Creating Price Levels in QuickBooks
You already know that when you create a product or service record in QuickBooks, you must assign a sale price to it. But did you know that QuickBooks gives you a great deal of flexibility when to comes to pricing items you sell? The software allows you to create one or more additional Price Levels that you can access in invoices, estimates, sales receipts, credit memos, and sales orders.
Three Ways to Use Price Levels
- Manually Assign
- Select the price level from a drop-down in the Rate field for individual transactions.
- Globally Assign to Customers/Jobs
- Once a price level is assigned to a customer or job, it applies to all future transactions with them.
- Assign to Specific Items
- Create customized price levels for certain items and customers.
How to Create a Price Level
- Open Lists > Price Level List.
- Click the arrow next to Price Level and select New.
- Fill in the field next to Price Level Name, and then click the arrow next to Price Level Type.
- Select Fixed %. Select decrease from the drop-down list on the next line and enter your percentage number.
- Round up to the nearest is an optional field, Click OK when you’re done.
- Your new price level will now appear as an option in the Rate column for sales transactions.
Figure 1: You can create price levels in QuickBooks and assign them to individual sales transactions.
When you need to edit or delete a price level, go to Lists | Price Level List again and click the arrow next to Price Level in the lower left corner. You have several options here. You can, for example, make a price level inactive so it doesn’t appear on the list. The field next to Price Level is labeled Reports. Click on the arrow to see what’s available there.
Customers and Jobs
You can also apply a price level you’ve created to a specific customer or job, perhaps to reward a customer for frequent purchases. When you do so, that rate will appear every time you enter a sales transaction for the customer or job you selected.
Open the Customers menu and select Customer Center. Double click on a customer or job’s name to open the record. Click on the Payment Settings tab. Click the arrow in the field next to Price Level and select the right one, then click OK.
Figure 2: You can assign a Price Level to specific customers or jobs.
Per Item Price Levels
QuickBooks also allows you to set custom prices for specific items that are associated with preferred customers or jobs (this option is only available if you’re using QuickBooks Premier or Enterprise). Let’s say you want to give a 10 percent discount to specific customers who purchase your website development services. Go to Lists | Price Level List and click the arrow next to Price Level in the lower left corner again, then select New (you can also get to the New command by right-clicking anywhere in the window).
Give your price level a name (like Web Development 10 Off) , then select Per Item from the Price Level Type drop-down list. Click in front of the Item you want to include. The fields in the next line should read as pictured in the image below: 10% | lower | standard price. Click Adjust. You’ll see your reduced prices in the Custom Price column in the table above.
Figure 3: You can establish a Price Level for specific items in QuickBooks.
Again, the rounding field is optional. When you’re finished here, click OK. The next time you create a sales transaction for a customer who is eligible for the lower price, you’ll select Web Development 10 Off from the drop-down list in the Rate column.