We are often asked about how Tariffs and new vendor pricing are handled within Portal. We have many features built in to help you navigate the world of rapidly changing pricing and costs.
Catalog Pricing
We have live price feeds from many vendors in our catalog, but we also crowd source price sheets from vendors. Each product page shows a time stamp of the last price update for that item. As long as we have new pricing from vendors, it does not take us long to update the catalog. For some vendors like ADI and Wave Electronics, it's instant since we're communicating live via API.
Upcoming Price Changes
When vendors announce upcoming price changes with an effective date, Portal pre-loads the new pricing to your catalog. You are then presented at the top of your catalog with the upcoming price change. You can review the change and then choose to use the new, upcoming pricing for all proposals as you add products to proposals; or you can choose to wait until the effective date when the pricing updates in your catalog to the new pricing for that vendor. Here's how it works:
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Reviewing and Updating Active Proposal Pricing
If you have proposals that have been sent that you need to update with new pricing that has been loaded and active in your catalog, open the proposal and scroll down to the Profit Analysis section. To the right of the header you'll see a button to refresh costs and MSRP on the proposal:
*Please note* When you do this, your costs will update, and the MSRP values will update, but your actual sell prices will not automatically update. You can review each line item (compared to MSRP to decide if you change any of the sell prices on items. Here's how it works:
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Adding Tariff Fees to Proposals
If you are unsure of upcoming cost changes and you'd like to add a line item to cover Tariff costs, you can do that with Fees. Here is how to do that:
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Additional Tools
There are other features in Portal you can leverage to make sure you are covered for unforeseen cost increases.
Utilize Proposal Expiry
Set your proposal to expire so that a customer doesn't check back in after too long and assume the pricing stayed the same. Here's how Proposal Expiry works:
Updated Contract Language
Mallory Craig-Karim from Daisy suggests that a well-drafted contractual provision should cover all types of unexpected cost increases, such as:
If, after the effective date, any change in law, regulation, governmental order, trade restriction (including tariffs, duties, or sanctions), market condition, or other unforeseen circumstance beyond [Company]βs control materially increases its costs or renders performance commercially unreasonable, [Company] may, at its sole discretion:
(a) adjust pricing by up to 5% without prior notice,
(b) modify the scope of supply,
(c) substitute alternative products, or
(d) terminate the affected portion of the contract.
You can include language like this in your Project Terms section on the Proposal.