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Price Books for Developers in B2C Commerce
The Salesforce B2C Commerce API dw.catalog.ProductPriceModel scripting class enables you to retrieve product prices in the storefront. Often products can have multiple prices assigned. B2C Commerce uses a set of business rules to determine which price is relevant at a given time. This topic applies to B2C Commerce.
The Salesforce B2C Commerce API
dw.catalog.ProductPriceModel scripting class enables you to retrieve product
prices in the storefront. Often products can have multiple prices assigned. B2C Commerce uses a
set of business rules to determine which price is relevant at a given time. In general, B2C
Commerce, based on price lookup rules, determines the best price (lowest price) for a
requested quantity and shows it in the storefront.
Price lookup rules
- Changes entered programmatically through APIs, such as script or Open Commerce API (OCAPI), that aren’t represented by promotions in the system, apply before changes made through Business Manager.
- If you use the
SetApplicablePriceBookspipelet to register a price book, the lookup calculates the best price from those price books and the price book which those price books are based on. B2C Commerce uses the price books only if they exist and activate within the activation dates and in the site currency. B2C Commerce considers no other price books. The price books registered by the pipelet must be activated, but don't need to be assigned to the site. - If no price book is explicitly registered, the lookup considers all active price books assigned to the site. It only considers price books that are in effect at the current time and for the current site currency and have prices for the quantity specified. It then takes the best price from all prices for the specified quantity.
- After determining the set of applicable price books by one of these mechanisms, B2C Commerce determines the lowest price for the current product and quantity within this set. B2C Commerce looks at all price tables for the current product within these price books. If a price book doesn't define a price table for the current product, it isn't considered. A price table defines a price for a threshold less than or equal to the requested quantity or it isn't considered. If the current time doesn't fall within the activation dates of a price table, that price table isn't considered.
- A single price book can define multiple price tables for the current product. However, only one of the price tables is considered active, and the rest aren’t considered. In this case, the active price table is the one that defines a time period containing the current time and has the most recent start date. For example, a merchant defines two price tables for each pair of winter boots. One has dates from October 1, 2015 to February 15, 2016, reflecting in-season prices. The other has dates from February 16, 2010 to September 30, 2010, reflecting off-season prices. On November 24, 2015, the first price table is active, while on March 20, 2016, the second price table is active.
- In this way, zero or one price tables are considered from each applicable price book. B2C Commerce takes the best active price from these price tables for the specified quantity. If there’s no price for the specified quantity in these price tables, then B2C Commerce returns NA.
- If no applicable price books for a variation product are found, the system falls back to the price for the base product.
These rules represent how prices are retrieved through the scripting API. Product prices are also relevant when a search is performed in the storefront. For example, B2C Commerce lets you refine searches by price. For performance reasons, B2C Commerce doesn’t directly access prices that are stored in the database to provide this refinement capability. Instead, it uses prices that are stored in the product search index when the index is built. It's possible, therefore, for these prices to get out of synch (though they generally remain consistent).
Adequate information is encoded in the product index. B2C Commerce follows the same lookup rules regarding applicable price books, price activation dates, and multiple price tables for a given product. Occassionally rebuild the product index so that the prices used by B2C Commerce are consistent with the prices that appear on product detail pages.
