Your supplier just raised cost prices mid-season. Here is the repricing order of play

Short answer: update costs first, look at what has fallen below margin second, and only then decide what to do about customer prices. Most businesses do these in the wrong order and end up either over-reacting or selling at a loss for a month.

Hour one: get the new costs in, even if you change nothing else

Until your system holds the real cost, every margin figure you look at is fiction and every decision you make is guesswork. Import the new cost prices before you have any opinion about selling prices. If the increase arrived as a supplier spreadsheet, that is a CSV import job — and the usual formatting traps apply.

Day one: find what is now underwater

With true costs in place, the urgent list is short: SKUs where a tier price is now below cost, and SKUs where it is above cost but below the margin you actually need. That second list is the dangerous one, because nothing flags it. Deal with the below-cost lines immediately — a margin warning at the point of sale buys you time, but it does not fix the price list. See how below-cost pricing sneaks through.

Day two: decide whether you are passing it on, and how much

Three honest options, and it is normal to use all three across different lines. Pass it through where the increase is industry-wide and your competitors face the same cost. Absorb it on a small number of lines where price visibility is high and the volume protects you. Restructure where the increase makes the product marginal — change the pack size, change the tier the product sits in, or stop selling it.

Formula-driven tiers make this quick: if your tiers are driven cost-up, updating the cost already produced new tier prices and you are reviewing rather than calculating. If they are driven RRP-down, a cost increase changes nothing automatically, which is exactly when margin erosion hides. Know which of the two each tier uses — see cost-up or RRP-down.

Week one: tell people, in the right order

Internal first — counter staff and reps need to know before a customer tells them. Then the accounts most affected, individually, by phone if they are significant. Then everyone else, by email, with an effective date far enough out that they can place one more order at the old price if they want to. That last courtesy costs you very little and is remembered.

What to fix afterwards

If this took a week, the problem is not the supplier. It is that costs and prices live in different places. Cost changes should flow into tier prices by formula, with you reviewing exceptions rather than recalculating a catalogue.

B2B Price Tiers drives each tier from cost or RRP with attractive rounding applied automatically, so a cost update reprices the catalogue and leaves you judging the exceptions. Find out more →

Questions, or want a tool we don't have yet? Email hello@grafto.co.uk — a real person replies.