If you’re in B2B sales, you already know: pricing contracts can get messy, fast. Between customer-specific terms, volume breaks, and endless exceptions, just keeping track is half the battle. This guide is for anyone who has to wrangle contract pricing in Vendavo—whether you’re a pricing analyst, sales ops, or IT admin who got “volunteered” for the task.
No fluff here—just a real-world walkthrough of how to set up and manage contract pricing agreements, plus what to watch out for (and what to skip).
Step 1: Get Your Ducks in a Row—Prep Before You Click Anything
Let’s not kid ourselves: jumping straight into Vendavo’s contract module without prep is asking for pain. Before you open the UI, nail down:
- Who gets contract pricing? List the customers (or customer groups) this will cover.
- Which products? Be clear on SKUs, product families, or categories involved.
- Discount or price logic: Fixed price? Percentage off? Tiered/volume-based? Map it out.
- Effective dates: Start and end dates for each agreement.
- Approval flows: Who signs off on deals? Is legal or finance involved?
- Exceptions and edge cases: Any regions, products, or customers that are different? Note them now.
Pro tip: Don’t rely on tribal knowledge. Get this in writing, even if it’s just a shared Google Doc. Trust me, you’ll thank yourself later when sales comes back with “but that’s not how we do it for Acme Corp.”
Step 2: Set Up Customer and Product Data (Don’t Let Garbage In)
No pricing tool, including Vendavo, can fix bad data. Start by making sure your customer and product master data is:
- Clean: No duplicates or outdated entries.
- Consistent: Use the same customer IDs and product codes as your ERP.
- Complete: No missing fields, especially those used for pricing logic (e.g., regions, tiers).
Common gotcha: If your customer or product data is a mess, fix it before building contracts. Otherwise, you’ll spend hours troubleshooting why pricing isn’t applying (spoiler: it’s almost always a data mismatch).
Step 3: Build the Contract Pricing Agreement in Vendavo
Now you’re ready to get your hands dirty.
3.1. Create a New Agreement
- Go to the contract management or agreement module.
- Click “New Agreement” (wording varies by version).
- Fill in agreement basics:
- Name/description: Use something obvious—“Acme Corp Q2 2024 Contract.”
- Customer: Link to the correct customer account. Double-check the ID.
- Effective dates: Set start/end dates. If rolling, make it clear.
3.2. Add Products or Product Groups
- Attach individual SKUs, product groups, or categories, depending on how your deal is structured.
- You can usually bulk upload if you have a lot (use CSV template if available).
- Set up product hierarchies if needed—e.g., different prices for different product families.
3.3. Define Pricing Terms
Here’s the meat of the contract. Vendavo handles a few different types:
- Fixed prices: Set a locked-in price per product/SKU.
- Discounts: Percentage off list/standard price.
- Tiered/volume pricing: Price changes based on quantity purchased.
Fill these in line by line, or use bulk upload for big contracts.
Watch out: If you’re mixing pricing types (e.g., fixed for some SKUs, discounts for others), double-check the priority rules. Vendavo usually applies the most specific rule, but don’t assume—test it.
3.4. Set Approval Workflows (If Needed)
- Add required approvers—sales manager, legal, finance, etc.
- If your company skips formal approvals for low-risk deals, you can often set auto-approval thresholds.
Tip: Don’t overcomplicate. More steps = more delays.
3.5. Attach Documents (Optional, but Useful)
- If there’s a signed PDF contract, attach it to the agreement. It’s not technically required in Vendavo, but helps avoid “he said, she said” later.
Step 4: Test Before You Launch (Don’t Skip This)
Nothing burns trust faster than a botched contract price in front of a customer. Test your agreement setup before you go live:
- Run test quotes/orders for the covered customers and products.
- Check edge cases—like overlapping agreements, or what happens if a customer orders outside the contract dates.
- Validate approval flows—make sure nothing gets stuck.
If you find errors: Nine times out of ten, it’s a data mismatch or a rule priority issue. Go back and check your details.
What to ignore: Fancy “simulate” features are nice, but nothing beats running a real test order (in your test environment, obviously).
Step 5: Roll Out and Monitor (But Don’t Set and Forget)
Push your contract agreement live, but keep an eye out for:
- Order exceptions: Are sales reps still overriding prices? If so, find out why—maybe the contract isn’t working for all scenarios.
- Contract utilization: Is the customer actually using the contract terms, or are they buying off standard price? Low usage can be a sign something’s off.
- Renewals and expirations: Set reminders before contracts expire—nothing like a customer getting a nasty surprise when their pricing changes overnight.
- Audit logs: Check who made changes and when. If pricing suddenly changes, you’ll want a paper trail.
Honest take: Vendavo can automate a lot, but it won’t babysit your agreements. Regular reviews are your friend—quarterly is good enough for most.
Step 6: Handle Changes and Exceptions Without Losing Your Mind
B2B contracts rarely stay static. Here’s how to stay sane:
- For mid-term changes (e.g., price hikes, product swaps):
- Amend the agreement in Vendavo.
- Document the reason for the change.
- Notify the customer (don’t rely on “the system” to do it for you).
- For urgent manual overrides: If your process allows, you can override at order entry. But track these—too many overrides mean something’s broken in your contract setup.
- Bulk updates: Use Vendavo’s import/export tools if you need to update lots of agreements at once. But test first—bulk mistakes are hard to unwind.
What not to do: Don’t start stacking overlapping agreements for the same customer/product. That’s how pricing chaos starts. Always end or amend old agreements before adding new ones.
Step 7: Reporting—Don’t Overthink It
Vendavo will spit out plenty of reports, but for contract pricing, focus on:
- Uplift vs. standard price: Are you actually getting the margin you expected?
- Customer adoption: Who’s using their contracts, and who isn’t?
- Exceptions and overrides: Where is the process breaking down?
Export to Excel if you must. Don’t waste days building dashboards unless you know someone will use them.
Quick FAQ—Vendavo Contract Pricing, No B.S.
Do I need to set up a new agreement for every customer?
Not always. If multiple customers have the same terms, you can use customer groups or segments—just be careful not to over-generalize and create exceptions later.
Can Vendavo handle overlapping contract rules?
Technically yes, but it gets messy. Vendavo applies the most specific rule, but humans make mistakes. Try to keep it simple: one active agreement per customer/product at a time.
How do I handle price changes mid-contract?
You’ll need to amend the agreement and document why. Don’t just “update” the price quietly—someone will notice (and not in a good way).
Is it worth using Vendavo’s advanced workflow features?
Only if you have the resources to maintain them. Most companies over-design this part and end up bypassing it anyway.
Keep It Simple, Iterate, and Don’t Be Afraid to Say “No”
Configuring contract pricing agreements in Vendavo isn’t rocket science, but it’s easy to overcomplicate. Start with the basics, test thoroughly, and only add complexity when you absolutely have to. Most pricing chaos comes from trying to cover every edge case—don’t fall into that trap.
Keep your agreements clear, your data clean, and your process as simple as possible. When in doubt, ask if that new exception or workflow really adds value—or just more headaches. Iterate as you learn, and you’ll spend a lot less time untangling pricing messes down the road.