Get this Wholesale thing correct.

[Skipper]

Maybe it's time to get the wording right for this wholesale-thing. TB would really stand apart.

"Cost price" is the acquisition cost of goods. That can be the price the merchant pays for merchandise, or the cost of making things for a manufacturer.

"Retail price" is the price end-customers pay.

"Wholesale price" is the price a wholesaler pays. A wholesaler, also called reseller, usually buys a larger quantity and gets a price discount to do so. That could be a percentage of the retail price, or a defined price. "Wholesale price" is also called "trade price".

Depending on the industry, you could have other, different prices. In my industry (home decoration), you can find "prescriptor prices" : An interior designer who needs 1 piece of something for a project doesn't pay retail, but with a quantity of 1 doesn't qualify for wholesale. As an incentive, he gets a price somewhere between retail and wholesale.

So changing "wholesale price" to "cost price" would correct this left-over from Prestashop.

[dynambee]

It depends on the store's position in the business food chain. If you're an importer or manufacturer who provides products to wholesalers then your "wholesale price" would be the price you sell to wholesalers for. This makes sense, of course.

However many retailers also use the term "wholesale price" to mean the price they pay to a wholesaler. This also makes sense, from the point of view of a retailer buying from a wholesaler.

There is no perfect set of terms that will fit what every single business expects to see so the best thing to do is to name things in a way that will be easy to understand for the largest number of users. The nature of business means there will always be a lot more B2C businesses than importers/manufacturers selling B2B, so the terms should be set up in ways that B2C users will most easily understand.

[Skipper]

Calling a dog a cat doesn't make it a cow.

So if I as a manufacturer sell both to end-customers and to shops (which in turn sell my goods to end-customers). What do you suggest?

Take any business text-book, and you will find that terminology is pretty fixed. Which is why there is so much confusion on the prestashop forum around the usage of "wholesale price". It's just the wrong term, plain and simple.

[dynambee]

A business textbook doesn't mean much if people don't actually use the terms that way. If the terms are changed to be technically "correct" but it causes more confusion with the largest number of users then what good is the change?

[roband7]

FWIW I agree with @Skipper

"cost price" is neutral and fits all B2B and B2C scenarios.

"wholesale price" is however a very specific term and only fits some scenarios.

The Prestashop terminology here confused me a lot when I learnt to set up my first shop.

[dynambee]

I don't have a problem with using "cost price". However if both "wholesale price" and "cost price" are included for different prices it will cause a lot of confusion, IMO.

[lesley]

This is something we have looked at changing, but there is really not a way to change in it in the 1.0.x branch, it will simply break too many things.

[moy2010]

The default should be "cost price" and, only after enabling B2B options in the BO then we should have both "cost price" and "wholesale price" fields.

As lesley mentions it, I really hope this to be changed/implemented in TB 1.1.

[Traumflug]

This whole strategy looks a bit narrow minded to me. I think the right thing would be to remove this "wholesale price" and also "B2B" mode.

Why? Well, business partners are just customers, too. They usually get a different price, just like customers buying often or customers being of a specific profession or whatever qualifies for a non-standard price.

This means, specific customer groups should be able to get specific prices, as a general solution. Want B2B? Well, create a group for B2B customers and put these prices there. Want wholesale customers? Create a group for them. From the software POV, business partners are just one group among many.

Such a general solution solves not only all the situations discussed here with more straightforward code, but also opens new opportunities. One can have any number of these special customer groups. Like members of a soccer club getting balls and shirts for a reduced price, for example.

Yes, I'm aware that there are already "specific prices", which try to work with this strategy. Apparently there's something missing to make it a good general solution for every situation.

[Traumflug]

P.S.: regarding reduced prices for business partners I'd usually choose to simply give reduced prices for larger packs. A business partner buying single pieces should get the same price as a normal customer, just as a normal customer ordering in packs of 100s should get this "wholesale" price. US based shops for electronic components (DigiKey, Mouser, etc.) usually work this way. No custom treatment for B2B.

But which strategy to choose should be the merchant's choice, of course.

[Skipper]

@Traumflug said in Get this Wholesale thing correct.:

This whole strategy looks a bit narrow minded to me.

What strategy are you talking about, specifically ?

[dynambee]

I would guess @Traumflug means any strategy that forces selling price terminology to be used in a single way. Shopping carts are used all over the world and even if your specific thoughts on a price are accurate for one language there's a good chance they could be used in a different way in another language, or that different groups of people use terms in different ways.

As a specific example, we buy products from several wholesalers here in Japan and the price lists we get from them all include 卸値段 as the price we, a retailer, pay as our cost price. You can plug that into Google Translate or I can save you the time and tell you it translates to "wholesale price".

So have a "cost price" field and then allow store owners to define all other prices as is necessary for their particular store.

[Skipper]

No, Ian, there is no ambiguity here at all. They send a pricelist, and they show their wholesale price. This is there to avoid any misunderstanding, because some pricelists also show the retail-price, and the wholesale-customer is informed that his price will be -50% off that price. They write "wholesale" to identify the price-type.

So yes, this is their wholesale price. Once you buy from them, you outlay money. And this is a cost you have. Hence: cost-price.

And that company might have a retail-price as well. With a retail-pricelist.

Just as I, as a business, have a price for end-customers, and this is the retail-price and I have a price for resellers, and this is the wholesale-price. And I have costs to acquire merchandise, which is the cost-price.

So far you have evaded my question from yesterday: If you think that "wholesale-price" is the correct field-name for cost-price, how would you call the price you give to a wholesaler ? End-customers is retail-price, Wholesale-customers is what, according to you ?

