Attributes HOW-TO

[midiwhale]

OK I've read 14 pages of this thread and my head is spinning. I just have two questions.

>>>
Turn off Priced by Attribute. This is only used when there is no (base) Product Price and the Product Display Price should be built from the lowest price of the Option Values in each of the Option Names.
<<<

I&#39;m just trying to think of a good example of when I would do this.
I don&#39;t see why you just wouldn&#39;t always set the lowest base price and then add 0 or more than 0 depending on the options.

ie t shirts
printed 10
printed xl size 15
plain 6

You could have no base price and set priced attributes for each, but why wouldn&#39;t you do;
base price 6
Plain add 0
printed add 4
printed xl add 9.

I&#39;m obviously missing someting fundamental here as I don&#39;t see the difference.... If the example application is wrong then that&#39;s what I&#39;d like to know ;-)

MORE IMPORTANTLY
the formula is supposed to be

products_price * (attributes_price_factor - attributes_price_factor_offset)

That makes no sense according to the BODMAS maths order I did at school. On my calculator 0.6 for 40% comes out as (0.6 - 1 = -0.4) which on 100 is -40 which is the discount and not the discounted price.

So does "factor" not just mean multiply? Is it more like the percent sign on some calculators, except it isn&#39;t a percentage. i.e. it "adds" that to the original for you. (+ a - = -)

I don&#39;t see why you have to use an offset of 1, nearly all of the time. If you leave the one out, I&#39;ve no idea what the answer it gives you is based on.

I can see why 40% discount could be 0.6 (though not very user friendly) but why does it need an offset of 1 as well.

Other than these 2 things, I understand (enough)....

Hope someone can show me the light &#33;

[midiwhale]

Originally posted by johorse@Jun 23 2005, 04:50 AM
SNIP

My problem is that to get the attribute price, I have to subtract 10% from it - otherwise it displays at a further 10% higher

SNIP

I don&#39;t understand what you are trying to achieve.

Surely the options also need tax applied to them?
In which case you enter them as exc. tax.
Or you could turn tax off and leave it until checkout.

There is also a store option to show tax in admin (as oopsed to public store). I&#39;d turn that off IMHO. We need to work exc. tax for trade pricing to make sense.

But I&#39;m thinking you are forgetting the (mysterious) 1 offset.

Do you agree that 10% surcharge is;

factor 1.1 with offset of 1.

That gives 110 for a base price of 100. Which is correct for 10% surcharge.

(15% discount is 0.85 with an offset of 1.0)

Does that help at all ?

[Ajeh]

There is a purpose to the offset on the plus/minus aspect.

There are client&#39;s that I have that need the display to read a certain way and calculate properly and having the two values allows both to happen.

For some, just the one setting is needed. Others need both.

All depends on your shop :)

[clayartisan]

midiwhale-
I sell kits in three sizes, SM MED and LG. The way I decided to do it, was to turn on "Price by Attribute" in the product, and make the price 0.00 there (this is on the "Add Product" form. I also set the weight to 0.00 on this same form. Then I built three attributes for the three sizes, with the correct price in each one, and correct weight for that size.

I decided to do it this way because I like the display to the customer better. I tried setting up a base amount in the product form, based on the small size price, then using attributes to add the extra for the different sizes, but I didn&#39;t like how it looked to the customer. My medium is 4.00 more than the small and on the product page, it said Medium +4.00. I was afraid it would mislead people to think that was the price.

On the Attributes controller page, the only boxes I have filled in are Price, Weight, and Order. I totally ignore the rest. Fortunately, this is not a form where you have to put something in every box. It&#39;s been working like a charm for me.

I used a dropdown box style for selection and made the medium size the default choice if the customer doesn&#39;t change it.

Hope this helps&#33; You can look at my setup as an example at:
http://www.embellishments-by-patti.com/zen...index&cPath=1_2
Patti Stoll

[Ajeh]

Thanks for sharing what worked for you on the Pricing by using the Price by Attributes feature ... :)

Note: if you are not using the other pricing settings ... under the Attribute Settings ... you can turn those off so they do not appear on the screen.

This makes the screens less clunky on adding/editing attributes.

[johorse]

Thanks for the reply midiwhale.

I don&#39;t understand what you are trying to achieve.

Surely the options also need tax applied to them?
In which case you enter them as exc. tax.
Or you could turn tax off and leave it until checkout.

I&#39;m not so good at explaining myself and I apologise&#33; I&#39;ll try to clarify better:

In Australia, majority of products & services are subject to 10% GST (goods and services tax). It is an overwhelming practice and assumption of buyers, that the price displayed is inclusive of the GST of 10%. As is the showing of this GST as a total only say at checkout.

No worries as far as that goes, to edit my product I enter my "Tax Class" which is taxable goods of 10%, enter my product gross price which is inclusive of this tax, and all is well. It shows only in checkout as "Inclusive of GST of: &#036;xx.xx" and does not add to the sub total.

This is fine for single products, however the majority of my products come in different weights. So I add the attributes based on size of the particular product, e.g.

Red marbles
Size: 1kg &#036;xx.xx
Size: 2kg &#036;xx.xx
Size: 4kg &#036;xx.xx

With these products, when I add them, I set the "Tax Class" (which is the 10%), but I leave the gross price as zero and "set price by attributes".

Now, if I enter the gross price for Red Marbles Size 1kg in attributes, to say &#036;35.00, it will automatically add a further 10%. Which is not wanted, but understandable since I told it to add tax when I input the product.

