Markdowns

In Prism, price markdowns are done using Price Manager. To access Price Manager, navigate to Store Operations > Merchandise > Price Manager.
Price Manager enables users to easily implement markdowns on a filtered subset of Inventory by adjusting Price by a certain amount or percentage. Markdowns with Price Manger can be planned or immediate.

• Immediate markdowns [UPDATE NOW option]: All price changes are replicated and take effect as they are received, effectively updating the prices throughout the enterprise at the same time, regardless of local time.
• Planned markdowns [SCHEDULE UPDATE option]: All price changes will take effect at the stores local time based on the "Update on:" Date/Time set when the Markdown was scheduled. When scheduling, if the RESTORE MARKDOWN option was selected the prices will be restored at the stores local time.

Whether immediate or planned, when the price change takes effect, all price updates occur at the same time throughout the enterprise. Example: If a user schedules a markdown for 5 a.m. at the HQ server in New York, it will update New York stores at 5am (EST) and Hawaii stores at 11pm (HST) on the night before. There is a preference in Admin Console > Node Preferences > Merchandise > Price Manager: Default Update Time for Planned Markdowns. The preference is ONLY used to suggest the default time of day that will appear when trying to schedule a markdown; users can change the time if needed. For example, it may be desired to always have updates occur at  3 am. Setting the desired default update time helps to ensure any scheduled price changes occur at the desired time but does not guarantee it because the user can still change the time when scheduling the markdown.

Price Plan Ownership
Markdowns create adjustment memos. In Admin Console > Node Preferences > Merchandise > Price Manager, the "Price Plan Authority" setting enables retailers to specify which installation within the Prism enterprise is the owner of a price plan for scheduled price changes. The owner of a price plan is the installation that can create adjustment memos for a markdown (and reverse those memos, if necessary). In this case "price plan" refers to each set of markdown prices made with Price Manager scheduled to take effect on a certain date. The Price Plan Authority preference helps ensure that adjustment memos associated with price changes are created by the correct installation. This setting does not apply when the Update Now option is used.
This feature uses the following terms.

• Any installation which receives adjustments via replication profiles can reverse an adjustment memo
• If a non-Price Plan Authority manually reverses a markdown a request is sent to the PPA to actually reverse the adjustment memos.  Inventory prices will only be adjusted by the PPA
• If the Adjustment memos themselves are reversed they will affect inventory through the normal Adjustment replication process

As mentioned previously, the "Price Plan Authority" setting in Admin Console > Node Preferences > Merchandise > Price Manager, the "Price Plan Authority" enables retailers to specify which installation within the Prism enterprise is the owner of a price plan.

Price Plan Reversal at Owner Installation
When a reverse is performed against a price plan at the Owner installation, adjustment memos are created, Inventory prices are updated and the price changes are replicated
Price Plan Reversal at Non-Owner Installation
When a reverse is performed against a price plan at a Non-Owner installation, a request for reversal is sent to the Owner Installation and the Owner Installation performs the reversal whereupon adjustment memos are created, Inventory prices are updated and the price changes are replicated.

Replication of Markdowns
Prism replicates price markdowns separately from other Inventory information using the MARKDOWN resource and MARKDOWN Adjustments profile.

• The MARKDOWN resource sends the Markdown list (so its basic information may be viewed at another location).
• The MARKDOWN ADJUSTMENTS profile filters for the specific Adjustment memos created by the PPA and sends to other locations to be processed by the scheduler to perform the price adjustment.

Notes:

Requires both the MARKDOWN resource and MARKDOWN ADJUSTMENTS profile linked to replicate for both directions of the link (Store to POA/POA to Store).

• The MARKDOWN resource must be link to send the markdown list
• The MARKDOWN ADJUSTMENTS profile must be linked to ensure the adjustment memos created by markdown are sent

For immediate markdowns, Prism creates a one-time scheduled task for each adjustment to avoid a delay in replication. For scheduled markdowns, a one-time scheduled task is created at the Prism Point of Authority. This task is also scheduled throughout the enterprise.
Adjustment memos created by a markdown, when replicated to stores/POA and applied to Inventory through Scheduler, are processed by PrismBackofficeService. This might slow down PrismBackofficeService. For example, a user creates a markdown with 100,000 items and clicks Apply Now. This creates 100 adjustment memos (1000 items per memo) that will be replicated. When the other side of the connection (store) receives the adjustments, 100 scheduled tasks will be automatically created to apply the markdown to Inventory.

Sample Profile screen in Connection Manager with markdown resource selected (user must also select the adjustment resource):