Wholesale Handler
Wholesale pricing starts simple. One price per product, same for everyone. Then a customer who orders every week asks for a better rate. That's reasonable - they're reliable, they deserve it. So the price gets adjusted, noted somewhere, and the new rate goes on their next invoice.
Then another customer asks. Then a new customer arrives and nobody's sure which price they should get. A price increase goes out, but does it apply to the discounted customers too, or just the standard ones?
This is how wholesale pricing gets complicated. Not all at once, but one reasonable decision at a time.
How pricing gets tracked (and lost)
The common approaches all have the same problem: the pricing information lives separately from where orders happen.
- A spreadsheet with customer names across the top and prices down the side. It works until a price increase gets applied to four columns but missed for the fifth.
- A note on the customer's account - "10% off standard" - that someone has to remember to apply manually when writing the invoice.
- The owner's memory. This works until they're on holiday and someone else processes the orders.
None of these are wrong. They're just systems that depend on a human remembering to check them every time an order comes through. At three customers, that's easy. At fifteen, something gets missed every week.
The invoice problem
Pricing errors rarely show up at the point of sale. They show up on the invoice, after the delivery, when the customer has time to check the numbers.
"That's not the price we agreed" is a conversation that damages trust regardless of who's right. The customer feels overcharged. The wholesaler feels accused. And the actual cause was someone looking at the wrong row in a spreadsheet three days ago.
The fix is usually a credit note, an apology, and a mental note to be more careful next time. The mental note doesn't scale.
What actually works
The answer is simple: named price lists that live where the orders happen.
Instead of a spreadsheet that exists separately from your ordering system, each customer is assigned to a price list. When they place an order, they see the prices from their list. Not the default price. Not last month's price. Their price.
- A new cafe starts on your Default list
- After a month of reliable orders and on-time payment, you move them to Trusted
- A friend who runs a restaurant goes on Friends & Family
- Each list has its own prices per product
The customer never sees the list name. They never know other prices exist. They just see their products at their prices. One price per product, no confusion.
When you increase prices, you update the list. Everyone on that list sees the new price next time they order. No columns to remember, no tabs to check, no risk of updating four customers but missing the fifth.
Percentage discounts or exact prices
Two ways to set prices on a list:
Set exact prices per product per list. Full control - a product is exactly what you say it is on each list.
Or set a percentage discount from your default list. "Trusted customers get 10% off default prices." When default prices change, trusted prices follow automatically. Less control, less maintenance.
Most wholesalers use a mix. Percentage-based for most products, with exact overrides for a few where the margin needs to be precise.
Rounding
Percentage discounts create awkward numbers. 10% off a round price rarely lands on a round number. That's fine for accounting but looks strange on an order.
Rounding settings fix this: round to the nearest cent, 5 cents, or 10 cents, with optional charm pricing (e.g. $4.99 instead of $5.00). These settings apply across the board - set them once, not per product.
How Wholesale Handler handles price lists
Wholesale Handler has price lists built in. Create up to 10 named lists, assign each customer to one, and set prices per product per list - either directly or as a percentage discount from your default list.
When a customer logs into their portal, they see their products at their prices. When you generate an invoice, it pulls the right price automatically. No lookup, no spreadsheet, no manual adjustment.
New customers can be pre-assigned to a list before they place their first order. Moving a customer to a different list takes one click. The customer never knows it happened - they just see their updated prices next time they order.
