Profit Tools
Pepper's price, margin, and inventory tooling helps DSR's stay in the know when it comes to item and order pricing, allowing reps to win new business and keep profits consistent. In this article, we review the options users have when activating our dynamic pricing editor and the associated feature set.
Note: Inventory analysis and price editing are only available to users with the Enterprise plan for DSR Connect. Please contact customer success if you'd like to upgrade your DSR Connect Service Level.
Integrating with your ERP
To get started with profit tooling, distributors need to decide how they'd like their pricing integration to effectively set prices:
Pricing set by Sales Cost - When pricing is set by sales cost, your ERP provides the raw sales cost of the item in local currency and the new cost is what is sent back to your ERP when the prices is 'saved'
Gross Profit Percentage (GP%) - When using GP%, only the effective profit margin for each item is sent back to your ERP when an item is saved.
Note that Pricing by sales cost or GP% can be different from restaurant to restaurant! Our implementation and support teams can guide you through which implementation method makes the most sense for your business. Pepper pulls item costs from the ERP wherever they are typically stored. This can be any type of cost you'd like to show in the app (average, last, sales rep, etc.).
Additional ERP Considerations
On top of base pricing configurations, there are a few decisions to be made prior to starting use of price editing
When do Prices go back to the ERP?
When the item is sold with a price override. The price override should flow in as a one-time manual price override on the sales order.
Pepper offers an open API that allows our users to mass-send prices into the price override section of the app; reach out to your rep to learn more about this functionality.
Should a Price Floor or Price Ceiling be enabled? If so, what minimum price field from ERP does distributor want to be used?
If price floors or ceilings are enabled, DSR's cannot set the price below the minimum price or above a maximum price on the item, regardless of override type.
If GP% is selected for at least 1 restaurant, should Peak Price Protection be implemented?
With Peak Price Protection, if the sales cost goes down, the GP% should increase to maintain the highest price listed.
What inventory quantity on hand does distributor want to show in the app?
What additional 4 fields, if any, should be shown within the app for item attributes?
Price Editing
Price Editing Overview
With Price editing, DSR's have the ability to dynamically view and change pricing on the fly within the app, giving sales reps greater leverage to win business and get existing customers to purchase more from you. Price editing is only available to sales reps and admin users, while customers never have the ability to update prices.
Price editing is available in both the mobile app and web view. Check out the following for a quick overview:
Permissions
As a distributor, you may want certain reps or territories to have the ability to edit prices, while others should not. This is why price editing supports a 3-tier permission structure, totally controlled by Pepper admins:
NULL users will have no access - They can’t view the price overrides, gross profit, etc.
READ users have read access - They can view all item price and inventory, but will not be able to edit prices
WRITE users have both read and write access - They have access to all of the above and will be able to edit prices live within the app
Profit Calculations
How is GP calculated?
GP% is calculated as such: (unitprice - item cost) / unitprice x 100
A case of apples sells for $25 and has a cost of $14.50. ($25 - $14.50) / $25 * 100 = 42% GP.
Price override is calculated as such: Price = item cost / (1 - GP%)
A case of apples costs $14.50 and has a GP% of 42%. $14.50 / (1 - .42) = $25
Item Inventory
With item inventory enabled, reps will have the ability to see your live item inventory for each item within the app. There are several considerations when choosing to showcase item inventory:
Does your ERP have updated inventory count? If not, item inventory may not be useful to show inside of your app
How often should inventory counts refresh? Depending on your integration requirements and ability to refresh data regularly, inventory counts may update as quickly as every 15 minutes
Item Attributes
As a distributor, you may choose additional item attributes to show on the item detail screen within the app.
Key examples of item attributes include:
P.O. Quantity and date - useful to inform the rep on any incoming orders for the item, in case inventory is low
Last price - What was the last price this item sold for
Last ordered date and quantity - How recently was this ordered?
Item priority codes - is this a 'high priority' item?
Next lot expiration date - useful for highly perishable goods to know how 'fresh' the delivery will be.
Price Distribution
As a sales rep, it's helpful to know what items have been selling for recently, and be able to customize that view to get the most information for what you're selling. That's why we've created Price Distribution, an exciting and intuitive way for DSR's to view pricing for an item over the last 7, 30, 90, and 365 days.
Price distribution will give users price history - both overall as well as for when that item is sold to specific restaurant and cuisine types.