Uploading Customer Prices for Bill of Materials (BOM)

This Buymanager feature allows you to import specific pricing details for line items within a Bill of Materials (BOM) that your customer has provided. Instead of manually entering each price, you can upload an Excel file, saving significant time and ensuring accuracy.

Once uploaded, this BOM, now enriched with customer-specific pricing, will serve as a quotation for your deal within Buymanager.

• What it is: A way to quickly and accurately import customer-provided prices for BOM items directly into Buymanager.
• Situation: Your customer has given you a BOM that includes their preferred pricing for certain components, and you need to use these prices to generate a quotation for your deal.

Why do you need to use this?

• Accuracy: Directly importing customer prices minimizes manual data entry errors, ensuring your quotations are precise and reflect the customer's expectations.
• Efficiency: Automating price uploads saves a lot of time, especially when dealing with large or complex BOMs.
• Streamlined Workflow: Integrates customer-provided pricing seamlessly into your existing deal and costing projects within Buymanager, making your workflow smoother.
• Customer Alignment: Ensures your internal quotations align perfectly with the pricing information your customer has supplied.

Prerequisites and Audience

• Audience: This guide is for Buymanager users who need to process customer-provided pricing for BOMs, typically those involved in sales, quoting, or project management.
• Prerequisites:
  • Existing BOM: You must have already uploaded the "standard" BOM for your deal into Buymanager before attempting to upload customer prices. This process adds prices to an existing structure.
  • Pricing File: You will need the customer's pricing information in an Excel file format. This file should contain at least a Description (to match parts in Buymanager) and Price in Currency for each line item.

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How It Works: Step-by-Step Instructions

This process involves importing a file with pricing details and associating it with your existing deal to create a new quotation.

Step 1: Prepare Your Deal in Buymanager

Before you upload customer prices, ensure your deal is set up correctly and has its initial BOM.

1. Upload the Standard BOM: Make sure you have already uploaded the initial Bill of Materials for your deal into Buymanager. This is the foundation upon which you'll add the customer's prices.

Step 2: Initiate the Price Upload

Now, let's start the process of bringing those customer prices into Buymanager.

1. Open Buymanager: Launch the Buymanager application.
2. Navigate to "Parts - Prices":
   • From the main menu, go to Parts > Prices.
3. Start a New Upload:
   • Click on the New Upload button.
   • Select Upload a Bill of Material with Prices.
     
     
      
4. Choose "a new part number":
   • When prompted, select a new part number. This creates a temporary entry for the price upload.
     
     
     
      

Step 3: Create a "Dummy BOM" for Price Association

This step creates a temporary entry in Buymanager to hold and save your customer's prices.

1. Enter Basic Information:
   • Part Code & Part Description: Enter a temporary (or "dummy") Part Code and Part Description. This is just a placeholder for these customer prices.
   • Customer: Select the specific customer for whom these prices apply. This ensures the prices are only visible and used for this customer.
   • Project (Optional, but Recommended): If these prices are only for one specific deal, indicate that deal.
     • Click the arrow next to "Project" until Deal is selected.

     • Choose the relevant deal from the list. This prevents these prices from appearing for other deals.

       
       
        

Step 4: Select and Configure Your Pricing File

Now, let's tell Buymanager how to read your customer's Excel pricing file.

1. Select the File to Import: Choose the Excel file containing your customer's pricing data from your computer.
2. Create a New Upload Template:
   • Click to create a new upload template.
   • Give it a clear name, for example, BOM-Client Price.
     
     
      
3. Map Your Fields:
   • Minimum Required Fields: Ensure you select fields that correspond to your Excel import file. At a minimum, you'll need:
     • Description (to match parts in Buymanager)
     • Price in Currency
   • Optional Fields: You can also include fields like MPNs, Item codes, or Customer references if they help match parts more accurately. These are not strictly mandatory if the parts already exist in Buymanager with the same description.
   • Currency: Don't worry if currency isn't explicitly in your Excel file; you can add it later in the "Price" tab (Step 6).
   • Quantity: Initially, set the quantity for BOM items to at least 1. This can be adjusted later in the "Upload" step.
   • Reusability: This template can be reused for future client price imports. Feel free to include as much information as possible. You can also create a template for each customer, if preferred.
      
4. Save and Close: Save your new upload template and close the window.

Step 5: Import Your Data

1. Into the Import Assistant:
   • Header: Indicate that your Excel file contains a header row.
   • Align Fields: Carefully align the fields between your Buymanager template and your Excel pricing file.
   • Launch Import: Click to start the import process.
2. Review the BOM Draft:
   • Once the import is complete, the BOM draft window will open, displaying all your imported lines under the "Upload" step on the left menu.
   • Automatic Matching: If parts from your Excel file already exist in Buymanager, they will be automatically added to the BOM draft.
   • Resolve Unmatched Parts: If any parts are highlighted in orange (or red), it means Buymanager couldn't automatically match them.
     • Perform an "auto-search" to try and resolve these.
     • You may need to search for existing parts or create missing parts, as per standard process.
   • Mark for Customer Control: Crucially, tick all parts with Customer control price. This flag tells Buymanager that these prices are specifically from the customer.
     
     
      

Step 6: Finalize and Save Prices in the "Price" Tab

This is where you review, adjust, and officially save the customer prices as a quotation.

1. Review and Update Prices:
   • Navigate to the Price tab within the BOM draft.
   • Verify Information: Carefully review all the imported data. You'll see two columns for each type of information:
     • Imported data: From your Excel file.
     • Data in Buymanager: What Buymanager has after processing.
   • Key Information to Check:
     • Currency: Ensure the correct currency is selected.
     • Supplier: If the customer didn't provide a supplier, you can manually assign a placeholder supplier or even list the customer themselves as the supplier.
     • Price Unit: Confirm the correct price unit (e.g., per piece, per meter).
     • Costed Quantity: This should be at least 1.
   • Manual Adjustments: If any information is missing or incorrect (e.g., a supplier wasn't found in the Buymanager database), you can manually assign or correct it here. To do so, select the line(s) you need to update, and right click on the table. Then select to update either the currency, the units, quantity or the suppliers... 
     
     
2. Save Prices as a Quotation:
   • Once all information is accurate and you're ready, click the Save prices button.
   • Quotation Name: You will be prompted to specify a name for this quotation. This name should clearly identify the prices and the relevant date (e.g., "Customer X BOM Prices Q4 2025").
     
     

Step 7: Access Your New Quotation

Your customer's prices are now saved as a quotation. You will be able to integrate them in your orginal deal costing as you would any other quotation. 

• Open your costing 
• Click on the Quotation button 
• Add the relevant quotation 
  
  

This quotation will now appear alongside others in your costing project, ready to be used for your deal, with a prefix CUS. 

You will also be able to set a priority as you see fit for those price within your Automatic Valuation: