Introduction

Repricer automatically adjusts an item's price to maximize your profit and minimize inventory costs. It is a useful tool as you set up your requirements and it continuously tracks competitor’s prices and sales volume and proactively adjusts prices to beat competitor’s prices if that is what you have specified you would like it to do. Repricer can:

• Lower your prices just a little and place your ranking just ahead of your competitor
• If there is no competition, increase your item’s price
• Protects you from getting warnings from manufacturers as it will keep prices within their range

StoreAutomator Price Fields

StoreAutomator has the following price fields in the system (sorted from lowest to highest). It is a good idea to understand these price fields:

Cost is the cost of the product in the default warehouse. StoreAutomator uses the cost for Repricer calculations, so this value must be correct for efficient repricing. If you are using multiple warehouses you can enter a different cost for each warehouse. This can be done in Inventory>warehouses and by logging into the relevant warehouse.

Min. Price is the absolute minimum price for a product

MAP is Minimum Advertised Price, usually the manufacturer’s lowest limit

Sale Price Discounted Sale Price

Regular Price is the regular sales price

MSRP  Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price, usually manufacturer’s upper limit

Max Price is the absolute maximum price

Repricer basics

Platforms such as Amazon and Walmart provide competition information for requested products; they provide all competing store names, product prices, and price effective dates. Repricer uses this information to figure competitive stores for you, select one store to beat its price, while fulfilling all Repricer restriction settings.

StoreAutomator has a rule based Repricer algorithm that changes an item’s price automatically in accordance with the following rules and conditions:

• Repricer settings 
• Manufacturer’s min/

max. pricing limits, 

• Competitor’s prices, 
• your sales volume,
• Your pricing target,
• Change can occur both as an increase or decrease in prices.

To use Repricer, first contact Support and tell them to activate your Repricer. Depending on your contract with StoreAutomator, there may be additional costs to benefit from the Repricer tool. Once Repricer is enabled in your account, you can activate it by going to Channel Settings> Common> General and by switching “Enable Repricer” to “Analyze Only” mode for starters. 

Repricer Modes

Repricer has the following modes: Disabled, Reprice and Analyze Only/Dry Run. It is  good practice to start with “Analyze Only” mode and see the suggested new prices for your items based on your parameters, and when you are comfortable sending your new prices to the channels, you can switch Repricer mode to “Reprice”, as shown below.

Analyze Only/Dry Run mode, starts collecting information, finding competitors and calculates a price for your SKUs, but it does not send end prices to channels.

Reprice, sends prices to channels,

Disabled, disables all Repricer actions.

Channel Level Repricer Settings

Next stop is the Channel Level Repricer settings located at Channel Settings> Common> and in the Repricer tab; main settings look like  the picture below. Let's look at these settings first:

Default commission rate, sets the initial commission rate for a channel before SA sends the first prices to a channel. After some repricing data is sent back and forth with the channel, StoreAutomator calculates the commission rate automatically.

Default Repricer Settings, is the default Repricer setting for this channel. You can define multiple settings and choose from the drop down menu and assign to this channel. To create new Setting Sets, see “Global Repricer Settings” below.

Use Repricer Rulesets, enables the usage of rule sets, which also displays rule sets designer matrix underneath. Please see the section “Defining new rule sets”, below.

Next step is to proceed to Global Repricer settings and create at least one Ruleset or multiple rulesets, that will be displayed in the “Default Repricer Settings” or in the “Ruleset Designer”.

Global Repricer Settings

Global level Repricer settings is located at Menu> Settings> Repricing

Next step is to create a Repricer setting by clicking the “+ Add Settings” upper right corner.

After creating the setting, click edit (pen icon)

Below are the list of tabs in this screen:

• General
• Margin
• Target Price
• Restrictions
• Shipping Price
• Competitor Filtering
• Competitor Evaluation

Margin Tab

This tab is to set the profit margin for the channel. Move sliders to select values. 

• (important) Minimum Margin, is the lowest Margin you can afford on this channel, Margin is calculated as (Price-cost) / Price; StoreAutomator won’t price any items lower than this minimum margin,
• (important) Max discount rate, is the highest discount rate that Repricer algorithm is allowed to use on this channel

Note: If you want to be competitive you can lower your minimum margin and increase your discount rate.

