Documentation/ Checking the line items/ Last price and price rise alerts
Last price and price rise alerts
Every line is compared with the last time that item came in from that supplier. It is what catches the rises nobody told you about, the ones that would slip past when there are a lot of lines.
On this page
The three columns
| Column | What is in it |
|---|---|
| Last price | The unit price recorded the previous time that item came in from that supplier. |
| Change | The difference from that price, as an amount and a percentage. |
| Price alert | A flag according to how big the change is and which way it went. |
The comparison is by item and supplier: the same product bought from two suppliers keeps two separate histories, which is the right way round for negotiating.
The alert levels
| Level | What it says |
|---|---|
| Big rise | A significant increase on the last price. |
| Modest rise | A smaller increase, within what could be ordinary movement. |
| No change | The price is holding. |
| Modest fall | A small decrease. |
| Fall | A noticeable decrease. |
| No history | There is nothing earlier to compare against. |
Falls are flagged too. They are not always good news: a sharp fall can mean a change of pack size, grade or unit that is worth checking.
Items with no history
An item bought for the first time has nothing to compare against, and the column says so outright rather than showing a change of zero, which would mislead.
The history builds from the documents you process: the more there are, the more useful the comparison. Which is why the feature does little in the first month and a great deal from the third.
How to use it
Two ways, depending on when:
- While going over a document: the alert column points at the lines whose price has moved, and those are the ones worth looking at.
- Across a whole period: from Received products, filter by date and sort by the change and you have, on one screen, everything that has gone up this month.
The second is the one that is any use in a negotiation: it gathers the evidence by item and supplier without opening a single document.
Movements that are not rises
| Cause | How to spot it |
|---|---|
| A change of unit of measure | The supplier has gone from billing by the case to billing by the single. The unit price changes scale, not value. |
| A discount applied differently | The gross price is the same but the discount has moved column or changed form. |
| A different item with a similar description | Two pack sizes of the same product are being compared. |
| An agreed price in force | The line is recorded at the agreed price, not the one billed. |
Rule those four out before you complain: a unit conversion applied wrongly produces spectacular changes that are not real.
What to do about a real rise
- Check the original document to confirm the price.
- Hold it against the agreement, if there is one.
- Take it up with the supplier.
- If the agreement still stands, set the agreed price so that future deliveries are recorded at the right one.
- If the rise is fair and you accept it, do nothing: the new price becomes the last price from now on.