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Trade agreement journals

A Trade agreement journal is the worksheet used to enter and publish sales pricing and discount rules in bulk. Each line you post becomes a live rule that the sales order and sales invoice pricing engine consults automatically whenever a customer, item, quantity, and date match it - a Price rule quotes a unit price directly, a Line discount rule applies a percentage off whatever price is otherwise resolved. An item with no matching, active rule simply falls back to its standard price from the active costing version, so trade agreements are entirely optional - they exist to let you price by customer, customer group, quantity break, currency, site, or a validity window, without having to maintain a separate price on every item for every customer.

Prerequisites​

Viewing the journal list​

Navigate to Accounts receivable > Price and discount > Trade agreement journals.

The grid shows each journal's Journal number, Name, Description, Creation date, and Status (Unposted or Posted). Validate, Post, and Lines all act on whichever single journal is currently selected, so they work directly from this list without needing to open the journal first.

Creating a journal batch​

  1. Select New from the Action Pane. A new row is added with journal number New.
  2. Select the governing Name (Trade agreement journal name). This also populates Description from that journal name's own configuration - edit it if this particular batch needs a more specific description.
  3. Select Save. The journal is assigned its own auto-generated number and a status of Unposted, and Lines becomes available.

Entering journal lines​

Select the journal and choose Lines to open the Trade agreement journal lines page, then select New to add a rule. Each line is edited directly in the grid, with the same fields also available in the Line details panel below it, organised across four tabs:

Overview​

  • Relation (type): The kind of rule this line represents - defaults from the journal name but can be changed per line. A Price relation quotes a unit price; a Line discount relation applies Discount % 1 / Discount % 2 instead and unlocks the Find next flag.
  • Account code: The scope of the party this line applies to - Table for one specific customer, Group for a customer group, or All for every customer.
  • Account selection: The specific customer or customer group, required when Account code is Table or Group; left blank when Account code is All.
  • Item code: The scope of the item this line applies to - Table, Group, or All, on the same pattern as Account code.
  • Item selection: The specific item, required when Item code is Table or Group.
  • Currency: The ISO currency the Amount/Price is denominated in.

Amount & discount​

  • Amount/Price: A unit price for a Price relation, or a monetary discount basis for a Line discount relation.
  • Discount % 1 / Discount % 2: Only meaningful on a Line discount relation. Discount % 2 is applied after Discount % 1, on the remaining balance, giving a compound discount.
  • Find next: Only available on a Line discount relation. When enabled, the pricing engine keeps searching for further applicable discounts after finding this one instead of stopping here, letting several discount rules stack on a single sale.

Inventory​

  • Site: An optional location filter - leave blank to apply the rule regardless of site.
  • Unit: The unit of measure this rule was priced in. Once Item selection is set, only units from that item's own unit class are offered.
  • Price unit: The quantity the Amount/Price is stated for. An Amount/Price of 100 with a Price unit of 10 means the unit price is 10; defaults to 1 (a straight per-unit price).
  • From quantity / To quantity: The order quantity range this rule applies to.
Quantity ranges are half-open

From quantity is inclusive and To quantity is exclusive. To price quantities 10 through 99, set From quantity to 10 and To quantity to 100.

Validity​

  • From date / To date: The date window this rule is effective for. Leave either blank for no lower or upper bound.

Select Save to add the line, or select an existing line and Delete to remove it - either is only possible while the journal is unposted.

Specificity when several rules match

When more than one active rule matches a sale, the pricing engine prefers the most specific one: a Table match beats a Group match, which beats All - evaluated separately for the Account and the Item dimension - and a rule scoped to a specific Site beats one that applies to every site.

Validating a journal​

Select Validate to run a non-destructive pre-flight check across every line in the journal. It flags:

  • An empty journal (no lines at all).
  • Two lines with identical criteria - the same Relation, Account code/selection, Item code/selection, Unit, Currency, and Site - and identical From/To date and quantity ranges (an exact duplicate).
  • Two lines with that same matching criteria whose date and quantity ranges overlap, which would leave the pricing engine unable to tell them apart for a sale that falls in the overlap.

Validation does not change the journal - resolve the flagged lines and validate again as needed.

Posting a journal​

Select Post to commit the journal. Posting re-runs the same validation and fails if any issue remains; once it succeeds, every line is written as a rule to the live pricing table and the journal becomes permanent.

Posting is irreversible

A posted journal and its lines can no longer be edited or deleted, and the live pricing rules it produced cannot currently be deactivated from this page. The only way to change a price or discount published this way is to post a new, later-dated or more specific rule that supersedes it - for example, a From date that starts after the old rule's To date, or a narrower quantity range that the engine will prefer as the more specific match.

A posted rule appears on the item's Sell (or Purchase) tab under Trade agreements, alongside every other posted rule for that item, letting you review what is currently live without tracing it back to the journal that created it.

Sales channel only, today

The Relation (type) field lists purchase and rental relations as well as sales ones, but on this page Account selection always resolves against your Customers and Customer groups. Use the sales relations here; a corresponding vendor-facing page for purchase agreements does not exist yet.