The flexibility of CourseSales.com price rules means that you can have pricing automatically updated to reflect a standard pricing rule based on time triggers. eg:
With CourseSales.com you can!
I want my course prices to start at the maximum discount of 15% to spur people to make early bookings, then to automatically increase on each course per week 10 weeks before the course starts reaching the maximum price in the 2nd to last week before the course. I want the display of the courses to say ‘price increasing to XXX on 3 May’ to encourage bookings. The increments need to be automatically calculated as I have different course prices. Then, in the last week if the course is not full I want the price to drop back to the maximum discount.
With CourseSales.com you can!
I want to discount my prices automatically in the last two weeks, by 5% the second to last week before the course, then if there are still places, discount by 10%.
With CourseSales.com you can!
I want to automatically discount courses is some locations and not others based on a pre-defined price per location table.
Implementation instructions
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Navigate to the automation tab in the ribbon the click on ‘Price rules’
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From the list you can edit a price rule or click ‘new’ to create a new price rule
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Fill in the following fields for “Default Starting Point”:
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Name - something that will describe the price rule for later reference by the configuration administrator eg. “Weekly price increase as course approaches during week 70 to week 1”
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Select a starting price type
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Enter an amount (fixed or %) and the days prior to the start date to trigger the first change e.g. 80%, 100 days
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Complete “How to Change the Price”
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Choose a Rule type, eg. increase by % of RRP
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Enter the amount that needs to be incremented each period defined below in frequency eg. 20/(10-1) = 2.22%
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Select your desired precision eg. 1,234.50
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Select your desired frequency eg. days
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Enter the number of days eg. 7
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Complete “When to stop the rule”
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Select a limit type eg. % of RRP, this is to stop the price from going too low or too high. If you have a minimum price set at the course date the pricing rule will apply that.
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Enter the Limit eg. 100 (for 100% of RRP)
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Enter the days eg. 0 (For the day of the start date)
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Select Next Price Rule (when limit reached) if appropriate, eg. as the example does not have any further days remaining before the course date this is left blank.
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Save the Price Rule
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Edit the course master and select the price rule, then add course dates
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Edit course dates and select the price rules
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Use the Courses tab/Course dates, ‘change’ button on course dates to update the price rule on the selected course dates.
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Use the Automation tab/Price rules, change button to view what changes are expected, compare this with what you would expect.
Tips for implementation
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If increasing prices, it is sensible to set the course master ‘Our price’ to be the same as the ‘starting price’ defined at the default price rule, or alternatively have another price rule preceding it that sets the price accordingly. You can use the courses>course dates>change feature to alter many course dates at once
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Updates to the prices on course dates are performed automatically, and will occur as frequently as defined in the service tab>course price. To manually make prices update click on Automation tab>Price rules>change, then ‘process’ button after reviewing the changes that are due to occur.
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You can run one after another, increase or decrease prices over time, at a specified amount. Also you can vary the price rule by course date. You can specify a default price rule at the course master and there is a bulk change facility in the ‘change’ button of the course dates in the ribbon on the ‘courses’ tab.
Caveats
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Any changes to price rules should be treated with extreme caution, and a test server should be used to verify any price rules will perform as expected, ideally over a number of days, and gradually implemented as any wrong pricing could impact the business directly.
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To avoid prices being discounted too much all course dates should have a minimum price set - which will act as a hard stop of any automatic price discounting.
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Price rules are only available on the ‘base’ or ‘core’ price found on the course date or course master, NOT alternative prices.
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If you want price rules on alternative pricing and are displaying these on different websites you can use different course masters to achieve the same thing. If each site is selling the same course you can manage these by grouping the course dates on an event.