How do I configure tiered pricing with items? (Classic Items)

Tiered pricing allows you to offer different rates based on the duration of a booking (e.g., 1-2 nights, 3-5 nights, etc.). It’s ideal for encouraging longer stays by offering discounts or special pricing when customers book more days.

Learn how to set up tiered pricing for inventory items, including:

• Configuring rules
• Configuring Item Events
• Updating Tiered Pricing

Accessing the features mentioned in this article

Where can I find this feature using the top menu?

• Rules:  Inventory > Rules
• Item Events: Inventory > Item Events
   

What more do I need to use this feature?

• Admin permissions or restricted permissions to View items, Manage items, view events and rules, manage events and rules.
   

Which Checkfront version supports this feature - Classic Items, Classic Products, or both?

• Your account must have access to classic items (Inventory > Items), a key feature of our Classic Items version of Checkfront. 

If you're reading this document, you've already configured the basic pricing of the items in your Checkfront account. You may have even added some group pricing to offer your Customers a discount for booking a larger party.

But what if you want to offer a discount based on the number of days or nights booked? After all, a Customer booking an entire week should get a slightly better rate than a Customer booking just one night.

Well, that is up to you, but if you want to offer such a deal, this document shows you how to do it!

Learn more For a detailed look at how to configure tiered pricing for Products instead, check out the following articles: Step 4: Configuring pricing for your product Introduction to custom duration rates

You can add new price points alongside your base price, creating a tiered pricing structure. This structure changes the rate for the Customer based on the parameters outlined in your rules and item events.

So, let's start by looking at how you need to configure rules in your account using the 270.00 base price example shown above.

Rules are the first step when creating a tiered pricing structure for your account. They are critical as they determine the number of days for each tier. In this tutorial, we make three new pricing tiers: 1-2 Days, 3-5 Days, and 6-7 Days.

1. To get started, go to Inventory > Rules in your dashboard. You see your default ruleset on the screen, but you can ignore it for now.
   
   If you have any minimum/maximum day/night rules configured here, you must remove them, or they will clash with what we're about to do.
    
2. Over on the left, click the + New Rule Set button.
   
   
    
3. The system prompts you to enter a name for the rule set. Input something that makes sense later and helps you easily identify the different rule sets. In this case, 1-2 Days are fine.
   
   
    
4. Next, enter values for the minimum and maximum duration rules. These are the only rules we need to update in the rule set.
   
   Enter 1 for the minimum duration and 2 for the maximum.
   
   
   
   Any booking between 1 and 2 days triggers this ruleset and the attached item event, which we get to shortly.
    
5. Repeat this process and create rule sets for 3-5 days and 6-7 days. Ensure you set the appropriate minimum and maximum days for each.

You should have three new rule sets to apply to their matching events when complete. 

It's time to set up some item events so you can implement the rule sets we just created. Follow these instructions:

1. You can access your events page from Inventory > Item Events in the Checkfront dashboard.
2. Next, you need to configure a new event for each of the rule sets created. Click the + New Item Event button (seen above) to create your first item event.
   
   
   
   
    
3. Configure the type as special events. Since we're applying a tiered structure to the events, it is necessary to configure them as special events. Special events enable each event to override the pricing of the previous one once customers have met the parameters defined in the rule sets.
4. Enter the event name. The event name should make sense to your Customers as they see it during the booking process and on their subsequent invoices. It's usually best to duplicate the name of the rule set you'll be attaching, in this case, 1-2 Days.
5. Next, select the Create a new price point option. This option allows you to input a specific price that does not fluctuate based on the original item price. Set the recurrence however you wish, then choose the rule set you created in the previous step.
6. Finally, select the item(s) from the Apply to list to which you want the system attached to the event. For this tutorial, we're using the Valley Lodge (Single Room) item. 
7. When ready, click Save to save the event.
8. You must repeat the above process for other events in your pricing structure.

After completing that, your account should contain three events, with the relevant rule set attached.

And that's it! The tiered pricing structure is now in place. All that's left is updating the pricing and performing a quick test to ensure it's working.

You should now see pricing bands for each event you created in the item's Pricing tab. You only see these if you create a new price point in the event.

All you have to do now is input the pricing for each tier. You can do this in the Pricing Table section of the item's pricing tab.

When Customers choose their dates during the booking process, the price per night automatically adjusts according to the number of nights selected.

Make a test booking to see it in action and ensure it's performing as expected.

As you can see from the example above, the Customer selected three nights during booking, which triggered the 3-5 nights event and adjusted the pricing accordingly.