Which price did we give the Plough?
The Plough gets a discount on the best bitter because they took it as a permanent line. The city bar gets a better keg price because they take three lines. The wholesaler has a different price per container. There was a promotion on the new stout last month, extended for some accounts. The office invoices from the standard price list, the landlord queries it, and someone looks back through emails to find out what was said.
Why pricing becomes a mess
Prices are agreed by people, often the owner or a sales rep, in a pub, by phone or by text. The agreement rarely reaches the system that invoices. Your brewery system or accounts package may support price lists, but setting them up takes time, so the standard list gets used and exceptions are handled by credit notes after the landlord complains.
- Deals are agreed verbally or by text.
- Discounts are not recorded against the account.
- Promotions have no end date in the system.
- Wholesaler and distributor prices differ by container.
- Price rises are applied to some accounts and not others.
What drifting prices cost
Credit notes and queries that take office time. Discounts that continue long after they were meant to stop. Accounts that were never moved on to a price rise. And relationships strained when a landlord feels you have gone back on a deal. You also lose sight of margin, because the real price per account is unknown.
When a price rise comes round, the uncertainty gets worse. Nobody is quite sure which accounts are on old deals, so the rise is applied unevenly and some customers notice.
Prices kept where invoices are raised
- Base price lists per account type: free trade, tied, wholesaler, distributor, events, taproom.
- Account-level agreements on top, with who agreed them, when, and any end date.
- Promotions set up with start and end dates and the accounts or types they apply to.
- A quick way for the owner or rep to record a new deal from a phone, which goes to the office for approval before it is used.
- Prices applied automatically when an order is entered, and passed to your brewery system or Xero invoice.
- A report of every account's effective price per beer and container, and of deals about to expire.
- Price rises applied to a list, with a check of which accounts have agreements that override it.
| Price source | Where it lived | Where it lives now |
|---|---|---|
| Standard list | Spreadsheet | Base list per account type |
| Pub deal | Owner's memory | Account agreement with date |
| Promotion | Promotion with end date | |
| Wholesaler price | Contract PDF | Wholesaler list |
| Price rise | Applied by hand | Applied with override check |
If your brewery system already supports customer price lists, we fill them properly and add the approval and expiry parts it lacks, rather than building a second pricing system.
Invoices that match the handshake
Orders are priced as agreed. Promotions end when they should. Queries fall away because invoices are right the first time. When prices rise, you know exactly which accounts are on deals and can decide what to do with each. The owner can see real margin per account instead of guessing from the standard list.
New staff and reps benefit most. Instead of learning each pub's arrangement by asking around, they see it on the account, with who agreed it and when it runs out, and they cannot accidentally undercut a deal someone else made.
Does this sound like your pricing?
- Pubs regularly query invoice prices.
- Deals are agreed verbally and not recorded.
- Promotions continue past their end.
- Some accounts were never moved to the last price rise.
- Nobody knows the effective price per account.