Pricing, Markup & Margin

The problem

Your prices live in a spreadsheet somebody built three years ago. A technician quotes from it, a salesperson quotes from a different tab, and the storefront quotes from whatever was typed into the catalogue. When a distributor raises a cost you find out at month end, from the margin — if anyone is looking at the margin. And the discount you gave the client with the volume commitment is a note in the CRM that nobody applies consistently.

The number that matters is the one you cannot see: what you actually made on the deal, after the markup you meant to charge and the discount you actually gave.

What Solidlio does about it

Pricing is four independent controls over one calculation. A pricing profile sets your default markup — a multiplier on cost with per-category and per-brand overrides, a minimum-margin floor and a rounding rule — and every product list, product page and checkout prices through it. Discount rules take money off list by volume, contract length, promotion or named customer. Bundles fix a price for a group of items and are refused if they cost more than buying the parts. Margin thresholds classify the result as healthy, thin or critical against numbers you set, and raise an alert when a quote or invoice crosses them.

Margin is (sell − cost) ÷ sell everywhere, from one shared implementation. When there is no cost to compare against, Solidlio reports ”—” rather than inventing a percentage.

Capabilities

Built for MSPs and their clients

A managed client is a separate Account with its own books. Pricing configuration is the MSP’s own commercial position and never crosses that boundary in either direction — a client cannot read the markup applied to it, and an MSP cannot read a sibling MSP’s rules.

How it works

1. Set the markup once — pick cost-plus or target-margin, set the percentage, choose a rounding rule. The worked example on screen prices a $100.00 cost item through the exact steps the engine uses.
2. Override where it matters — add category and brand rules for the lines that carry a different number, with an optional minimum-margin floor beneath them.
3. Add the discounts you actually give — volume tiers, contract-term tiers, promotions with an end date, or a rate for one named client.
4. Bundle what you sell together — the server prices the components live and refuses a bundle that is not actually a saving.
5. Set the thresholds you manage to — a warning level and a critical level. Creating the record is the opt-in; no thresholds means no alerts.
6. Check before you send — the calculator returns the list subtotal, the discount taken, the sell price, the cost, the margin, and a per-line table naming every rule that fired and what it took off.
7. Get told when it slips — a quote or invoice created below threshold raises one alert for the document, blended across its cost-bearing lines.

Numbers that are enforced, not suggested

• Below cost is flagged on every line, with the price and the cost both quoted.
• A bundle priced above its components is rejected, with both totals returned.
• A promotion without an end date is rejected.
• A warning threshold below the critical threshold is rejected.
• Default thresholds are 10% (warning) and 5% (critical) where none are set.
• Margin analytics cover a rolling 30 days and report separately how many lines have no cost basis to measure.
• Cost, markup and margin are staff-only — floored at MSP technician, which excludes every organization and customer role.

Editions

Pricing, markup and margin carry no plan gate. Every capability listed above is available on every tier that can reach the MSP portal; access is governed by role, not by plan.

Discount rules, bundles and margin thresholds require the account to be flagged as an MSP/IT partner.