Blocking/Allowing discounts at the Menu or Category level

[GRCBar]

GRC Bar, using vers. 14

We need to be able to block or allows discounts on sales of certain items, preferably at the menu or category level, but certainly at the item level. And here's why:

We are a cigar lounge that offers a full bar. We offer to our customers discounts for things like locker discounts, student discounts, AD Military, police/fire ... you get the idea. Those discounts are for cigars and accessories. The State of Michigan does not allow us to discount beer and liquor sales in this manner. So any drink sales to these customers cannot be discounted. And here is where the problem is created.

If I set a customer as a locker holder and in his customer page I set his Discount level at the appropriate amount, any sales I ring up for him are discounted on the entire ticket. If he buys drinks, those drinks also get the discount - which is illegal. So what I have to do now is either have all my customers in the system set up as Retail and then I have to remember which customer gets which discount and then apply that discount to the individual line items on the ticket before I finalize the sale. Or I have to abandon the whole Customer tracking abilities of the system because they create  Which is untenable - all that does is make more work for me and invite errors and confusion. So I need to be able to tell the system that it cannot apply sales discounts to certain items in my inventory regardless of customer level.

Is this something that can be done?

[ronaldrwl]

That should be easy if I understand correctly.
Setup your eligible customers to have the Second Price level in their customer record.  Now on eligible products give them the discounted price in the second price level (Wholesale is the default name).  On non-eligible products they only have the first price level (Retail is the default name).  Leave the second price as zero.  The software will use the Retail price.

[GRCBar]

Here is what I did, and it didn't work. If I misunderstood what you said, let me know.

I set a customer as a Lifetime Member, which receives a 30% on cigars (shot1.)

Then I set up two cigar items with Retail and then Discounted pricing for all our levels (shot2.)

Then I set up a liquor item with Retail pricing across the board (shot3.)

Then I ran a test sale with all three items and the customer (shot4.)

The sale rang up with the correct discount prices on the cigars, and the correct price on the drink, but then it double dipped the 30% discount and applied it to the entire sale. In the example, what should have rung up as $25.40 (the two cigars plus tax and the drink, which is sold tax included) rang up as $17.78. The 30% customer discount was applied to the entire sale.

Is there something else we should be doing?

[ronaldrwl]

It looks like you have another discount turned on.  If you have the Sales / Discount Levels turned on, turn it off.

[GRCBar]

Then, in order to make this work, we should turn off the discount levels (set them all to zero) and then manually enter all of the discounted prices into each item that has them?

There should be an easier way. I have over 3600 items, 75% of which will now require manual entry. If I export the inventory, can the changes be imported back? I have had mixed luck with importing item changes.

Edit: On Saturday, I tried this. I exported the ProductB.txt file from Product Control/Export Inventory Basic. I imported that file into Excel, and edited it directly. I added all the prices for my current discount levels and then saved the file back as tabbed text. When I tried to import the file, nothing happened. It did not pull any data and the pricing remained unchanged. I am leery of using the Import From Older Formats option because I am not always sure what field matches with which in the fields list.

[GRCBar]

*bump*

Is it possible to import pricing for the pricing levels, not just retail and cost? If so, how would I go about doing that.

[ronaldrwl]

The Basic Import/Export will change all the price levels.  Using Excel can be tricky at first.  Make sure all the fields are set to Text.  Or, Excel will change your numbers and mess things up.  As always, do a backup first.  And save the file as Text (Tab delimited).

[GRCBar]

Just to follow up, this did work. Thank you.