Price from a look-up table

Pro feature

Price tables are part of AddOnBoss Pro, alongside measured sizing.

Some trades do not price by a rate. A blind maker, a signmaker or a glazier works from a grid: widths down one side, drops across the other, and the price sits in the cell where they meet. That grid usually comes from a supplier, and it rarely follows a neat formula.

A price table set prices from exactly that grid. You keep the sheet you already work from, and the shop prices from it.

When to use a table instead of a rate

Both price a made-to-measure product. The difference is where the number comes from.

• Use measured sizing when the price really is a rate: so much per metre, per square metre, per cubic metre.
• Use a price table when the price comes from a sheet, steps in bands rather than smoothly, or was given to you by a supplier who will not explain how they worked it out.

Create a price table

On the Option Sets page, create a set and choose a price table for its kind.

1. Name the two axes. A blind is Width and Drop; a sign might be Width and Height. One axis is fine if your price only follows one measurement.
2. Label each row and column the way your sheet does, then fill the cells with your selling prices.
3. Choose how the customer gives you a size. Buttons or a list when they should pick from the sizes you make. Typed when they enter their own and you want the nearest band to price it.
4. Choose what the cell price means. It can set the whole price, so the table is the price, or it can add to the product's price, so the table is a surcharge on a base.

Typed sizes and bands

If customers type their own measurements, each label becomes a band rather than an exact size. A row labelled up to 1200 covers everything from the row below it up to 1200.

You choose per axis what happens to a size that falls between bands: round up to the next band, or take the nearest. Rounding up is the safer default for anything you cut, because it never prices a piece as smaller than it is.

A size larger than your biggest band is refused rather than guessed at, so nobody buys something you cannot make.

Working from a supplier’s cost sheet

If your sheet holds costs rather than selling prices, paste it in as it is and add your margin.

1. Paste the grid straight from your spreadsheet. Rows and columns come across as they are.
2. Set a margin, either a percentage on top of every cell or a flat amount.
3. The prices shown to customers are the marked-up ones. Your costs stay in the editor, so when the supplier sends a new sheet you paste it over the old one and the margin carries.

What the customer sees

Buttons, a list or two size boxes, depending on what you chose. The price updates as they pick or type, and the total on the page is what they pay.

Good to know

• Every cell floors at zero. A table cannot make a line negative, whatever the margin or the base price.
• A table is a kind of option set, so it behaves like any other: attach it to as many products as you like from one library, and change the prices once for all of them.
• Tax works normally. The price joins the line through WooCommerce’s own pricing, so your tax settings apply exactly as they do to any other product.
• Changing a table does not change past orders. What a customer paid is recorded on their order.