Short answer. Up to a few dozen items you can manage prices by hand. Above that you work with rules: a floor price, a ceiling and a step size. Automatic repricing reacts on top of that to the buy box status and to competitors, but it is only safe when the floor price is right, including VAT and commission.
Three levels of price management
1. Manual
You look at your most important items every day, see who has the buy box and adjust the price. Works up to about fifty items, and only if you really do it every day. The big risk is not a wrong price but a price you forget to put back.
2. Rules
Per item or per group you set a floor price you never go below, a ceiling, and a step (for example €0.25 or 1%). A tool or your own integration executes the rules. This is the level most sellers with 50 to 1,000 items end up at.
3. Automatic
The software itself looks at the buy box status and the competing offers and picks the price within your limits. Two directions matter: stepwise down until you have the buy box back, and then stepwise up as long as you keep it. That second part is often forgotten, and it is exactly where the margin is.
The floor price is the foundation
Every form of repricing is as safe as the floor price. You calculate it per item, not per category. Include everything:
- purchase price excluding VAT;
- bol's commission: a fixed amount per price band plus a percentage per category (the exact rate per EAN is in your seller account and in the Commissions API);
- shipping and packaging;
- an allowance for returns (for example 3% of revenue in a category with few returns, more for clothing);
- the VAT you pay on the selling price;
- the minimum margin you want to keep.
A worked example with assumed figures (always check your own rates):
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Selling price including 21% VAT | €29.95 |
| VAT payable (€29.95 / 1.21 × 0.21) | €5.20 |
| Commission (assumed: 12% of the consumer price + €0.40 fixed) | €3.99 |
| Shipping and packaging | €4.50 |
| Returns allowance 3% | €0.90 |
| Purchase cost excluding VAT | €12.00 |
| Net margin | €3.36 |
At a floor price of €26.95 that same margin is almost zero in this example. If you do not calculate that before switching the repricer on, you let software set prices at which every sale costs money. Do not forget the price band boundary either: the fixed part of the commission jumps at a boundary, so €19.99 and €20.00 work out differently.
What bol says about price
According to bol the total price including shipping and VAT counts, and a difference of €0.01 has no effect on the buy box. Two consequences for your rules: do not set the step size to one cent, and always include shipping when comparing with competitors. A competitor with free shipping and a higher item price can be cheaper in bol's eyes.
Up is as important as down
Many sellers aim repricing only at winning back the buy box. But once you have it, the question is: how much room is there upwards? A rule like "raise by 1% every 6 hours as long as you keep the buy box, up to the ceiling" recovers in practice the margin you gave away while winning it back. Without a ceiling this is dangerous; with a ceiling it is the rule that earns the most.
Dry-run first, then live
Run a new rule or a new tool in dry-run for at least a week: the software calculates what it would do but writes nothing to bol. You then see three things you would otherwise only see afterwards:
- items whose floor price is too high (the rule never reaches the buy box);
- items whose floor price is too low (the rule would run at a loss);
- items where you are alone and the price can go up.
Only when the proposals have been right for a week do you switch on live, preferably for part of the range first.
What you do not do
- No repricing without a floor price per item. A category-wide margin of "20%" is never right for every item.
- No race to the bottom against a seller who apparently works without a floor. Let them have the buy box and sell through other items; their stock is finite.
- No price cut to win back a buy box you lost through delivery time or quality score. First look where the difference is.
Checklist before you start
- Floor price and ceiling per EAN, including VAT, commission, shipping and returns allowance.
- Step size larger than €0.01.
- A rule for going up as long as you keep the buy box.
- At least a week of dry-run with a log of every proposed price.
- An alert for every price that comes within 5% of the floor.