How pricing rules work
Pricing rules adjust your base price per marketplace, apply consistent rounding, and enforce floors. They exist because the same item should not always carry the same price on every channel — fee structures and buyer expectations differ.
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Why one price across all channels is wrong
Marketplace fees differ substantially. Buyer expectations differ too: some platforms have a strong offer culture where a listed price is an opening position, and others are close to fixed-price. Listing the same number everywhere means you are either leaving margin on the table on the expensive channel or under-pricing on the cheap one.
Pricing rules let you hold one base price and derive per-channel prices from it, so the adjustment is a policy rather than a per-item decision.
What the rules control
- Per-marketplace adjustment: a plus or minus percentage applied to your base price for that channel.
- Rounding: so prices come out as consistent, deliberate numbers rather than $47.83.
- Floors: a minimum below which no rule may take a price.
- Offer headroom: pricing that leaves space to accept an offer on platforms where buyers expect to negotiate.
A worked example
| Channel | Rule | Base $80 becomes |
|---|---|---|
| Own storefront | -5% (no commission to absorb) | $76 |
| Marketplace with low fees | Base | $80 |
| Marketplace with high fees | +10% | $88 |
| Offer-heavy platform | +15% headroom | $92 |
The logic is that the buyer pays a comparable amount everywhere and you keep a comparable amount everywhere. Without rules you are silently accepting whatever the fee structure does to your margin.
Rounding is not cosmetic
Consistent rounding makes a catalogue look priced rather than calculated. Whether you round to .99, to .00 or to the nearest 5 matters less than doing it the same way every time — a shop where some items end in .00 and others in .37 looks like a spreadsheet leaked onto the shelves.
Combining with age-based markdowns
Pricing rules and markdown workflows compose: the rule sets the channel price, the workflow moves the base price down as an item ages. Test the combination on a small set before applying it broadly, because compounding is exactly where automated pricing goes wrong.
Frequently asked questions
Do pricing rules apply to existing listings?
They apply when a listing is created or updated. To push a rule change across live listings, run a bulk edit deliberately rather than expecting it to propagate silently.
Can I exempt specific items?
Yes. Set the price on the item directly and it overrides the rule. Reserve that for pieces where the rule genuinely does not fit rather than using it routinely.
Should I price higher on high-fee marketplaces?
Usually, within reason. The constraint is competitiveness — if a marked-up price makes you uncompetitive against comparable listings on that platform, the rule is not the problem, the channel's economics are.
What about promoted listings and ad spend?
Ad spend comes out of margin after the sale, so factor it into your target margin rather than into the listed price. Margin-after-fees reporting is where you see whether the promotion paid for itself.
Step-by-step product docs
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