Advanced Pricing Engine
Volume thresholds, contract rates, and quantity breaks resolve automatically as buyers build their orders—no manual overrides, no pricing surprises at checkout.
B2B pricing is a matrix: account tier × order volume × contract terms × channel. It cannot be a static lookup table assigned once per product. The pricing engine needs to evaluate all active rules at every cart interaction—in real time—and return the correct price for the correct buyer in the correct context.
Virto's pricing engine does exactly this. Rules fire at runtime at every cart state change. Prices update as buyers adjust quantities. The same engine that resolves pricing for a storefront buyer resolves the same logic when an ERP or partner system requests a price via API—eliminating the inconsistency between what buyers see and what systems confirm.
How the Pricing Engine Works
Every cart interaction triggers a rule evaluation across the full pricing hierarchy: channel-level rates apply first, then account-level price lists, then contract-specific rates, then cart-level rules including volume thresholds and quantity breaks. The precedence order is configurable and deterministic—buyers always receive the most specific applicable rate, not a generic fallback.
Quantity steppers reflect this in real time: as a buyer adjusts line quantities from 10 to 51, the price per unit updates immediately to reflect the applicable tier. There is no wait until checkout, manual override required, or post-order adjustment needed.
The marketplace price-tag validation adds a further layer of reliability: duplicate pricing conditions—two price tags with identical conditions—are now blocked at save, eliminating the pricing ambiguity that causes unpredictable checkout outcomes in multi-vendor environments.
Key Capabilities of Advanced Pricing Engine
- Volume-based tier pricing: Define quantity thresholds (e.g., 1–10, 11–50, 51+) with different rates per tier.
- Contract price lists: Bind specific rates to individual customer accounts or agreements.
- Real-time cart recalculation: Prices update as line quantities change, not only at checkout.
- Price list layering: Channel → account → contract → cart rules evaluated in precedence order.
- Customer-group pricing: Assign price lists to segments, not just individuals.
- Marketplace price-tag validation: Prevents duplicate pricing conditions that cause unpredictable outcomes.
- API-accessible pricing engine: Same rules power storefront, partner portals, and ERP integrations.
- Pricing Integration module: Sync rates from external systems in real time.
Use Case Examples
- Volume-based distributor pricing: A distributor orders in bulk. As they adjust line quantities from 10 to 51 units, the price per unit drops automatically from the Tier-1 rate to the Tier-3 rate—visible in the cart before they confirm the order.
- Contract-specific account pricing: A key account has negotiated rates for specific product categories. Those rates apply automatically when they log in—no sales rep intervention, no manual price adjustment, no post-invoice correction.
- ERP price consistency: A procurement system queries Virto's pricing API before submitting a purchase order. It receives the same contracted rate the buyer would see on the storefront—no discrepancy between system-confirmed and buyer-visible pricing.
Your Questions, Answered
Discounts and promotions are applied on top of a base price. Virto's pricing engine determines the base price itself—through contract rates, volume tiers, account-specific price lists, and channel rules—before any promotional logic runs. The two layers operate independently.
Yes. The Pricing Integration module synchronizes rates from external systems in real time. The same rules are then applied by the pricing engine at cart, regardless of whether the request comes from a storefront, a partner portal, or an API call.
Yes. The pricing engine is exposed through Virto's unified API layer—the same rule evaluation that fires at cart fires when any external system requests a price, ensuring consistency across all touchpoints.
