Supplier price updates: when a part goes up, your prices follow (on your OK)

Margin leaks one part at a time

Supplier prices move all the time, and most shops find out at the counter. The Price Book still sells the part at last year's price, the open estimates still carry the old cost, and the margin you planned shrinks a few dollars a job. Nobody decides to work for less; it just happens. Supplier price updates catch it the day the cost changes.

What happens when a cost changes

Every change to what the shop pays for a part is kept, whichever screen or import made it. For each change SWITCHBOARD drafts what follows:

• Job names that use the part, with their price re-rolled.
• Price Book items sold under the same SKU, re-priced at the same markup.
• Open estimates that carry the part: a draft estimate gets the new line price; a sent estimate shows its margin at the new cost, so you can decide whether to re-quote.

Asking for a better price

When a part went up, or another supplier sells it for less, SWITCHBOARD can draft a price-match ask from the numbers. It is sent from the shop's own email address only when someone presses send, and the reply comes back as a price proposal you accept or not.

Supplier and sub scorecard

From what is already recorded, a scorecard shows each supplier's spend, deliveries on time against the purchase order date, bill variance and price drift, and for subs: visits, on-time arrival, callbacks on jobs they worked and their paperwork. It is all plain arithmetic from your own records.

Finding parts

Techs and the office can find a part in your Price Book, your suppliers or a store, and a browser button adds a part or a whole cart from a supplier's site. See how to manage van inventory.

Why it matters

A few points of margin across a year of jobs is real money. If you are not sure what your markup and margin really are, start with markup vs margin and the job pricing and markup calculator, then see how to raise prices without losing customers.