Overview
Price levels are a B2B pricing feature in Luminous that let you offer different effective prices to different customers — for example, a wholesale tier, a key-account tier, or a cost-plus tier — without changing the product's published list price. When you open the Sales Order creation form and select a customer, Luminous automatically picks the right price level and adjusts each line accordingly.
The three price level types
| Type | How the effective price is calculated |
|---|---|
| Price-Based | A percentage discount is subtracted from the product's list (wholesale) price |
| Cost-Based | A percentage markup is added on top of the product's weighted average cost |
| Manual | An exact dollar price override is entered per SKU (and optionally per quantity tier) |
How the auto-fill price is determined (priority order)
When you add a line item to a sales order, Luminous resolves the effective price through the following steps, in order. The first match wins.
1. Customer-specific SKU price
If a one-off price has been entered directly on the company record for that exact SKU, it is used immediately — no price level calculation applies. For variant SKUs, if no variant-specific price exists, Luminous checks the parent/master SKU as a fallback.
2. Explicitly selected price level on the order
The Price Level field on the sales order header holds the level that will be used to calculate line prices. If this field is already populated (either auto-filled or manually chosen), that level governs every line.
3. Category/subcategory price group on the company
If the company has a price group configured for the product's category — and optionally its subcategory — the price level linked to that group is used for matching products. This lets you give a company one discount tier for one product category and a different tier for another.
4. Company default price level
If no category price group matched, Luminous falls back to the default price level set on the company record. This is also the value that auto-fills the Price Level field the moment you select a customer on the create-order form.
5. Product list (wholesale) price — no level applied
If none of the above apply (no customer-specific price, no explicit level, no price group, no company default), the product's standard wholesale price is used as-is.
Quantity-based price schedules
Products can also have a price schedule — a set of quantity break tiers that apply an additional percentage or fixed-amount reduction. If such a schedule exists, Luminous finds the tier that matches the quantity on the line and applies it on top of the price level calculation. You can also define per-SKU manual price overrides tied to a specific (price level + tier) combination.
What you see in the line-item table
- Unit Price — the product's list/sticker price (before the price level discount)
- Line discount fields — the dollar amount and percentage that the price level reduces from list price
- Net line total —
(quantity × Unit Price) − line discount, which equals the effective (wholesale) price × quantity
Two optional columns — List Price and % Off List — can be toggled on from the column-chooser menu on the line-item table if you want to see both figures side by side.
How it carries over to invoices
When you generate an invoice from a posted sales order, the same price level is copied to the invoice header automatically. Line discounts and net totals carry over unchanged, so the invoice always reflects the same pricing context as the original order.
Summary: what to check if the wrong price auto-fills
- Company record → default price level — this is what the form auto-fills on customer selection.
- Company record → price groups — category-level overrides take priority over the default.
- Company record → SKU-specific prices — these override everything else for the matched SKU.
- The Price Level dropdown on the order header — you can always change it manually after the form opens; all line prices will recalculate.