the product data isn't ideal.

Since, I need to set prices that are the same for a bunch of customers (these customer can easily be inserted into a price group when they sign up for a store account, the code already exists and we do this already for certain use cases). So it makes sense to me it would be a price group setting. This preserves all the other discounts and function of the store without having to alter any code in any templates (other than the account creation to assign them to the price group when they first sign up).

[kayakbabe]

Kent, I emailed you direct to continue this conversation... Kelly

[kayakbabe]

I've tried doing an assign at the top of the template and at the top of each area in the PROD template. But I think some backend stuff is bypassing the template and going directly to the db to get the price field. GRRRR.

how hard would it be to "extend" the price groups module? I"m thinking being able to choose a specific custom field for prices might just help a lot of folks who don't or can't do % markup/markdowns. A lot of wholesalers and distributors don't make the same margin depending on if a product is self manufacturer or sourced from different vendors. This feature sure would be nice.

[Kent Multer]

I don't think there's any built-in way to pull a cost directly from a custom field as you describe. But the store has a "Specific Price" discount module that lets you assign a fixed price for each product in the price group; no mark-up or other math involved. It provides its own admin setting to enter each product's price. There's probably a way to do a bulk import of price data, so that you don't have to enter the prices manually, although I suppose it might require an XML provisioning file, which isn't the most convenient format.

As usual, if you can't find a built-in solution or work-around, I can write a custom module to do it. This looks like a pretty simple (low cost) project.

[kayakbabe]

I'm trying to figure out to do something that I think others have wanted to do based upon my search through the forum, but no real solutions have been offered.

I want to use a MSRP custom field as the price if someone is in a specific price group.

NOTE: I am already using the cost field...so I can't use that
NOTE2: I can't do a simple markup.. becuase there isn't a simple markup, no pattern or rule to follow for the difference of price vs MSRP
NOTE3: MSRP custom field already exists and we display to all customers and price groups.. we have been doing only B2B and now want to sell to end retail customers at full MSRP.

Basically what I think I really need is a price group extension that has an option I can choose which uses the following logic
use custom field code MSRP as the source for prices for all shoppers in this price group.

any ideas?

I've thought of some nightmares...
a. we can have two stores that use all the same database tables and templates etc except that the price is different for the second store.. that "might" work.
b. I could recode every single page template to check for this one specific price group and everywhere that price is used.. insert code to change the price. (this would be a real nightmare with updates and such in the future).