Tiered pricing in Xero: wholesale, trade and retail price lists

Does Xero support wholesale, trade and retail pricing?

Not as tiers. Xero's Products & services list holds one sale price per item. There is no setting for a second price, no “price list” you can attach to a group of customers, and no automatic discount for trade accounts. If a wholesale customer pays less than retail, the lower price has to come from somewhere outside Xero's item list.

Plenty of Xero users have asked for it. The Product Ideas thread “Create custom (tiered) price lists for contacts” was opened in 2012, has 135 votes, and is marked “Not in pipeline”. Xero's response, on 13 March 2023, pointed users to inventory apps in the Xero App Store.

What Xero offers today

• One sale price per item, used for every customer.
• Reference and line item description fields on the invoice, which can describe a price but don't set one.
• Contact Notes, which are internal and not shown on invoices.

Workarounds people use

• One item per tier. Duplicate each item with a prefix in the code, such as TRADE-Widget and WHOLE-Widget. Every tier multiplies the size of your item list, and a price rise means editing each copy.
• A trade price list in a spreadsheet, sometimes with Excel macros to work out discounts. The prices are right in the spreadsheet; whether they make it onto the invoice depends on who is typing.
• Checking the customer's last invoice and copying the price. Quick for regulars, unreliable after a price change.
• A full inventory suite at roughly $69 to $359 a month, which brings stock control, purchasing and more along with price tiers.

How tiered pricing works in Pricefield

Pricefield is a Xero add-on that keeps your tiers next to Xero instead of inside its item list. You create as many tiers as you need (Retail, Trade and Wholesale are common, but the names are yours) and set each one up in either of two ways:

• A % discount off list. Trade at 15% off, for example. Every item gets a trade price automatically, calculated from its Xero sale price.
• Fixed prices per item. Type the exact wholesale price for the items where a percentage doesn't fit.

You can combine them: a fixed price on an item beats the tier's percentage, and the percentage covers everything else. One tier is your default, used for customers you haven't assigned yet. For the occasional negotiated deal, a per-customer override on a single item beats the tier.

Here is what a price book with three tiers looks like:

When you create an invoice in Pricefield and pick a trade customer, each line fills in at the trade price, labelled with where the price came from. The invoice is written to Xero through Xero's API, as a draft or approved. Your Xero items and their sale prices are never changed.

Percentage or fixed prices: which should you use?

Use a percentage when a tier really is “list minus a set discount”. It needs no upkeep: when you raise a price in Xero, the next sync picks up the new list price and the trade price follows.

Use fixed prices where the margin differs by item, such as labour or call-out fees that you don't discount, or high-volume lines where the wholesale price is negotiated separately. Fixed prices don't move when the list price changes, so review them when you change your prices.

Not sure your team has been charging the right tier? The price audit compares the last 30, 90 or 180 days of Xero invoices with your tiers and shows each line charged differently, with the undercharged total. More on that in different prices for different customers in Xero.