Implementing Custom Line Item Pricing in Optimizely Commerce 14

In many enterprise commerce implementations, business users often need the flexibility to override product pricing at the cart level - especially during customer service operations, B2B negotiations, or manual order creation.

Recently, I had a client requirement where the Super Admin (a special CMS/Commerce role) needed the ability to modify the price of each line item directly from the Cart page.

For Example:
If the default price of a product is $1000, a Super Admin should be able to change it to $900, $850, or any custom value - even if this price is not defined in the price lists.

This custom pricing must also continue to work correctly with:

• The promotions engine

• Tax calculations

• Recalculation workflows

• Order totals

To meet this requirement cleanly and safely, we needed a way to override PlacedPrice at the line item level in a way that stays aligned with Commerce’s pricing pipeline.

This blog explains the correct, Commerce-native way to implement custom line-item pricing.

Use a Custom Price Processor

To implement custom pricing properly, we must plug into Commerce’s pricing pipeline via IPlacedPriceProcessor

1 - Store the Custom Price on the Line Item

When a Super Admin updates the price on the cart page:

lineItem.Properties["SuperAdminCustomPrice"] = customPrice.ToString(); // SuperAdminCustomPrice is meta field
_cartRepository.SaveCart(cart);

This property persists with the cart/item.

2 - Implement the Custom Price Processor

[ServiceConfiguration(typeof(IPlacedPriceProcessor))]
public class SuperAdminPriceProcessor : DefaultPlacedPriceProcessor
{
    public override void ApplyPlacedPrice(
        IOrderGroup orderGroup,
        IOrderForm orderForm,
        ILineItem lineItem,
        IMarket market)
    {
        // Allow Commerce to set its default price
        base.ApplyPlacedPrice(orderGroup, orderForm, lineItem, market);

        // Check for Super Admin’s custom price
        if (!lineItem.Properties.ContainsKey("SuperAdminCustomPrice"))
        {
            return;
        }

        if (decimal.TryParse(
            lineItem.Properties["SuperAdminCustomPrice"].ToString(),
            out var customPrice))
        {
            // Save original Commerce price for audit/rollback
            lineItem.Properties["OriginalPlacedPrice"] = lineItem.PlacedPrice;

            // Apply custom override
            lineItem.PlacedPrice = customPrice;
        }
    }
}

3 - How It Looks in the UI

Your “Edit Price” option on the cart page simply updates the custom property:

if (User.IsInRole("SuperAdmin"))
{
    lineItem.Properties["SuperAdminCustomPrice"] = newPrice;
}

This was exactly what the client needed:
A clean, production-safe way for Super Admins to override line item prices without breaking any Commerce functionality.

Thanks,

Sunil Kumar