Individual price lists in B2B: per-customer pricing without spreadsheets

In B2B sales almost nobody pays the catalogue price. One customer gets −10% across all coffee because they buy by the pallet. Another negotiated a specific amount on one product and checks it every month. A third is just starting and runs on the base price list. The trouble begins when those agreements live in a spreadsheet, an email and a sales rep's head — instead of in the system.

Why a spreadsheet stops being enough

A price spreadsheet works while you have a dozen customers and a few dozen products. After that the hidden costs start:

• A customer asks for a price — the rep has to look it up instead of pointing them at the shop.
• A catalogue price increase — someone has to walk through every individual agreement and check which ones no longer make sense.
• Staff turnover — arrangements made two years ago are known only to the person who made them.
• A mistake on an order — someone charges the catalogue price to a customer with a negotiated one, and the invoice has to be corrected.

Three levels that are enough in practice

Instead of a price per customer per product (a matrix nobody will maintain), three levels do the job — from the broadest to the most specific.

1. A product price group

You group the catalogue the way you actually think about it: “whole bean coffee”, “accessories”, “new arrivals”. Then you discount the whole group at once. A new product joins the group and inherits every agreement automatically, with no price lists to edit.

2. A customer group

The same mechanism on the other side. Wholesale customers get one set of rules, retail chains another, and new customers the base prices. You set nothing per company until you have to.

3. A negotiated price on a product

Only at the end comes what genuinely needs individual treatment: a specific net amount on a specific product for a specific customer. There are usually a handful of those, not hundreds.

An order of precedence that has to be unambiguous

When levels overlap, the system has to resolve them the same way every time — otherwise you are back to guessing. A sensible order looks like this:

• A price on a product beats a price on a product group. You negotiated one item — it wins, and the rest of the group stays as it was.
• A customer's own arrangements beat their group's — but item by item. You override one product, not the whole price list.
• Quantity breaks still apply, on top of the price the arrangements produced. A customer on 89 with a −5% break from 10 pieces pays 84.55, not something calculated off the catalogue.

An individual price list is worth exactly as much as the trust people put in it. If a sales rep has to check whether the system got it right, they might as well calculate it themselves.

The preview that ends the argument

The most underrated part of such a mechanism is being able to see the whole catalogue through one customer's eyes: the catalogue price next to the price this customer will actually see, and an explanation of where that price comes from — individual arrangements, a general discount, a promotion, or simply the base price list.

That turns “why is my price this?” from an investigation into a single glance at a screen. It also surfaces, immediately, the cases where a percentage discount works out worse than the current promotion — because a percentage is taken off the catalogue price, not the promotional one.

The customer sees their own prices

Once the arrangements sit in the system rather than a spreadsheet, the shop shows the buyer their prices straight away — in the catalogue, in the basket and on the order summary. The sales rep stops being a middleman for quoting prices and gets back to selling. That is the whole idea behind a closed shop on invitations: the customer walks into their catalogue, not a shared display.

Worth remembering that a B2B buyer compares amounts in net terms — so net should be the headline figure in an individual price list too.

In vendispace, price groups, individual price lists and the client price preview are part of the standard — on the free plan as well. Create an account and move your arrangements out of the spreadsheet and into the place where the customer will see them.