"Best Pratice" advice for updating prices

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Hi all.

I'm building an interface to update prices for a catalog, and I'm wondering - is there any sort of 'best practice' when it comes to updating prices.

Do you update the price value or do you create a new one, with a new valid period?
The 'data guy' in me would likely prefer to create new prices to keep the change trail - but is that a prefered solution or do people simply update the value if the value change? Which I also suspect is most simple.


With regards;

#181215
Aug 14, 2017 9:05
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You can technically add new prices with new timeframes, and keep the old prices, for history. However keep in mind that the price list will grow over time and if you frequently update prices then it might slow things down after a while.

The prices are not "versioned" for a reason - most price updates are from external system, such as ERP. I'd say that should be the place to keep price history.

One alternative approach is to store a special price - MSRP -so you can show something like "Was $1234. Only $666 now". That approach is discussed in detail in my books (including https://leanpub.com/epicommercerecipes )

#181216
Aug 14, 2017 9:26
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Thanks - it was purely as a "change trail" approach that made me wonder.

So given the scenarios it's preferable to keep change tracking of prices either in the original data source or create a new external source for it; and then simply update prices.

Thank you for your advice :)

Regards.

#181218
Aug 14, 2017 9:36
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