Glossary A–ZLetter C
Central price management
Central price management means that prices are maintained in a single place and distributed from there to all outputs, such as checkouts, price labels, menu boards, screens and the online shop.
A price is thus changed once and appears the same everywhere.
In food service, for example, head office changes the price of a meal, and all of the chain's menu boards show it at the set time. In retail, prices for a promotion are created with a start and end date and switch automatically on the key date. Depending on their permissions, branches can add their own prices for regional items without affecting the others. The data usually comes from the merchandise management system or a dedicated price list.
Operators should schedule price changes with a date rather than switching them by hand on the day. It is important that screen and checkout change at the same moment, because differences annoy customers and can breach pricing law. A screen that is offline may show old prices; this needs monitoring. Mandatory details such as unit prices are also part of price management.