Target Price Tab

StoreAutomator gets competition information, which is every 15 minutes, and identifies one competing store for a chosen product. This is the tab to set your price lower than the competitor’s price. After identification of the competing store, there are two ways to go below the competitor’s price:

• Price difference Method: Fixed, your price will be lowered as a fixed amount. Choose this option, If you want to go 1 cent (input 0.01 for 1 cent) below competitor’s price, or 0 assigns the same price as the competitor
• Target Price Difference Method: Percentage, your price will be lowered as a percentage; choose this option, If you want to go 1% below competitor’s price
• Use suggested Lower Price Plus Shipping (If available): If the marketplace utilizes a suggested price, you can use this option. A good example of this is, Amazon’s suggested price, if the suggested price is higher than your minimum margin, it will be sent to Amazon.

Restrictions Tab

This is the tab that removes brand restrictions and sets upper/lower limit conditions for Repricer.

• Ignore Brand Max Discount: Sometimes brands check channels and search for prices of their products, to ensure dealers don’t sell their products below their discount limits. They will contact you and ask for an explanation if they catch you going lower. This checkbox will disable this protection and allow a product’s price to drop below Brand Max. Discount limit.
• Ignore MAP, this will ignore Maximum Advertised Price limit and allows Repricer to go below MAP value
• Ignore MSRP, this option ignores Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price limit and allows Repricer to go over MSRP value
• Enable Max Price Factor, is a ratio to set an upper limit for the Repricer. The upper limit to be the lowest of these below values:
• Max price = Item_Cost X Max_Price_Factor,
• Max price entered at product level

Note: If SA Repricer cannot find your competitors, it will raise the price to the Max price as calculated above. 

• Don’t Use Sale Price for Repricer, will prohibit using sale price within the calculations of Repricer.

Shipping Price Tab

These settings are only applicable to channels that have the shipping price sync enabled.

StoreAutomator is capable of adjusting product’s shipping price to satisfy below conditions:

• Keeping an item’s price at MAP (so you won’t get warnings from manufacturers) and decreasing shipping costs so yout total price will be still competitive,
• Keeping an item’s price at MSRP and increase shipping costs so you are still competitive and make money through shipping

On a separate note some channels enforce MAP and MSRP values that are setup by manufacturers. In this case, it is not recommended to use these settings as when manufacturers catch your low prices, your seller rights might be suspended, and you may be fined for seller policy violation.

• Reprice Shipping Charge: If this switch is enabled, shipping charge will be repriced. Otherwise, the default shipping price will be applied.

• Minimum Shipping Price: Set this price, if you do not want shipping price go below a certain value.

• No Competition Shipping Price: This shipping price will be applied when there is no competition.

Competitor filtering Tab

In this tab you can set criteria to choose your competitors to take into account for Repricer calculations. 

• for FBM products, Ignores competition for FBM products, or vice versa. This let’s you to chose who to ignore while plotting a competitive price
• for FBA products, Ignores competition for FBA products, or vice versa.
• Competition Min. Rating: This sets the minimum rating of a competitor to take into account; ignores sellers which have ratings less than this level. Value can be set between 1 and 100.
• Competition Min. Feedback: This sets the minimum number of feedback of a competitor to take into account; ignores sellers which have feedback numbers less than this set level. This function takes both positive and negative feedback into account.
• Ignore Price deviation, ignore any competitors who are way above or below your price range of this set value; within the +/- range. Value is in a percentage of a value of your product price.
• Ignore amazon, if you are selling a product that amazon also sells, this will ignore Amazon as being a competitor of yours and find other competitors.

Make sure to click “Save” to save your settings.

Competitor Evaluation

In this section you can provide weight values on factors to show how important they are to you:

• Price Weight (%)

• Seller Rating Weight (%)

• Feedback Count Weight (%)

• Ship Time Weight (%)

• Prime Status Weight (only for Amazon)

Channel Level Repricer Settings

Channel level Repricer settings is located at Menu > Channel > Channel Settings > Repricer. These settings apply to all products in the channel. If you like, you can make changes at individual level, by editing and entering overrides in the Repricer tab of that particular product. 