But as I don&#39;t want this, I have been calculating the net price (which is less 10%) to correct it for my purposes. However I have found this very time consuming and was wondering from you knowledgable people if there was an easier way.

Also, the problem with this is the net price rather than the gross price, displays in the browser which would be confusing to the customer.

I tried the price factor 1.1 with offset 1. in different combinations but this doesn&#39;t work out exactly (and I&#39;m no mathematician to try working it out further&#33;).

Your suggestion of turning off tax until checkout would not work, as it would only add tax to the sub total, not be an inclusion as I require for Australian purposes.

I thought perhaps I was missing something - but the more I look and read, I believe that perhaps what I am doing is the only way to achieve the end result I&#39;m after? But I&#39;m only new to this and any suggestions / comments would be kindly appreciated.

[Ajeh]

I am not quite following the logic of excluding the tax on attributes.

If you are showing prices with tax ... why wouldn&#39;t you want the attributes to also be displayed in a like manner?

A price is a price is a price, isn&#39;t it?

Tax on a product that is taxed is the whole price.

Why are you needing this distinction?

Type really, really slow ... I am not always the brightest bulb on the tree ...

[johorse]

My apologies, to make a short story longer...

I am not quite following the logic of excluding the tax on attributes.

If you are showing prices with tax ... why wouldn&#39;t you want the attributes to also be displayed in a like manner?

That&#39;s just it, I am not excluding tax on the attributes - the price I am inputting IS inclusive of tax. So I am "showing prices with tax".

I do not know my net price.
I do know my gross price.

WHY?
Remember, we&#39;re talking "Down Under" - we&#39;re upside down&#33; - ;) we don&#39;t ADD tax to a product(s), we Subtract 10% - and merely display this figure on receipts/invoices (in case the purchaser is a business & can claim this amount back at the end of the financial year).

AND;

It&#39;s an Australian Tax Office legal requirement that I must have a customer receipt (invoice) with this displayed.


To get this to show up in the checkout, I must enter my product to have a "tax class" of 10%.

Which means the product price I enter in attributes, must be worked out to be 10% less - so it adds back up to the product price correctly.
e.g.
My product price is &#036;72.00
&#036;72.00 divided by 11 = &#036;6.5454.
&#036;72.00 subtract &#036;6.5454 = &#036;65.4546

So I enter &#036;65.4546 in attribute so it displays back as &#036;72.00 AND in checkout will display as:

Sub Total: &#036;72.00
Includes GST of: &#036; 6.54
Shipping: &#036; 2.00
TOTAL: &#036;74.00

Okay, so I started to do this. But faced with doing this another 1000+ times, and not having a complete comprehension of what price factor etc meant, I thought there may be a quicker/better way of doing it.

Also, in the above example, the product info page will show the price as &#036;72.00, but in the browser displays as &#036;65.45 - confusing to the Aussie consumer as we don&#39;t display products less any tax - we just show how much tax is INCLUDED in the total figure.

I think I may have to accept this and settle for explaining this in the shop front.

After some of your comments, I now believe there is no other way around these things and if this is so and I don&#39;t get a reply, I apologise for "taking up space".

[Ajeh]

I guess I am just a little dimm today ...

If the product is &#036;100 and the attribute is &#036;10 ...

I enter the product at 100 and the attribute at 10

Then ... turn on the show prices with tax if desireable ... and it automatiically manages this for me and adds the tax to these prices.

Were you perhaps not aware that you have turned on the display tax and that is why the prices show with tax?

[midiwhale]

Hi Johorse,
maybe I have hold of the wrong end of the tree?&#33;

The UK is much the same for consumer sites. We need to show inc. tax prices and show it seperately on the invoice for business customers.
So we work the same way &#33;

In my situation, in admin config, I have admin prices DO NOT SHOW TAX and in the cart DO SHOW TAX.

You know there are these two setting in store config right?

So in my case in the product pages, I enter sale prices exc. tax in the exc. price field and it adds the tax for me.
If I enter a tax inc price in the inc. field, it calculates the exc. tax for me.
I&#39;m sure that&#39;s the same for you?&#33;

For priced attributes, actually the price I add is INC TAX which on reflection is strange, but exactly what you want, no?
The attribute is taxable.

It gives me the correct inc price and shows the correct tax amount of tax on checkout.

I&#39;m sure what you want is really easy, I just still can&#39;t see it.

One thing is that the ZONES seem quite quite fussy and can nest. So make sure your admin location in your correct zone and that your test customer is in the zone too.

Also that your country is only in one zone, as otherwise they can congregate.

ie if oz was 10% and oz was a zone
but also Hot_Places was 12% tax and Oz was ALSO in HOT_Places, then the tax ends up as 22%.

Or at least that&#39;s what seems to happen ;-)

As UK is in EEC, that was causing me major problems until I set the tax rates for the zones and parent zones properly.

I wonder if that was why you were getting an extra 10%.

BTW instead of doing gross*10% then gross-10% to get net, just do this on the gross price to get the net exc. tax....

gross / 1.1

AYK / means divide.

i.e, 110 gross / 1.1 = 100
(for 17.5% it would be / 1.175 - cool?)

BTW failing all else, for 1000 products would it not be worth doing an EXPORT/IMPORT to a spreadsheet ?
The spreasheet copy formula would save you hours.
Even if you just used it to "show" you the prices and didn&#39;t re import....