Cost markup by department

Is there a way to do a cost markup by department? I have aprrox 1200 items in my inventory broken up into various department numbers. For example,Dept #1 has a 20% markup over cost, Dept#2 is 15% etc. Is this something that can be set up in attributes, or is it better to mark up pricing in my spreadsheet before loading to my db.

I am going to be moving my website from OSC to Zen Cart because of all the added features in Zen Cart. That being said I still see where I'm going to have to do a fair amount of custom coding. Thanks in advance for any help.

What determines Dept #1 and Dept #2?

Product dictates dept number ie 1911 pistols are dept #1, revolvers are dept #2, etc. Currently I have ten depts with about 1200 inventory items. I will be doubling this probably in the next month or two. Also since my distributors inventory of 14000 items changes hourly, I update my inventory levels daily to stay current. My next project will be an automatic inventory update system. Hopefully Zen Cart will fit into this scheme also.

Zen Cart doesn't have a Department field ... what are you using for this?

Right now in OSC I'm using the down and dirty way. I've assigned my different depts as tax rates. Each tax rate uses a different dept heading ie 1911 is the first tax rate of 20% etc. I know this is not exactly right but it gets the job done. So, if I want to raise the profit margin in dept #1 (1911 pistols) from 18 to 19% all I have to do is change the tax rate from 18 to 19. This in turn changes the gross/net pricing which in turn shows up on the website as price including tax. I can see where this will lead to trouble down the line, thats why I'm asking now. Maybe its just easier to blanket update profit margin by dept in the spreadsheet then upload new pricing to the db. Thats a lot of spreadsheet work since I want to update inventory and pricing daily. I'm supprised that with all the ecommerce software available none of it (magento, presta etc) can markup pricing on the backend. To me thats one of the basics of retail. As mentioned before Zen Cart is way ahead of OSC feature wise and I'm looking forward to making the transition.

You could customize the database table for products and add a new field such as:
products_department

and then use that for making updates ...

Considerations would:
Are Specials used?
Are Sales used?
Are Attributes used? If so, do their prices also need to be updated?

Once the prices are updated, you need to be sure to run the Tools ... Store Manager ...
Update Products Price Sort Order ...

This would allow the prices to display in proper sort order ...

Hi Linda,
Thanks for the quick comeback. The only other consideration would be special pricing, but thats only on one item at a time, and right now I manually run that. Don't use attribs, as I haven't figured out how to use them yet. I think your correct in looking at the db table. I also think this is the way to go with this. Hummm, now if I only knew a good db programer.

Adding a new field to the products table then to the Admin to manage it ... then writing some code for updating the prices based on that should not be horrible ... :smile:

It will take some time to write, but the code is designed to be flexible ...

You would need to be cautious on upgrades for your changed files in the Admin as there are no overrides there ...

But saving the original copies and changed files should allow for easier updates ... :smile: