POS Mat Pricing

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Kirstie

Kirstie

PFG, Picture Framing God
Joined
Jan 16, 2007
Posts
8,395
Loc
Berkeley, CA
We are almost using the POS full time, except for those of who are SLOW to learn. Like me. Over the weekend I tried to price a job with English mats, hand wraps, Concerto, 8 ply rag, yada yada. I got stuck and reverted to paper .

Here's my question, and yes I do plan to call Frame Ready on Monday.
In order to price our mats so that the small ones weren't overpriced and the large ones underpriced, we used a graduated scale with the addition of a set price. So far so good. The POS mat prices are close to our price list. But on 8 ply rag, which we pay twice as much for, and are used to selling for double the 4 ply rag price, the POS is giving us a price of about 1.3x the 4 ply price. So we are losing our normal mark-up. So I'm back to hand writing orders with 8 ply, which we sell a lot of. In fact, I rarely sell 4 ply white anymore.

Any suggestions? I know why this is happening--the price of 8 ply is so much the graduated scale is pushing it into a lower mark-up category. I just don't know to fix it without messing up the other mat pricing. I don't want prices that won't automatically update, so I don't want to set a whole bunch of individual prices.

One of our staff is doing the set up, so I would like to have another suggestion for her.
 
Let us know what FrameReady says about that issue. I think you could set up 8-ply mats as a separate product category and give them unique pricing and/or set prices. I use set prices to distinguish certain items from normal pricing, too.

But here's a question for you: If an expensive 4-ply mat has a markup of X, why should a similarly-priced 8-ply mat have a higher markup?
 
Sounds like your graduated scale applies to price instead of quantity (area or UI). Can you make that change in Frameready?
 
There are 2 basic methods for calculating a price for mats....

mathematical formula (fixed cost plus variable costs [with a markup factor] times a value per UI, FT, Sq Yd, lineal yard............)
price table (in UI increments) - this is the closest thing to making a manual chart


or a combination of the 2



If you are using a price table - you can always generate a new table to account for the added cost of 8 ply.
 
Kirstie,
I have encountered similar problems. Did you use Frameready's default as the basis for writing your own formula? The default takes the cost of the matboard and applies the graduated markup you are talking about. So the markup on a mat under $7 might be 5x, while the markup on a mat that wholesales at $15 might be 3x. If you locate the mat cost for 8 ply in the formula list for matboard, you can adjust each markup individually.

If this isn't the problem, I am also interested to hear what Frameready says.
 
Jim Miller said:
Let us know what FrameReady says about that issue. I think you could set up 8-ply mats as a separate product category and give them unique pricing and/or set prices. I use set prices to distinguish certain items from normal pricing, too.

But here's a question for you: If an expensive 4-ply mat has a markup of X, why should a similarly-priced 8-ply mat have a higher markup?
Click to expand...

I'm not looking for a higher mark up, just the same mark up.They were set up on a sliding scale by my employee. I need to understand this myself.
 
As soon as I walked in to work the phone rang and it was Carol from Frame Ready. She saw my post and wanted to help. After some analysis, we decided that I would send her a few FR files and our manual price list. She's caling us back on Monday for a fix that will work for us.

Now that's service!
 
Richard Darling said:
Kirstie,
I have encountered similar problems. Did you use Frameready's default as the basis for writing your own formula? The default takes the cost of the matboard and applies the graduated markup you are talking about. So the markup on a mat under $7 might be 5x, while the markup on a mat that wholesales at $15 might be 3x. If you locate the mat cost for 8 ply in the formula list for matboard, you can adjust each markup individually.

If this isn't the problem, I am also interested to hear what Frameready says.
Click to expand...

In answer to your question, Carol at Frame Ready spent several hours on the phone with me today, coaching me through the development of a very graduated Markup table plus a set price involving our cost of the mat. It worked very well. Our prices on sizes right in the middle are now a bit lower, but probably more what they should be.

Carol is amazingly patient and I was blown away by how much effort she put into this.

It is strange to be pricing by united inches. When one cuts a 30 x 60 mat, the leftover is useless. On our old chart we priced up to the nearest standard size, a mat that size would have been priced at the 40 x 60 price.

Our POS prices and our manual chart prices are now quite different, so we'd better get moving on those extra terminal installations fast!
 
I can't agree more that all of the folks at FrameReady are patient and pleasant to work with. When you sign on with them you have just added a team to your staff that cares as much about your business as you do.
 
For those who do not know FrameReady - pricing by U.I. is only one of 8 methods to calculate a price list for mats, etc

there is:

by U.I
by square inch
by square ft
by square yard
by lineal Yard
by price matrix (predetermined sizes chart)
by mathematical formula
by a combination of the first 5 and price matrix
by foot (moulding)

And you can also have a fixed value plus the above methods - I.E. a flat fee of (Ex: $5.00) plus any of the above. This "fixed fee" can be for freight, setup charge, assembly of frame, other materials..... whatever you want(fund for a trade show)....

If you want you can also modify the "fixed charges" and or markup % on the fly when you are writing up an order, for a one time modification (Ex: next day air delivery, PIA charge, matching a pattern in materials, risk factor, extra materials or labor)
 
Yes, it is an amazingly versatile program. As I am delving into it spending a couple of hours each night in my home office I keep coming upon neat little features. The more I noodle around in the program, the more I discover. It is really a power packed program and it is PC and Mac compatible. I like that last part a lot.

Why do I have it at home? Because FR unlocked a copy for me to use for learning in my home office on the Mac. Such great people.
 
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