Is it possible to hide products in a category from showing in specials?

Scenario: A category where all products remain perpetually discounted. Basically I want to show the retail price and a wholesale price for each item. I can't use salemaker because the discounts are not uniform across all items. I can use specials and set each, but then they would all, (over 100 items), appear in specials. Not an acceptable alternative. Is there a way to hide just this category so that the products do not show in specials? Barring that, is there a plugin that would allow me to set a sale price at the individual product level?

Note: I already played around with the MSRP mod. It doesn't work for what I want to do.

Specials are displayed through a process similar to this:
Once identified as a special, the product id is added to the products_to_categories table such that it is associated with the specials category id that is defined in the admin control panel for configuration->specials...

My suggestion instead of hacking the specials code would be to see/use a notifier in the specials code that follows the addition of the product to the products_to_categories table (or perhaps just before to prevent further processing of it). To investigate the category and if it is in the category(ies) or meets other requirements, then to not add it to that table or to remove it from the table. (Depends on which notifier, what condition the data is in at the time, etc...)

RescoCCC:

Scenario: A category where all products remain perpetually discounted. Basically I want to show the retail price and a wholesale price for each item. I can't use salemaker because the discounts are not uniform across all items. I can use specials and set each, but then they would all, (over 100 items), appear in specials. Not an acceptable alternative. Is there a way to hide just this category so that the products do not show in specials? Barring that, is there a plugin that would allow me to set a sale price at the individual product level?

Note: I already played around with the MSRP mod. It doesn't work for what I want to do.

Have a look at the Twitch Restrict module (category based product level restriction), it works with Twitch Wholesale and both stock ZC Specials and Sales.

Thanks for the suggestions, I really appreciate it. Tried, and not working for what I'm trying to do. Let me ask another way. Is there any way to set sale prices for individual items? Is there a plugin for this? The issues I'm running in to with the various mods I've tried are 1) They nuke the ability to calculate sales tax, 2) The discounted prices doesn't show in the product listing display, and 3) Since group pricing is involved, a user must be logged in to see discounted prices. I need the discounted prices to be visible whether logged in or not.

Okay lets try it this way:

1 - you're using zc stock group pricing module as 'wholesale customers' yes?

2 - where exactly do you want to see the 'sale' prices?

3 - are you using % or $ amount or manual enter for sale prices? or what's your preference?

4 - how do you intend to manage sale prices? meaning:
a - i want to manually enter them in on a product listing and just quickly run down the list and change the field
b - i want to navigate to each product and make changes to it's pricing
c - i want to use the default ZC Specials or SaleMaker already in admin

5 - are you running any attributes or 'priced by attribute' ?

twitchtoo:

Okay lets try it this way:

1 - you're using zc stock group pricing module as 'wholesale customers' yes?

2 - where exactly do you want to see the 'sale' prices?

3 - are you using % or $ amount or manual enter for sale prices? or what's your preference?

4 - how do you intend to manage sale prices? meaning:
a - i want to manually enter them in on a product listing and just quickly run down the list and change the field
b - i want to navigate to each product and make changes to it's pricing
c - i want to use the default ZC Specials or SaleMaker already in admin

5 - are you running any attributes or 'priced by attribute' ?

1. Yep, using the native ZC group pricing, but I'm not actually using it to provide different pricing. I have one group set up and everybody who creates an account is automatically added to the group. I'm using it in conjunction with the Invoice mod so that customers can select "invoice me" during checkout and get instant credit set up, (after verification of info, of course). There is no tiered pricing.

2. I'd like to see the sale prices in the product listing. In other words, when a customer opens the category they see both prices. This category is for building supply packs from a list of about 100 different products. The goal is for the customer to get an idea of how much profit they can realize by selling the packs they build.

3. Preference is manual entry of actual prices. But I can make percentage work IF I can do it on an individual product basis. The discount is not uniform across all items. The spread between wholesale and retail selling price varies from product to product. I'd also note, that this is the only category where I need to do this.

4. a&b Either way is fine.
   c. Salemaker won't work because the discount is not uniform across all products in the category. I could use Specials IF if I can hide the products in this one category from showing up in Specials.

5. There are no attributes for the products in the category.

RescoCCC:

1. Yep, using the native ZC group pricing, but I'm not actually using it to provide different pricing. I have one group set up and everybody who creates an account is automatically added to the group. I'm using it in conjunction with the Invoice mod so that customers can select "invoice me" during checkout and get instant credit set up, (after verification of info, of course). There is no tiered pricing.

2. I'd like to see the sale prices in the product listing. In other words, when a customer opens the category they see both prices. This category is for building supply packs from a list of about 100 different products. The goal is for the customer to get an idea of how much profit they can realize by selling the packs they build.

3. Preference is manual entry of actual prices. But I can make percentage work IF I can do it on an individual product basis. The discount is not uniform across all items. The spread between wholesale and retail selling price varies from product to product. I'd also note, that this is the only category where I need to do this.

4. a&b Either way is fine.
   c. Salemaker won't work because the discount is not uniform across all products in the category. I could use Specials IF if I can hide the products in this one category from showing up in Specials.

5. There are no attributes for the products in the category.

Ask the right questions, get the right answers... NOW I understand what you want need and how your using zc, thank you.

I'm not directly aware of any combination of settings or modules that will make somethings so simple as:
Base Price - Price shop owner pays (Twitch Base Cost)(static)
Retail Price - Guest/Public retail price (Stock ZC)(static)
Retail Gross Price - Retail price including taxes (Stock ZC)(dynamic)
Wholesale Price - Price wholesaler pays (Twitch Wholesale)
List Price/MSRP - Dealer price or desired market value (Twitch List Price)

Sale Price - Discounted price retail customer pays (Nothing)
Wholesale Sale Price - Discounted price retail customer pays (Nothing)

So, you need a 'sale' price that will statically remain in the database, be manually entered per product and only available to customers belonging to a Group Pricing - Group.

**This I can develop :D

** All the meaty bits are done in the various Twitch modules l've listed above... there simply isn't a field called **static_sale_price **and static_sale_price_w in the product table. And of course there needs to be a code that displays the sale price then applies it to every step along the checkout process from the shopping cart, checkout, completed order, email confirmation and then in admin (Fortunately Twitch List Price already follows this path)

If you'd like it built - feel free to PM or email me.

Thanks for the offer. I accomplished what I needed to do by using JS that automatically shows the profit to the customer as items are added.

Great! One question how does the java handle the pricing/taxes through rest of the shopping cart?