A distributor, a walk-in customer and an online shopper can buy the same bottle on the same day. One price field per product cannot price all three.
Take a bottle of cold brew. A distributor buys it by the case at a wholesale rate. A walk-in customer pays the counter price. Someone ordering from your website pays an online price that may sit somewhere between the two.
All three are right. The trouble starts when the software holds one price per product. Then two of the three are overrides — typed in at the counter, adjusted on the invoice, remembered by whoever usually handles that customer.
A price list per channel, not a price per product
VAP keeps prices in price lists, and gives each way of selling its own: online, the counter and wholesale. A product can sit in all three at different prices, or be left out of one — a case pack only trade buyers should see, say.
A price list can belong to the whole business, to one firm or to one outlet. Each is set as tax-inclusive or tax-exclusive, so a wholesale list can be quoted before GST while the counter list matches the price on the shelf.
The narrowest list wins
Most businesses have a default and a handful of exceptions. The airport outlet charges more. The flagship store's express till gets its own list for the festive fortnight.
In VAP you assign a price list to a channel at whatever level the exception lives — the business, a firm, an outlet, or a single app or till — and the most specific assignment wins. The airport outlet gets its own list; every other outlet keeps the default. Nobody copies the whole catalogue to change one shelf.
Wholesale buyers are priced by who they are
The most common wholesale mistake is a trade customer billed at the retail price, or the reverse. It usually happens because someone forgot to switch the price list.
When a customer buys through your online store, VAP looks at who they are. A buyer recorded as a company is priced from the wholesale list; a person is priced from the online one. There is no switch to forget.
The MRP is a ceiling the system enforces
The printed MRP is a legal maximum, and a price list above it is a compliance problem waiting at the counter. A listing in VAP can be tied to the MRP of the pack it sells, and once it is, VAP will not save a price above it. The same product printed at two MRPs carries two ceilings.
Changes to a list go through together or not at all. If one line in a batch would break its ceiling, none of the batch is saved, and the list is never left half-updated.
Getting the MRP itself right is a separate problem — it belongs to the pack, not the product, as we covered in one price per product. Price lists are the layer on top: the same pack, priced correctly for whoever is buying it.