The week the vendor price increase letter arrives

The letter lands on Tuesday. In this illustrative notice, upholstery goes up 10%, dining goes up 12%, and case goods go up 4%, effective in three weeks. Your store has two dozen open quotes involving the vendor. The website and showroom are still quoting the old book.

Run two connected jobs: update the catalog for future sales and review the offers customers already hold. OrderPilot keeps saved quote prices separate from later template changes. That gives your team room to make deliberate decisions about existing work while putting the new catalog into use.

What do you need to settle on the first day?

Read the notice as a buyer before treating it as a spreadsheet instruction. Find the effective event: order receipt, acceptance, shipment, or another stated milestone. Then identify the affected products, origins, categories, and charges. If the wording leaves a gap, get the vendor's answer before building an update around an assumption.

Separate a list-price increase from a surcharge. A vendor may replace an earlier charge, increase it, or introduce another one. Those treatments produce different totals. Keep the original notice and acknowledgment together so the person reconciling the invoice can see which interpretation purchasing used.

Record the notice in your price-book log: vendor, source, effective date, affected assortment, cost treatment, selling-price decision, and owner. The log can be a simple store-maintained record; it isn't a claim that OrderPilot schedules price changes from a letter. The price-book import guide covers the catalog structure behind the update.

The floor also needs a temporary instruction while the review is underway. Tell associates which products need a current price check and who can provide it. A neatly filed letter doesn't stop someone reaching for the price book already open beside the swatches.

How should you review the quotes customers already hold?

Group the affected work by its actual stage: exploratory quote, accepted offer, deposit received, vendor order sent, or vendor order acknowledged. Then decide the store's handling with the agreement and vendor commitment in view. A date printed in the notice doesn't itself settle what the customer has already agreed with your store.

Possible store policies include protecting a quoted price until a stated cutoff or sending a revised offer for work that hasn't been accepted. Those are policies to evaluate, not automatic rights created by the app. For an order that already has a deposit, use the separate open-order repricing guide, which addresses the agreement and legal questions.

Changing a product template doesn't change the price on a quote sent last week. Saved template lines retain their frozen pricing, and the catalog change doesn't raise a price-change alert on those lines. Keep an explicit list of quotes needing review, with a person responsible for each next conversation.

The quote PDF's Valid until date also needs a deliberate read. It defaults to 30 days from quote creation, rather than from the latest send or revision, and merchants don't have a normal self-serve setting for changing those days. Inspect an older quote's actual date before using it in a protection message; then send terms the customer can understand.

How do you update only the affected catalog prices?

Export the catalog and isolate the vendor and category records that the notice changes. Keep stable template Handles. Work from an untouched copy of the export, then prepare a focused import containing the rows and columns you intend to update. Filtering a spreadsheet isn't enough if hidden rows still go into the exported file.

Identify every place the affected amount lives: base price, base cost, shared value price and cost, or a template-specific Price override and Cost override. A grade increase may belong in the grade contributions; a frame increase may belong in the base. Product templates make that distinction visible in the catalog model.

Don't apply one percentage to every cell simply because the letter uses a percentage. A fabric addition may be unchanged while the frame cost rises. An override may already replace the shared baseline. Trace the proposed new configured total against the vendor's notice before applying the same rule across the assortment.

With overwrite enabled, supplied values can update existing records. A blank clears stored information only where the field's rules permit it and the column is present, with a warning before applying. Remove columns you don't mean to touch, read the report, and resolve errors before applying the import.

What does the pricing check look like in practice?

Say a sofa has a $1,200 vendor base cost and a $200 fabric cost addition. The notice raises the frame cost by 10% while leaving the fabric addition unchanged. The revised cost is $1,320 + $200 = $1,520. Raising the entire $1,400 configuration by 10% would produce $1,540, which misreads the notice.

If the store chooses a selling price of $3,000, the product contribution before freight and other costs is $1,480. That figure is $3,000 less $1,520; it isn't the store's final net profit. Keeping cost and selling price distinct lets the owner make the pricing decision with the actual changed inputs.

After applying the import, wait for the run and catalog synchronization to finish. Active templates synchronize to Shopify. Test fresh configurations at the desk, in POS, and in the website options block where enabled; don't describe the update as an instantaneous switch across every open screen.

Should a surcharge be its own line?

Keep a separately billed vendor surcharge identifiable in purchasing and costing. The store can choose how to present its selling price, but the customer should understand any separately charged amount before approving the quote. A named fee line can make that treatment explicit when it matches the store's policy.

Watch for double counting. If the increased base already includes a charge the vendor has absorbed into list price, leaving the old surcharge in place charges it again. Conversely, changing only the retail total while leaving the vendor cost untouched produces a misleading margin view.

The surcharge presentation guide covers the customer explanation. This update routine uses the actual vendor notice as its source; it doesn't assume a general tariff rate equals the percentage the maker charges your store.

How do you revise an unsigned quote clearly?

Review the affected line, establish the intended selling price, and revise the quote deliberately. A saved line's snapshots mean that simply opening it after a catalog update isn't a reliable repricing operation. Check the complete revised total and the selected fabric and finish before sending.

Use the revised-quote workflow so the customer can see what changed. A customer-facing change invalidates the previous signature and asks for a new one. Keep the earlier agreement in the record and give purchasing a clear indication of which version is ready to order.

What should the floor and customers hear?

Give associates a short explanation tied to the store's actual decision. For a fictional store that has approved a temporary protection window, the script could read: “The vendor's prices change next month. This quote keeps the agreed price until the deadline shown in our message. I'll confirm the specification and ordering cutoff with purchasing before we place it.”

Use a customer message only after the protection and cutoff are confirmed. For a quote with an agreed September 12 deadline: “Your quoted price is protected through September 12 under the terms in this message. Please review the attached specification and contact us before that date if you'd like to proceed. We'll confirm the order requirements and vendor acceptance before placing the purchase order.”

Adjust the message to the real agreement rather than copying a protection promise the store hasn't made. The customer's next action should be clear. The associate's next action should be clear too: review, revise, obtain approval, or send to purchasing.

What closes out price-increase week?

Finish with evidence that both jobs are under control. The catalog uses the intended prices and costs, and each affected quote has an owner and a next step. Archive the original notice, checked import, and the store's policy decision together.

• Record what changes and when the vendor applies it.
• Decide how each existing agreement will be handled.
• Update only the affected rows and price or cost fields.
• Review import warnings and complete synchronization.
• Compare sample configurations with the source notice.
• Send clear revised offers and obtain required signatures.
• Tell the floor which catalog and message to use.

For a complete example of the handoff, follow the vendor letter through to customer re-signing. A price increase is manageable when every changed amount has a source and every existing customer has a deliberate next step.