Contract and customer price lists with effective dates

Every shop with repeat customers has agreed prices, and almost nobody has them anywhere the estimator can see at the moment of quoting. They live in a signed supply agreement in a filing cabinet, an email thread from two purchasing managers ago, or one person's memory. The failure is predictable in both directions: you quote a standard price to an account that negotiated ten percent off and then honour the mistake, or you quote the agreed price for a part on an agreement that expired in June and lose the increase you were entitled to take.

A contract price list fixes that by putting the agreement in the system, against the customer or dealer it belongs to, with the dates it is valid between. When an estimator prices a part for that account, the quote reads the list before it reads anything else. The line shows that it priced from a contract list rather than from the buildup, and it shows which list and when that list expires — so an estimator quoting in February can see that the agreement runs out in March and raise it before the buyer does.

The order of precedence is the same one the manufacturing CPQ work uses, and it is fixed: contract price, then customer price, then quantity break, then the standard cost buildup. A contract list is the strongest of the four because it is the one you signed. The buildup is the fallback for parts nobody has agreed a price for yet. This is why the two pieces of work carry the same milestone — a pricing hierarchy with a missing top level is not a hierarchy.

The uncomfortable case is a contract price below your margin floor, and it happens: material moved, or the agreement was signed at a volume that never materialised. We do not silently suppress the floor because a contract exists, and we do not block a quote you are contractually obliged to honour. The line prices at the contract price, flags as below floor with the shortfall shown against the current buildup, and routes for approval by the same rule as any other below-floor line. The exception is recorded. What that gives you is a list, at renewal time, of every contract line you are currently losing money on — which is the conversation the agreement renewal should actually start from.

Dealers work the same way. A distributor buying at a channel discount carries their own list, dated, so a partner order priced through the portal and a partner order priced at your desk produce the same number. Where a dealer holds exclusivity on a SKU, the exclusivity rules and the price list are two separate records and stay that way: one says who may sell it, the other says at what price.