The phone call from the buyer at the garden centre
Their accounts person has gone through your last three invoices and found that a line they buy every week has been charged at list price, not the price your rep agreed in March. They want a credit, and they want to know why it keeps happening. Your office finds the rep's email, raises the credit note, and fixes the price on the account. Two weeks later a different customer rings about something similar.
Meanwhile the opposite is happening quietly. Some customers are still getting a deal that was meant to end at Easter, and nobody is ringing about that.
Where agreed prices go missing
In most distributors, special prices are agreed in the field. A rep sits in a customer's office, agrees a price on a line to win the business, writes it in a notebook or sends a quick email, and moves on to the next call. Whether that price reaches the system depends on someone in the office reading the email, understanding it and keying it into the right place.
| How the price was agreed | Where it often ends up |
|---|---|
| Rep's notebook on a visit | Nowhere until the customer complains |
| Email to the sales office | Keyed in, but without an end date |
| Phone call with the sales manager | Remembered by one person |
| Promotion from a supplier | Set up late, left on after it ends |
| Group or buying club agreement | Applied to some member accounts, not all |
The deeper issue is that the agreement and the price are treated as the same thing. The system holds a number. It does not hold who agreed it, why, and when it stops.
The cost of getting it wrong in both directions
Overcharging creates credit notes, disputed statements, delayed payments while the customer queries the invoice, and a buyer who starts checking every line you send. Undercharging is harder to see and costs more over time, because an expired deal can run for months. Both eat office time, and both come up in conversations with your best customers at the worst moment.
How we build the pricing check
- A simple form, on a phone or laptop, lets reps and managers log an agreed price: customer or group, product, price, start date, end date, and who approved it.
- Agreements that need sign-off, for example below a margin you set, go to the sales manager before they become live.
- Approved agreements are written into your stock or accounts system through its API or import, with the dates attached, so the price switches on and off by itself.
- Before invoices are raised, each order line is compared with the pricing register. Anything charged differently from the agreement lands in an exception list with the reason.
- Deals nearing their end date are listed each week so the rep can renew, change or let them lapse on purpose.
If your system already supports dated customer prices well, we use that rather than building a second store, and add the capture form and the invoice check around it.
What the office sees instead
Each morning the invoicing team works through a short list of lines where the price does not match an agreement, fixes them, and sends the rest. When a customer asks what price they are on, anyone can see the agreement, who made it and when it ends. Reps stop getting blamed for deals they did make, and the business stops giving away deals nobody meant to keep.
Signs this is happening to you
- You raise credit notes every month for pricing errors.
- Special prices are agreed by email or verbally and keyed later.
- Nobody can list which deals end this quarter.
- Buying group members are on different prices for the same line.
- Customers check your invoices line by line.