Custom Pricing: How to Offer Discounts and Set Fixed Prices
While standard price groups works as your base prices, specific customers often require tailored financial agreements. This guide explains how to use Custom Price Lists to lock in fixed rates and Custom Price Rules to apply discounts and connect pricing models to your customers.
1. Price Lists
A Custom Price List is an independent sheet where you define specific, fixed net prices for individual items.
How it Works
Price lists are standalone entities—they are not automatically tied to a customer when created. You build the list independently (e.g., “London county Contract 2026”) and set the exact fixed rates for your products.
- Go to Advanced -> Price List: https://app.myfoodoffice.com/price_lists
- Create new: Click New Price List.
- Choose a name: Write a name that is clear and easy to find back to (eg. Stockholm county spring 2026).
- Choose Non-fixed or Fixed price: Toggle for Fixed price if the list always decides the price for connected customers.
- Add Articles and Prices: Search for and choose articles or articles groups, and simply add the price.
- Remember to Save the changes you have made
- Apply Price list to Customers: To apply this list, you must link it using a Price Rule (detailed in section 2).
| Important: Fixed Price List |
| You can choose whether these prices must always be strictly followed (Fixed price), or if the system should dynamically choose the lowest price available to the customer. |
Key Benefits
Contract Certainty: Ideal for formal agreements where prices must remain entirely static for a set period, bypassing standard price groups.
Reusability: Build a specific contractual price sheet once and scale it across multiple clients effortlessly.
2. Price Rules
Price Rules act as the bridge between your pricing models and your clients. A rule is the mechanism you use to assign a discount, a custom Price List, or a combination of both to individual customers or entire customer groups.
How it Works
When configuring a Price Rule, you define the target customers and/ or customer groups, the pricing foundation, time period and any discounts:
- Go to Advanced -> Price rules: https://app.myfoodoffice.com/price_rules
- Create new: Click New rule.
- Choose a name: Write a name that is clear and easy to find back to (eg. Stockholm county spring 2026).
- Choose the Base Pricing: Select the Price list or Price group the rule is built on.
- Apply the Discount (Optional): Define the percentage to give the chosen customers the desired price.
- Target Customer(s): Go to the Customer banner, and choose the customers and/or customer groups.
- Target Articles: Go to the Article banner, and choose the articles and/or article groups.
At a Glance: Lists vs. Rules
| Feature | Custom Price Lists | Custom Price Rules |
|---|---|---|
| What is it? | A standalone sheet of fixed, item-by-item prices. | The tool that assigns discounts and connects price lists to clients. |
| Setup Requirements | Add articles and enter a fixed price for specific items. | Name: Give the rule a clear title (e.g., "Starbucks 10% Pastry Discount"). Article Scope: Select which specific articles or article groups (e.g., Bread, Sweet Yeast or all articles) the rule applies to. Customer Scope: Choose Customers and Customer groups that should be connected to the rule. |
| System Behavior | Independent. Holds the raw pricing data. | Relational. Connects a target customer or group to a price list or discount. |
| Common Use | Creating rigid contract rates that are not connected to standard pricing. | Use case 1: Connecting a customer with percentage discounts to a price group (usually Retail/Wholesale prices) or an existing Price List. Use case 2: Simply linking a client to a Price List. |
🛠️ Best Practices & System Health
| Core Recommendation: |
| Maintain as few unique Price Lists as possible. Instead, manage your pricing by applying percentage discounts via Price Rules directly to your Retail or Wholesale prices. |
Why prioritize Price Rules over multiple Price Lists?
Effortless Global Updates: If ingredient or supply costs rise and you update your core Wholesale Price group, any customer with a percentage discount rule will automatically scale with that update. If you use isolated Price Lists, you must manually open and update each individual sheet.
Simplified Maintenance: Leveraging customer groups and automated rules keeps your database clean, drastically reducing human error and administrative overhead.