Configuring Counterpoint Price History for Online Price Updates

Retail pricing changes quickly in Australia. A supplier cost increase, an end-of-financial-year promotion, a catalogue refresh or a competitor’s discount can require updates across the shop floor and online store within hours. When those prices are managed separately, customers may see a different price online from the one staff quote in store.

Counterpoint’s Price Change History can provide the audit trail needed to make online price updates more reliable. The key is to treat the history record as part of a controlled synchronisation process rather than as a simple list of past prices. Product matching, effective dates, price levels, tax settings and platform compatibility all affect whether a change reaches the web shop correctly.

Clarify The Pricing Source

Before changing a setting, decide which system owns the current selling price. In many Counterpoint environments, the point-of-sale and inventory database remains the operational source, while the ecommerce platform receives product, stock and price data through a connector. In other businesses, a merchandising team may prepare prices online and send approved changes back to Counterpoint.

Price Change History is most useful when every update has a clear origin and effective date. A record should identify the item, previous value, new value, price level, user or process that made the change, and the time the change became active. If a connector reads only the current item price, the history still supports auditing, but it will not by itself trigger an online update.

Document the intended direction for each field before configuration. Retail price, sale price, member price, recommended retail price and clearance price should not be treated as interchangeable values. An Australian retailer may need a standard AUD price for shoppers in Brisbane and Melbourne, a promotional price for a campaign, and a separate trade or loyalty price that must never be published publicly.

Prepare Product And Price Data

Accurate synchronisation starts with stable item identifiers. Confirm that the Counterpoint item number, barcode, variant code and online product ID map consistently. Clothing, footwear and other products with size or colour variants need special attention because a parent product may display one price while individual child items carry different values.

Review inactive, discontinued and clearance items before enabling price transmission. A historical price record for an item that is no longer sold should not accidentally reactivate its online listing. Likewise, a zero price, blank value or incomplete import should be blocked rather than published as a free product.

Australian tax treatment should be checked during this stage. Most consumer-facing prices are displayed as GST-inclusive, while some business pricing workflows store values differently. Confirm how Counterpoint and the ecommerce platform handle GST, rounding to cents, discounts and shipping charges. A small rounding difference can create repeated updates or produce a checkout total that does not match the product page.

Set The History And Sync Rules

The precise menu names vary by Counterpoint version and by the integration supplied by a Counterpoint partner, so begin with a configuration backup and the connector’s technical documentation. Look for settings covering price-change logging, effective dates, price levels, changed-record selection and the interval at which updates are exported.

A safe rule is to synchronise only approved, active changes. If the connector supports a changed-since timestamp, use Price Change History to identify records created or modified after the last successful run. If it supports a queue or export batch, keep each batch traceable so staff can see whether a price was sent, accepted, rejected or retried.

Avoid sending every historical record during routine operation. The initial catalogue load may require a full price export, but subsequent jobs should transmit only the latest valid change for each online item. This reduces duplicate updates and helps prevent an old promotional record from overwriting a newer standard price.

Automation also needs operational ownership. Procedures for retries, exception handling and failed exports should be written down, particularly during a platform transition; guidance on automated retail operations explains why unattended workflows need monitoring rather than blind trust.

Handle Promotions And Effective Dates

Promotions are a common source of price conflicts. A sale price may be entered days before its start date, while the regular price remains the active value until the campaign begins. The online system should receive the right price at the right time, not simply the last value typed into Counterpoint.

Use a consistent convention for start and end times, including the Australian store’s time zone. A campaign ending at midnight in Sydney should not remain active because the ecommerce server interprets the timestamp as UTC. Check daylight saving behaviour for locations such as Melbourne and Sydney, especially when a promotion crosses the seasonal clock change.

For EOFY campaigns, Boxing Day sales and state-specific events, record the campaign identifier or reason alongside the price change where the system allows it. This makes later investigation easier. It also helps customer service explain why an order placed shortly before a scheduled change received one price while a later order received another.

If the integration cannot process future-dated prices, use a scheduled Counterpoint job or an approved ecommerce promotion tool, but establish one authoritative process. Two systems independently changing the same SKU can create a loop in which each platform repeatedly replaces the other’s value.

Test The Online Publication

Test with a small group of products before activating the full catalogue. Include a standard item, a variant product, a discounted item, a GST-sensitive price, an out-of-stock product and an item with multiple price levels. Change each in a controlled environment, run the export, and compare Counterpoint, the connector log, the online product page and checkout.

Verify more than the visible amount. Check whether the correct currency is shown, whether the sale badge appears, whether the old price remains in cached search results, and whether the cart and checkout use the new value. Test mobile display as well, since many Australian customers shop from phones while travelling or during a lunch break.

Reconcile a sample after publication by recording the Counterpoint change ID, online product ID, transmitted value, response from the platform and final displayed amount. A short reconciliation report is valuable when a customer queries a price discrepancy or when a manager needs evidence that a campaign launched correctly.

For internal training, staff can turn a recorded walkthrough into concise notes using video summary techniques. A one-paragraph procedure can cover where to enter the price, how to approve it, when synchronisation runs and what to do when an exception appears.

Maintain The Workflow After Transition

NCR Retail Online was discontinued, so businesses still relying on that product need to confirm their replacement architecture with an NCR Counterpoint partner. Magento and WooCommerce may be suitable alternatives, but the correct choice depends on catalogue complexity, payment requirements, integrations, hosting and the retailer’s support arrangements. The current NCR Retail Online information provides the broader transition context.

Migration should include more than product descriptions and current prices. Preserve relevant price history, promotion rules, SKU mappings, tax configuration and failed-job records where practical. Historical data may be needed to investigate refunds, customer complaints or an advertised-price issue after the old platform has been retired.

Support procedures should identify who monitors the sync, who approves manual corrections and who communicates with customers when a mismatch occurs. The transition can affect escalation paths as well as software settings, which is why support workflow changes deserve their own review.

Schedule routine checks around Australian trading patterns. Review the process before major sales, school-holiday peaks and public holidays when support coverage may be reduced. Retailers with stores in Perth, Adelaide and the eastern states should also confirm that job schedules, warehouse cut-offs and local trading times are aligned rather than assuming one national timetable fits every location.

Price Change History works best as part of a disciplined control loop: create or approve the change, record its effective time, transmit only the valid update, verify the online result and retain evidence of what occurred. That approach reduces stale prices, duplicate promotions and difficult manual investigations while giving staff a clear process during platform change.

Begin by selecting ten representative SKUs, recording their current Counterpoint and online values, and running one supervised price-change export before enabling broader synchronisation.