Pricing & Item Maintenance

Price changes drive margin. S4 Back Office is built to make pricing fast, consistent, and synced across your POS and your shelves.

This module handles direct item edits and batch maintenance — the day-to-day work of running a pricebook, supporting complex promotional schemes, and keeping your margin and marketing plans in sync.

Direct & batch item maintenance

• One-click index changes
• UPC Keep feature
• See all cost and price info, including active and pending batch info, on the main entry screen
• Customizable grid view
• Color-coded indicators on changed data fields
• Like-item linking to reduce data entry
• Category, sub-category, and report-code links for group reporting
• Multiple vendors per item
• Mass change — direct or by batch
• Maintenance of normal, current, and last cost; layered allowances
• Support for all POS statuses, bottle links, and mix-match tables
• Frequent shopper pricing and electronic couponing

Pricing automation

• Complex promotional schemes unique to each POS system
• Auto price and rounding calculators off of cost
• Allowance pass-through formulas
• Rule-based activation/deactivation of cost and retail batches — handles the most complicated nested and overlapping pricing schedules
• Batch header, items, and full activity on one screen
• Customizable batch screens by batch type
• Handle increases and decreases in a single batch, scored separately
• Build and verify ads in-aisle
• Integrated shelf tag and sale-sign printing
• Interfaces to deli and meat scale systems

Major wholesaler support

S4 supports the major wholesaler import/export formats. A data-mapping tool is included for building new formats when a vendor uses something different.

How an ad cycle typically runs in S4

Most grocers run a weekly ad. In S4 the cycle looks something like this:

1. Build the ad batch from supplier deal sheets, host imports, or by manual selection. Items get assigned to the appropriate batch type (sale, promotion, manager’s special). 2. Verify before activation. The batch explorer surfaces every item in the batch with old cost, new cost, old retail, new retail, and gross margin. Sorting by margin catches data errors before they hit the lanes. 3. Activate on schedule. Rule-based activation handles the start date and time. Overlapping promos resolve via the priority pyramid; Best Price wins where multiple promos stack. 4. Print signage. The batch’s items flow to S4 Shelf Image for shelf tags, sale signs, and shelf talkers — same data, same workflow, no separate sign tool. 5. Deactivate automatically. When the ad ends, items roll back to regular pricing without a manual sweep.

Talk to S4 about pricing

If you have a pricing workflow that involves multiple zones, complex promos, or a tricky vendor data feed, we’d rather show you how S4 handles it than describe it.

Email: sales@s4.com Phone: (844) 747-4400

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