Using Discount Lists in Dynamics CRM 2011

Paul Nieuwelaar, 20 April 2011

In one of my last posts on the Product Catalog, I gave a brief Overview of Discount Lists in Dynamics CRM 2011. In this post I will be showing in depth how Discount Lists are used within the Product Catalog, and how you can quickly and easily start creating Discount Lists in Dynamics CRM 2011.

You can manage your Discount Lists by navigating to the Product Catalog, located under Settings, and clicking on Discount Lists. From here you can view, edit and create new Discount Lists.

Discount Lists can be used in a few different ways that can be of benefit to you and your customers. One scenario that you could use with Discount Lists is that you want to supply customers with a discount of $10 when they purchase 100 units of your product. This can be used to encourage your customers to purchase a higher quantity of your product.

The other scenario in which Discount Lists can be used is to supply a percentage discount to a specific quantity purchased. In this case you could say that if a customer purchases 100 units of your product, they will receive a 10% discount off the price. With percentage Discount Lists you can use them for multiple products of all different price ranges, so you don’t need to create new Discount Lists.

The Discount List I will be creating in this demonstration will be for icecream products purchased in bulk. For this we will want to offer a 10% discount off the total price for every 100 units of icecream purchased, with a maximum discount of up to 50%.

To create this Discount List, click New on the ribbon. Before the form opens, you will be prompted to enter a Name for the Discount List, and also whether the discounts applied will be a Percentage, or a specific Amount. If you select Amount you will also be asked to select a Currency. But for this example we will need to use Percentage as the type.

After selecting the Name and Type, click OK and the Discount List will be created (and saved) automatically. Click on Discounts related to the Discount List and then click Add New Discount on the ribbon to start adding each Discount. For each Discount in the Discount List, you will be required to enter a Begin Quantity and End Quantity, as well as a Percentage or Amount depending on which you selected in the Discount List. You can create as many different Discounts for each Discount List as you want, however each Discounts Begin and End Quantity must not fall within the range of an existing Discount in the same Discount List, otherwise you will receive the following error.

When adding a product to an invoice that has a Discount List applied, the quantity added will determine which Discount is used. This means you can configure your Discount List so that the more items a customer purchases, the higher the discount they receive will be. The image below shows how the Discounts would be configured for this example. 

As you can see, each multiple of 100 units purchased gains a 10% discount. Therefor if a customer purchases 90 units of icecream, no discount is applied. However if 150 units of icecream are purchased the 10% discount is applied. If 500 or more units of icecream are purchased, the 50% discount is applied.

Each Discount List you create can be used multiple times on different products, or you can also create new Discount Lists to apply to other Products as well. I will describe how to Apply Discount Lists to Products in a later post. In my next post I will be showing how to set up Units and Unit Groups in your Product Catalog. Stay tuned till then.