Product Scale Setup

Unlike the Price Markup, which is a blanket multiplier applied to a product no matter how many of it are sold, the Product Scale Setup is a multiplier or reducer that will let you apply a volume discount when larger quantities of a product are sold.  This may be especially useful for inventory products where the fixed costs (packaging, overhead, labor, etc.) apply whether 1 is sold or 200 are sold, so if you want to encourage your clients to purchase in bulk, you can offer the Product Scale discount as an incentive.

That said, the Product Scale discounts are based on the total costs of the products, not the quantities. 

Product Scale Setup Tab

This tab displays your existing Price Sets by name.  To see the discounts for each price set, click on a line.  The Sliding Scale as it was set up will appear in the field below.

Add a new Sliding Scale 

Click on the Add button to create a new sliding scale.

A small window will appear.  The Sliding Scale only has a name, and an active/inactive flag; all other settings are handled on the Sliding Scale Range field below.

Set an Existing Sliding Scale as Inactive

If a Sliding Scale will no longer be used, you can set it as Inactive.  This will remove it from the drop down menu on the Product Details tab.  Any existing Open orders with this Sliding Scale will need to be recalculated under the Order Management tool.  Any products that should have a different Sliding Scale applied should be changed to the new one under Product Setup or using a script.

Sliding Scale Ranges

The Sliding Scale Range is where you set the actual values for the discounts.   Values being at $0 and end at the increment that you specify.  The multiplier is then applied to any quantity of products that are sold that fall within the range specified.

Unlike a Client Type discount, which is applied to all products and services on the bill based on the client, or the Markup which is designed to inflate the price over your unit cost to account for your overhead, the Sliding Scale is intended to offer a discount on a specific product based on total cost.

In the example above, there is a 5% discount applied for overs over $100, which maximizes at a 25% discount for orders over $500.

To ensure you are not incurring a loss on a product, the sliding scale discount should not overlap beyond the product markup.  (E.g. a markup of 150% should then not have a discount greater than 50%.)  You can also enforce the minimum cost on the product for items such as pharmaceutical where a small quantity might be ordered. 

Follow accounting best practices as practiced by your hospital or your institution. 

Recalculate Scale Tool

This tool can be used to see what the actual amount would be, based on your sliding scale multiplier.  

If the base unit price of an item is $50, and the Bill Quantity of the item is 5, then the original total would be $250.  With the sliding scale discount, the price breakdown would be as follows:

• x2 of the item billed at a markup of 1.00 - full price
• x2 of the item billed at 0.95 of the total, so a discount of 5%
• x1 of the item billed at 0.90 of the total, so a discount of 10%

The result with this sliding scale set up, at this price and quantity, would be a discount of $10 on the entire order.  These values will fill in on the right column when you click the Recalculate Scale button.