Defining new rule sets

With the help of Repricer rule sets you can match groups of filtered products with a specific Repricer settings, see below image. The top row are filters that can be added in the menu Settings>Filters and the right side column is Repricer settings which you can add more of those from Settings>Repricer. Once all filters and Repricer settings are added you can match them as shown. In below example the products in filters “in stock”, “Test company Filter”, “Free shipping”, “Products costs under 10”, and “Products costs under 100” are assigned to have “Amazon AU default” Repricer Settings. 

Product Level Repricer

Channel level repricing settings can be customized for individual products in Repricer Details. To change settings edit the product at channel level and select the tab Repricing.

In this tab, you can apply product specific Repricer settings, by overriding channel level settings.

The first switch is the Repricer on/off switch; If you want to take an individual item out of repricing you can disable its main switch here. The rest of the settings are exactly the same settings at the channel level. You can customize the settings that will be applicable to this item, in this view.

Once the Repricer is enabled and settings are done, it will take a couple hours to obtain the competitor data from Amazon and when they come, Repricer identifies a competitor and starts beating its price. Newly calculated prices then are sent to Amazon in Price Updates that are initiated every 15 minutes.

Tips

• If you want to be competitively priced, you can lower your profit margin and increase your max. Discount rate,
• If you don’t have competition and would like to sell your products for a high price, you can increase your profit margin or increase Max. Price factor
• If you like to go below your competitor’s price by just one cent, in the Target Price tab, for Price difference method select fixed, and for target price difference enter 0.01.
• If you like to go below your competitor’s price 1%, in the Target Price tab, for Price difference method select Percent, and for target price difference enter 1.
• If you ignore competition for your FBA or FBM products, this will turn the Repricer off.
• If you would like to use Repricer for your FBA products, in the Competitors tab select “Do not ignore any competition” for FBA products text box. If you select “Ignore Non-FBA Competition” this will exclude all competitors that sell FBM, which may fine tune your price to become more competitive.
• If you are an established seller and you would like to compete with older sellers, you need to increase your “Competition Min. Rating” and “Competition Min. Feedback” values.
• If you would like to ignore short or very cheap sellers, you need to decrease the “Ignore Price Deviation” percentage level to exclude those sellers from competition and consequently lowering your price too much.

Reading Repricer Data

Programming the Repricer correctly takes reading and understanding all your expenses and the settings available to you correctly.  Go to your Repricer menu (Channel>Repricer) and click on the “i” icon to view repricing information on this item; below settings can be seen:

On the left hand side there are all ‘Costs’ listed for that product; native cost, shipping, handling costs, and FBA fees if available. 

On the right hand side, ‘Target Landed Price’ is calculated according to the information provided in the Repricer module settings. In this case, the target Landed price is $115.38 and the net margin is set to %10, so we can calculate the Net profit after deducting the Amazon commission and the total product cost from Target Landed Price, which ends up as $11.53. In other words to fulfill the 10% margin requirement, SA must sell this item for at least $115.38.

The Repricer also shows a close competitor at the top, which has a sales price for $110.08. For this case, the Repricer cannot lower the price further to go lower than the competitor, as lowering will violate its settings and will cause selling for a loss. 

To become competitive again, a lower margin must be chosen for this product or a way must be found to lower the shipping costs. Usually, it is not a good selling practice to lower the Channel’s profit margin, as it will be affecting all items in the channel. It is recommended to lower only this product’s margin. This can be edited within the product editor in Channel>Channel Products finding the product and clicking on the edit button towards the right and by clicking the ‘Repricer’ tab. These settings are the item's individual settings and lowering the margin here is the correct action. Also,  if you can afford, while editing the product you can go to the ‘Costs’ tab and set the item’s shipping cost to a lower value.

These actions will decrease the minimum selling price and give more room to the Repricer to stay competitive. Meanwhile, the Repricer will set the item’s price according to the competitor, and if it is high enough, it might never have to lower its own price to the minimum price.

If you have some products that are going to go bad soon, you might want to utilize StoreAutomator’s ‘Liquidation Mode’. In this mode, the Repricer is allowed to go lower than the minimum target price and sell products at a loss. For more information, please refer to this article:

https://www.storeautomator.com/resources/bulk-import-templates/liquidation-settings-import-file/