Why your prices and your totals are not the other shop's — transcript

Play this as a presentation — one slide per step, with the same narration. Every word of every step is on this page.

This lesson is for you if a customer has told you the price is different at another branch, or if your own totals stopped ending in a five-cent figure some time last month and nobody knows when. In about twelve minutes you will know which record actually sets the price your till charges, why three different things are all called the branch’s default pricing scheme, and how a rounding setting can be ticked and still do nothing.

Step 1 — Find the record that actually sets your price

After this step you will stop looking at the wrong field. Three different records in BigLedger are described as the branch’s default pricing scheme, and only one of them reaches your counter. It is a priority list, kept in the point of sale’s own branch settings, with a number against each scheme. Your counter takes the schemes on that list that the item is also priced in, picks the one with the highest priority number, and uses the first price above zero it finds there. That list is the price your customer is charged. If it is empty, your counter falls back to the applet’s single default scheme.

Reference: POS General — Branch Settings — what each tab actually reaches

Step 2 — Learn what the other two are for

After this step you will not ask for the wrong one to be changed. The Default Pricing field on the branch record itself, in the Organisation applet, is real and is read — by the customer portal storefront, by the marketplace price sync, and when a sales order is turned into a purchase order. It is not read by your till. Changing it also has a side effect worth knowing: it queues every price in the new scheme to be pushed out to your marketplace channel. The third, a per-document-type table reachable only through the interface, is read by nothing at all. A value in it means nothing has happened.

Reference: Organization — Three branch pricing surfaces, and which one the counter uses

Step 3 — Explain a price that changes between the list and the line

After this step you will trust the right number. When you search for an item, the price shown in the search list and the price that arrives on the line are worked out by two different pieces of code. The line applies your branch’s priority list correctly. The search list does not — it falls back to the single default scheme, so on a branch whose priority list points somewhere else the two genuinely disagree. The line is the one that is charged and the one that is right. If a cashier reports that the price changed when they added the item, this is usually what they saw, and the bill is correct.

Reference: POS General — Troubleshooting

Step 4 — Understand the rounding that stops without being turned off

After this step you will be able to fix a rounding complaint in one look. Five-cent rounding is a tick box on your branch, and unlike almost every other branch setting it has no company value to fall back on — your branch’s tick is the only one that counts. More surprising: the tick never travels to the till on its own. It is carried across attached to the rounding item, the adjustment line that the rounded amount is written on. So if the rounding item is removed or was never set, on your branch and on the company, the tick stays ticked on screen and your totals quietly stop rounding.

Reference: Organization — Branch Details, Pick Pack, Extension and Marketplace

Step 5 — Check the rounding item before you report the tick

After this step your first check will be the right one. The rounding item is an ordinary item set up for the purpose, chosen either on your branch or on the applet’s default selection, and the same is true of the group discount item and the points discount item. All three work the same way: no item, no line, and therefore no rounding, no whole-bill discount and no points redemption — silently, with the setting still on. Before you report that rounding has stopped, look at whether the rounding item is still there. It is a thirty-second check and it is the answer more often than the tick is.

Reference: POS General — Before you can use it

Step 6 — Separate a price question from a permission question

After this step you will escalate to the right person. Two more things change what a customer pays, and neither is a branch setting. The first is the link between a staff role and a pricing scheme, which decides which scheme a role sells at, so two cashiers at one counter can legitimately see different prices. The second is the set of price floors — below cost, below minimum, below replacement — which are permissions held per user. Selling under one of those does not change a price; it raises an approval request for a supervisor. If the question is “why can they and I cannot”, it is a permission, not a price.

Reference: POS General — Feature visibility / permissions

How the steps fit together

    flowchart TD
  s1["Step 1 — Find the record that actually sets your price"]
  s2["Step 2 — Learn what the other two are for"]
  s3["Step 3 — Explain a price that changes between the list and the line"]
  s4["Step 4 — Understand the rounding that stops without being turned off"]
  s5["Step 5 — Check the rounding item before you report the tick"]
  s6["Step 6 — Separate a price question from a permission question"]
  s1 --> s2
  s2 --> s3
  s3 --> s4
  s4 --> s5
  s5 --> s6
  

Check yourself

Three to five questions on what you just heard. Every correct answer links to the page that makes it correct, so you can check the source, not just the mark.

Next: Where the money lands when you press Cash · Back to the series · Play this as a presentation