How rules work

A rule has four parts: what it does to a price, which products it looks at, the limits it has to keep to, and whether it suggests changes or makes them itself. Every rule starts from a preset, and you can change any of it later apart from what the rule does.

Creating and editing a rule

On Pricing rules, choose a preset under Add a rule. The editor opens with the preset's numbers filled in, and nothing is saved until you press Create rule. To change a rule later, edit it from Your rules. What a rule does is fixed once it exists, so for a different kind of rule, add a new one.

Editing a rule leaves its waiting suggestions as they are. The next run, from Run now or the nightly one, replaces them with suggestions from the new settings, and any price you typed over on a waiting suggestion stays as you typed it.

What a rule does

• Hold a target margin: prices each product to the margin you set, from 1 to 95%, worked out from its cost per item. Products without a cost are left alone.
• Sales velocity: lowers the price of products selling at or below your slow number in 30 days, and raises the price of those selling at or above your fast number. Each side has its own percentage and can be switched off.
• Aged stock: up to five steps, each a number of days in stock and a markdown, so the discount grows the longer stock sits.
• Clearance: marks down products with at least the stock you set whose stock would last longer than the days you set at the rate they are selling. A product with no sales counts as overstocked.

A rule only suggests a change for products that fall inside what it is looking for, so most of your catalog is usually left alone. Scheduled sales are a kind of rule too, with their own page.

Which products

• Pick products, and the rule looks at only those. The tag, vendor and type filters are skipped while products are picked.
• Only products with one of these tags, only these vendors, only these product types. A product has to match every filter you fill in.
• Leave out products with these tags. This always wins, even for products you picked. The presets leave out no-discount, no-increase or no-repricing, depending on what they do.
• Only products with a cost entered, which skips products with no cost per item. Always on for Hold a target margin.
• Leave every filter empty and the rule looks at your whole catalog.

Suggest, or change automatically

1. 1
   Suggest changes for me to review

   The rule lists what it would change on the Suggestions screen. You edit any price, tick the ones you want and apply them. Nothing changes until you do. Every plan, and where every new rule starts.

2. 2
   Change prices automatically

   The rule runs every night after the price check and applies what it finds without asking first. Every change still has to pass the rule's limits and the EU price rules if you use them, and you can undo any change from History. Growth plan and above.

Switching a rule to automatic asks you to confirm first. Saving never applies anything: the first automatic change happens in the next nightly run.

When an automatic rule is on hold

• Automatic price changes are switched off in Settings.
• Your plan is Essentials, which only suggests.
• Your catalog has been over your plan's price limit for more than 14 days.

While any of these is true, the rule list shows the rule as on hold and it keeps making suggestions you can apply yourself. The editor won't let you switch a rule to automatic in the first place, and tells you which one is in the way.

When rules run

Each rule that is switched on runs every night, after the app refreshes your sales figures. Press Run now to see what a rule would change at any time, even while it is off. Each run replaces that rule's waiting suggestions, so the list never fills up with advice from old figures.

Rules that work from sales (sales velocity and clearance) don't run while your sales figures are more than 3 days old, and say so. A clearance run also tells you when the stock counts it used are more than a day old. Stock counts refresh when you sync products and when the app changes a price.

Products in a scheduled sale that changes prices are left alone by every rule until the sale ends.

Every suggestion explains itself

Each suggestion carries a sentence naming the numbers it used, for example: “Sold 2 in the last 30 days, at or below your slow threshold of 3. Marking down 10% to 170.10. Last sold 19 days ago.” If a limit changed the figure, the suggestion says which one.