Changes to retail pricing rules

Background

GlobalTill developers have been working on improvements to the retail pricing rules over the past several months. Our goal is to provide more predictable behaviour, transparency in recommended changes, and better visibility into previously recommended changes.

Summary of Completed Changes

• Artifact File. An Excel artifact file is generated each time you Check for New Price Changes. Locate this in Reporting > Archived Reports, or send a copy through email upon execution. The artifact file summarizes the calculations used to determine the suggested price changes based on the retail pricing rules.
• Additional info. The retail price changes table shows an additional field, Special Info, where additional information about pricing information is displayed in some configurations.
• Performance Improvements. Retail pricing rule analysis runs up to 80% faster. Stores with product databases of less than 2,000 products should see price changes appear within two minutes during normal processing times.
• BC Liquor Customers Only. Previously, the latest BC LDB/EPL list type were used, regardless if the effective date was in the future or not. This has been corrected and list type and cost are evaluated only for the current period or before.
• BC Liquor Customers Only. Previously, LDB/EPL unit cost was based on the EPL defined units per case, not necessarily the same units per case as used in store. Please see next bullet point for more information.
• BC Liquor Customers Only. New cost option Highest of last ordered cost cost, cost average and MAX BC LDB cost (base). This cost references the maximum BC LDB/EPL cost from the previous six months. This is designed to avoid referencing LTO pricing in retail price calculations.

What We're Working On

These features are in progress and will be available in a future release.

• View and filter retail price change history.
• View and filter products where suggested price changes were ignored.
• The option to calculate prices using AGLC Max Cost. Cost based on the highest AGLC cost for the previous six months. This cost references the maximum AGLC cost from the previous six months. This is designed to avoid referencing LTO pricing in retail price calculations.

Important Note for BC Liquor Retailers

The BC EPL publishes the following information that we use to calculate price.

• Bottles per unit
• Bottles per case
• Wholesale price per unit

The information isn't always sufficient to derive an accurate EPL/LDB unit cost, as some locations sell the same product in different ways, for example, a 6-pack sold as is, or broken down and sold as individual units.

We've reviewed the datasets from several stores in the B.C. market and have applied the following logic in determining the BC LDB cost:

• If the EPL Wholesale Price Per Unit is greater than the store's standard retail price, the unit cost is calculated as follows:
  
  (Wholesale price per unit ✖️ ( Bottles per case / bottles per unit)) ➗ Default units per case 

• If the EPL Wholesale Price Per Unit is less than the store's standard retail price, the EPL/LDB cost is considered to be the EPL Wholesale Price Per Unit with no further calculations performed.

Why was this done?

We've concluded this to be the most accurate way to calculate the BC LDB cost with the information that is publicly available.

Our team considered calculating the unit cost using the store's default units per case for the product. However, many BDL products have a default units per case of one. With these products, taking the  case price and dividing by one was not correctly deriving the unit cost.

Our team will monitor this solution, and may make further changes as needed. However, this calculation has proven to work correctly for the vast majority of products.