Showing prices and keeping them current

[AmyNY]

Just started a website with a catalog about 2 mos ago. The code is still basic stuff made with frontpage. Customers are mostly B2B. We don't have many prices listed and may not list all because of the nature of the business. Also, if multiple items are purchased the price is lower. Question: If we post prices on 50 or 100 items and the prices change every month, how do I keep track of them? Are there databases that can be linked to the site? Is there a simpler way, I hope?

Thanks.

Amy

[korkus2000]

Yes you should use a price database that is hooked into price decisions. You need to also set up some kind of logic that adjusts prices on amount ordered. If you are using Frontpage and are on a windows server then you can use ASP.

[TallTroll]

I can think of at least 2 ecomm packages that will handle the stated requirements off the shelf, and most others that I am familiar with could be made to do it with a greater or lesser amount of fiddling

I am a bit unclear about the exact meaning of this :

>> If we post prices on 50 or 100 items and the prices change every month, how do I keep track of them?

Do you mean you want to track the current prices, or the history of price changes here?

[gsx]

I used to wonder this as well.

I wrote my own database along these lines:

1) load in to a table several suppliers price lists
2) match the above with the products (only needs to be done once per product really)
3) calculate new cost prices by the following:
- i) if the item is in stock, use the last paid price or average stock price
- ii) if the item is out of stock, use the lowest price of the supplier who has it in stock
- iii) if no-one has the item, use the price of the highest supplier (thus you can order it from anyone)
4) automatically calculate sell prices by using various markup (profit)/addon (postage) techniques
5) put out into csv file to upload and there are the new prices.

My stock lines went from 600 products (took about 6 hours to update all the prices) to 2800 products (takes about half an hour).

Common/important product lines have a flag set so that the database does not calculate prices for them - they are done manually - I have about 50 of them.

[AmyNY]

Right now the prices for the products are in Access database. How do I get the database to interact with the html code. For example: in Excel if a number is updated in one worksheet, then another sheet can be set to change automatically.

f you are
using Frontpage and are on a windows server then you can use ASP.

Thanks. I'm new at this and need to read about asp.

am a bit unclear about the exact meaning of this :

>> If we post prices on 50 or 100 items and the prices change every month, how do I keep track of them?

Do you mean you want to track the current prices, or the history of price changes here?

What I meant was that if there are 100 items on the website. How do I update the prices each month if they were to change for each product?

5) put out into csv file to upload and there are the new prices.

Can do that but.... say I have a csv or database file that lists:
blue widget $5.00
yellow widget $6.00
green widget $7.00

Now, the blue widget product description is on the blue widget page and the yellow widget is on a different page, etc. So how do I get the new csv document to input each price into many different simply coded html pages?

This question is a little off topic. Spoke with someone in my industry today. He said he uses miva merchant. He bought a package that included a program and web hosting. All he has to do is put on the pictures and write description for the products. Everything else is set up. There is a shopping cart, quantity location, the program calculates shipping weight, calculates quantity discounts. He said the grunge-work manual html method of setting up many, many pages with products takes much longer than his software. Am I on the wrong track? I don't have a shopping cart yet. I was planning to set up my sit, then get some visitors, then add more products, then buy a merchant package (which I currently know nothing about).

Amy