[Occam]

Despite the fact that this wholesale/cost price discussion is sort of a déjà vu for me, because I tried to explain in vain this difference to the PrestaShop team that didn't even understand what I was talking about - where is the problem, guys? This is just an input field with no dependencies. Feel free to rename it in the English translations to cost price or whatever. ?

[dynambee]

No @Skipper, I haven't avoided your question, that issue was the entire point of my post.

Different people use price terms in different ways in different situations. I have wholesale prices that I pay, manufacturer prices I pay, and wholesale prices I set when I sell B2B. Many of my items have all three of these as we source different ways depending on availability. That's why there needs to be a more flexible system than just fixing prices in some sort of one-size-fits-all way.

[Occam]

@Traumflug

@Traumflug said in Get this Wholesale thing correct.:

This whole strategy looks a bit narrow minded to me. I think the right thing would be to remove this "wholesale price" and also "B2B" mode.

Why? Well, business partners are just customers, too. They usually get a different price, just like customers buying often or customers being of a specific profession or whatever qualifies for a non-standard price.

This means, specific customer groups should be able to get specific prices, as a general solution. Want B2B? Well, create a group for B2B customers and put these prices there.

Okaay ... and how would you make it happen then for example that the checkout - let's say in in Germany - displays the net sum plus required tax totals after you defined this (B2B) customer group with prices tax excl.? The wholesale price field afaik has no dependencies, but the B2B mode definitely has! I would rather agree to a solution to make this whole B2B mode dependent on a certain customer group instead of a general option for all customer groups. This would help shops with mixed B2B and B2C.

[Skipper]

Ok Ian, so when you talk price in your company, and someone says "'wholesale price", you first, natural reaction is "which wholesale-price are you talking about" ?

And I am not talking price finding. I am talking about renaming "wholesale price" to "cost price". Because wholesale-pricing, in all it's beauty and complexity, has been my bread-and-butter subject while working in consulting, and it is daily business now that I am on my own. I am far from suggesting any solution to wholesale-pricing, but if the bases are wrong, and won't get fixed, further development will suffer.

Prestashop is the brain-child of software developers, and that shows in details like these. Like Traumflug's suggestion to handle wholesale pricing with customer groups. A perfect example of a solution that has never hit reality. Or not being able to sell fractions of units. What else have I missed ? Prestashop is full of bad decisions.

Thirtybees started with good intentions, but it becomes obvious how change-resistant this community is.

[dynambee]

Ok Ian, so when you talk price in your company, and someone says “'wholesale price”, you first, natural reaction is “which wholesale-price are you talking about” ?

For us it's easy because we use the Japanese term for our purchases (which are all from Japanese companies) and the English term for our selling wholesale prices. The benefit of a multilingual business, I guess.

Thirtybees started with good intentions, but it becomes obvious how change-resistant this community is.

I haven't seen any resistance to change in this thread, only a discussion of the best way to make that change. You're the one that seems to think there is only one solution to the issue at hand. Much better to build something that can be flexibile for different kinds of businesses rather than a one size fits all solution.

[datakick]

I agree with @Skipper that this should be renamed.

I understand that some retailers use the term “wholesale price” for the price they pay to a wholesaler. But really, how much confused would they be if we renamed this to "cost price"? I believe every merchant would immediately understand what that means. On the other hand, if we keep the name, there will always be the ambiguity.

[lesley]

What about Cost Wholesale Price Retail Price for the 3 pricing areas?

[Occam]

And what is it good for? Small shops don't really need this field, big shops usually run a separate ERP solution or minimum a stand alone order management with or without interface to the shop software.

[lesley]

I personally would like to see thirty bees move into the place of being the data arbitrator in the future, while the other systems are populated by thirty bees, not the other way around.

[Guest]

We don't even bother using the wholesale price (or cost price) because it's too restrictive and really isn't of much use. We use separate accounting / stock software and update our pre-tax retail prices based on the data from this. This is because the price you pay for something can change depending on exchange rates, delivery charges, bulk discounts from the wholesaler, overhead costs, workforce costs, building costs etc. There's so many factors that come into force on what you've really paid for a product that bunging in an arbitrary value here is pretty meaningless imo; what you pay for a product one day may be different the next time you come to buy it in but you may maintain the same retail price depending your profit margin threshold.

PrestaShop isn't designed for that level of micro-management and really you need an external resource to manage your potential margins and work out your selling prices, even an excel spreadsheet is sufficient. In light of this I'd agree with @Traumflug that removing the 'wholesale price' might be a good way forward.

With regards to B2B I agree with him also that it's all about the retail pricing for the various groups. However, the B2B element comes in with the likes of quick and easy quotes, loyalty discounts, trade accounts (not tied to one email address), buying by SKU etc - but that's all a different kettle of fish :)

[Occam]

@lesley said in Get this Wholesale thing correct.:

I personally would like to see thirty bees move into the place of being the data arbitrator in the future, while the other systems are populated by thirty bees, not the other way around.

Think big, eh? :) I guess, this was the PrestaShop developers' dream too for a long time. And what happened? Currently they end up in a metamorphosys to a peculiar world wide license monitoring provider named Prestatrust.

[lesley]

@Occam Part of my thought is with ASM really functioning and a few features added it can. Once we get it functioning totally with warehouses really working as they should we are going to start integrating with POS systems. That will then give us the ability that no other cart has, to integrate different stores through a POS. Like a POS at one location will draw stock from one warehouse, a POS at another location will draw stock from another warehouse.

Then merchants with more than one location will be able to manage their whole inventory in thirty bees.

[lesley]

PrestaTrust is the nail in their coffin IMO. I do not think you can be called open source and freemium at the same time. That is what they refer to themselves as in that filing, freemium. That is why features keep on getting stripped and added back as paid modules. This is business software for God's sake, not Candy Crush.