Calculation Grids

Overview

Pricefx offers calculation grids as a powerful tool within its comprehensive pricing software solution. Calculation grids provide you with a flexible and efficient way to perform complex pricing calculations, enabling your business to optimize pricing strategies and make informed decisions.

Calculation Grids are intended for working with a large amount of row-like data (items) that are not tied to SKUs and therefore cannot be processed in Price Lists, Live Price Grids or Quotes. With Calculation Grids you are able to modify, execute and store data like supplier costs, promotions, etc.

Key facts about Calculation Grids:

A configuration wizard that helps you with the setup.

Table keys can come from data, a calculation logic or can be configured manually.

Table rows (line items) are generated by a dedicated calculation logic.

Additionally, Pricefx's calculation grids integrate seamlessly with other capabilities within the system, such as price optimization, and price analytics. This integration enhances the overall pricing capabilities and empowers businesses to make data-driven decisions that drive profitability and competitive advantage.

By leveraging these powerful tools, companies can gain deeper insights into their pricing strategies, optimize profitability, and stay ahead in today's dynamic and competitive market landscape.

Explore Calculation Grids (CG)

Calculation Grids enable you to tailor your pricing calculations to meet specific requirements and objectives. You can create and manage multiple grids for different products, markets, or pricing scenarios, ensuring that pricing strategies can be adapted to various business contexts.

Open

To access the CG go to Price Setting Calculation Grids. Here you can view and modify the calculation grids that already exist or you can create new ones.

When you enter the Calculation Grids, the system displays all the existing grids. You can use the calculate button in the lower black ribbon, to calculate a new grid or recalculate an existing one. Simply click the checkbox and calculate to run the calculation. It is recommended to run the calculation if changes have been made.

You can also delete a calculation grid. To do this, click the checkbox, then delete.

In this screen you can also add a new calculation grid by clicking the New Calculation Grid button in the upper right corner.

Open

Create a Calculation Grid

To do this, as you have seen before, go to Price Setting Calculation Grids New Calculation Grid.In the Define Calculation Grid step you will have to enter a label. You can also choose to set a Target Date (fixed date) or a Relative Target Date (relative to the current date, e.g., setting -5 means the system will consider Company Parameters which are valid at current date (= date of calculation of LPG) - 5 days). This target date will be used in the price calculation.

You can now move on to the Select Keys tab. You will need to select a Key Type. You can choose between 3 preset options.

Data Driven – Select up to six keys. The result data table will be automatically generated based on the number of keys and the selected restricted values.

Logic Driven – Keys are generated by a calculation logic. Select a calculation logic (of the Calculation Grid Keys nature) and the element containing the keys.

Manual – Select up to six keys. An empty result data table will be created leaving it up to the user to populate it manually.

You can now move on to the Set Parameters tab to select a calculation logic (of the Calculation Grid nature) that will calculate the grid. In the Output Elements step you will see the results you wanted to have as columns in this Calculation Grid based on the calculation logic elements you selected. You can select up to 100 elements.

When you have completed all the tabs in the New Calculation Grid step, you can click Finish.

Running the Calculation

When you have a new Calculation Grid ready, select it in the list and click the Calculate button.

After the calculation has been performed, the status of the Calculation Grid will change from Draft to Pending, then Processing and finally Ready.

Upon completion, you can submit the grid for approval. You will get a notification message informing you that the grid has been submitted.

If needed, you can cancel the running calculation of a Calculation Grid (when it is in the Pending or Processing state). Click the Status and cancel the calculation in the Job/Task Tracking dialog.

Mass Edits

While you may be familiar with Price grids that already exists in Price Setting, this feature, unlike price grids that is calculating SKUs, Calculation Grids is calculating columns that can be a mix of keys: While we do not have any defined in this example, you can use competitors and turnover indicators or any other rankings that are relevant to you and your business. You can add up to six (6) keys.

The option of mass edits within the Calculation Grids is available just as in the LPG.

Just like in LPG, all the columns that were marked to be overridden, the logic can be changed to suit your purpose.

Select what is appropriate , click OK to mass edit the items you are interested in.

Once the action has been performed, you will get a notification of the current status.

The status is updating every 5 seconds and it is reloading the content of the grid so no petulant clicking on the refresh button is required anymore to track when the job is complete. Now you can see the edited items.

You can go one by one but thanks to pagination you can get multiple items with one click. In this case you can select up to 300 items.

1. Select attribute and value

2. Select value

3. Run action

Just as before, you will get notified of the status in a message and you can track the progress in the pending status. When complete, this will change to ready.

Calculation Grids Logic

In our recent releases, we introduced the approval workflow and line-item level functionality to the calculation grid, along with some logical features. Let's create a calculation and explore the changes in the final step.

For this example, we'll create a logic-driven calculation with three keys and a simple calculation logic. In the last step, we need to specify the output elements. We will select all of them.

Here's where the change comes in - the approval trigger.

This is a new feature in the user interface, and it functions exactly like it does in the live price grid. In the live price grid, whenever the result price changes, the approval on the explicit line item is reset to draft. While we may not be limited to calculating a price in the calculation grid, we can still identify certain elements as the result. It can be all of them or just one final number. By setting the change trigger, we can control when the approval state is reset.

To give you a preview, we've already set up the calculation grid with the three keys and some calculation results. You'll notice that we've already approved some of them, while others are still in the submission stage. Let's submit the last one. As we have a two-step workflow, you can see that it is now approved.

Remember, there is a set change trigger for approval on the integer result. So whenever there is a change in this field, whether through manual override or recalculation, the item is reset to draft state.

This allows for a seamless workflow where you can submit and go through the approval process again if needed.

This feature is incredibly useful as it makes the approval workflow at the line-item level fully functional. You have the flexibility to define what you consider as the end result and whenever that changes, the approval status is reset to draft. This mirrors the same lifecycle as in the Live Price Grid.