Use Pricing Models Within Configured Products To Calculate Prices Without A BOM

The Product Configurator within Dynamics AX is very cool and is a great way to capture options during the sales and quoting process. You don’t have to go whole hog with it though and have it build BOM’s and Routes in order to have it help you during the sales cycle in quoting prices though. The Product Configurator has a built in Price Modeler feature that allows you to design a price build up based on your configuration attributes, and then calculate prices dynamically as you are placing your orders.

You will now be able to rest easy that all of the costs have been taken into account when you price out jobs.

How To Do It…

Start off by designing your configured product with all the options that you want to capture and then click on the Price Models button within the Setup group of the Model ribbon bar.

When the Price Models maintenance form is displayed, add a new record, and then click on the Edit button in the menu bar.

This will open up the Price Model designer. Click on the Add button within the Expression Rules tab to add a new price component.

Give your Expression a Name, and then click on the down-arrow on the Condition field to open up the condition editor.

When the Expression Editor is displayed, you can build your expression rule just by pointing and clicking through the columns. When you are done, just click on the OK button.

Then add a component price to the Expression field.

Note: You can also build an expression here as well like you did with the Condition field
and use a formula to calculate the price.

Continue adding additional Expression Rules to the pricing model for all the components that affect the price.

When you are done, just click on the Test button to see it in action.

When the Test form is displayed, you will notice that there is a Price being calculated on the right in the fact boxes.

If you change the options within the product configuration, then the price changes as well.

If you want to see a breakdown of the prices in Excel, then click on the View Price Breakdown button.

Dynamics AX will build you an Excel workbook with a summary of the prices.

How cool is that!

To use this within your Sales Orders, there is a little bit more setup required. Start off by clicking on the Price Model Criteria button within the Set Up group of the Model ribbon bar.

When the Price Model Criteria maintenance form is displayed, add a record, link it to the Price Model that you just created and also select the Sales Order type from the Order Type field.

When you are done then click on the Close button.

Also, you need to make sure that your product configuration is configured to use the pricing model. To do this, click on the Versions button within the Product Model Definition group of the Model area page.

When the Versions maintenance form is displayed, make sure that the Pricing Method for the record is Attribute Based.

Also, you need to make sure that your product configuration is configured to use the pricing model. To do this, click on the Versions button within the Product Model Definition group of the Model area page.

When the Versions maintenance form is displayed, make sure that the Pricing Method for the record is Attribute Based.

How It Works…

To see this in action, add a new Sales Order add a line for your configured product, and then configure it by clicking on the Configure Line option within the Product And Supply line menu item.

As you configure the line on the sales order, you will see the price is being updated based on the choices.

Also, when you return to the Sales Order the price that was calculated through the configuration is updated and applied to the order line.

Now that is super cool.