Separate Pricing 4.2.1 - What it Solves, What it Does & How it Works

What it Solves

  Separate Pricing was created to allow a website to have different pricing for the same products for different users. This is particularly useful for sites that need to retail & wholesale the same products or for sites that have customers that get different pricing depending on their past volume of purchases.

  Because the stock osCommerce release doesn't support this scenario the site owner can only have one pricing level on their entire site. This creates some problems for businesses that need to both wholesale & retail products because the site owner has to choose what pricing to display. For instance;

  As a real-world example, suppose you are selling plumbing supplies.

  The general public should see the regular retail rate and contractors that deal with you in volume should see a lower wholesale price. This is what Separate Pricing was created to do - display different prices for different people

 

What it Does

In addition, Separate Pricing allows you to do more then just show different pricing. Some of it's many features include:

How It Works

  The first thing you will want to do after installation is to create customer groups. These groups are created by going into your site's osC Admin and selecting the Customers link. After that you will see a link called Customers Groups. Click on that and you will see the default Retail Group. Select Insert to create a new group. At this point you can choose the name, whether to display the price with tax included, whether the group should be taxed and also define which Payment & Shipping methods will apply to that group. Create as many groups as are required for your business.

  The next step will be to edit your existing products and enter the new pricing for each product. You do this in the conventional osC manner, by going into the osC Admin and clicking on Catalog and editing each product. Once you edit a product you will see a field for each customer group you created. Enter the discounted pricing you desire in each field.

  After that you may want to define specials. This is done in the standard osC manner, by going into osC Admin, clicking on Catalog and then Specials. At this point you can create new specials by choosing the New Product button and then selecting the product from the drop-down list. You then define what group the special applies to, the price and also the date it should be in affect (if desired). To make the same special for another group just follow the same steps and choose a different group and price.

  To test your newly entered prices just go to your website and log in as the defined Site Administrator. The Site Administrator is defined by entering their email address into the catalog\includes\languages\english\login.php file. If you do a search of that file for the word root you will find the specific area to enter the address. Once you go to log in you will be presented with a screen asking which group you want to log in under. From that point the site behaves exactly as if you were a member of that group.

  From an operational perspective you can just move any of your existing customers into whatever groups you have defined. If a new user registers with a tax number then the Site Administrator will receive an email notifying them that the account needs to be approved. As well, a red light will be set next to that customer in the osC Admin's customer list. You then enter the osC Admin, highlight the customer and then select Edit. You can then assign which group the customer belongs in (whether or not they have been approved for a wholesale account) and also turn off the red light notification next to their name. From that point on, when that customer logs into your site they will see the pricing for the group that you assigned them to (wholesale or what have you).

  It should be noted that customers will not see updated pricing unless they log off and log back in or if their session expires.

General Installation Information

The Separate Pricing 4.x contribution comes with extensive documentation to make installation as easy as possible. It is a large contribution so the easiest way to install it is on a new site with no modifications. In that case you can simply upload the included files and run the SQL install script.

If you have a heavily modified site then you will have to perform a manual installation. The easiest way to do this is with a file compare & merge utility. If you don't have one you can use the one referenced here as they have a free trial that lasts for 50 files, which is enough to accomplish the task.

If your interest is in doing a truly manual installation with a Text Editor then tested file by file documentation is included with the contribution.

Support

Support for this contribution can be found in the Separate Price Contribution Support Thread at the osCommerce website. Please note that support for this contribution is provided on a limited basis. It's not the author(s) responsibility to ensure the contribution works with other's that are installed nor to trouble shoot installation issues.

A great deal of testing time has been spent on the documentation to ensure that it is accurate and reliable so conflicts with other contributions should be the only potential issue that may arise. In that case, if courtesy support is not forthcoming, you might find it worthwhile to consult a dedicated PHP programmer.

While every effort has been made to ensure this contribution is as bug free as possible, as with all osCommerce contributions, they are installed at your own risk.