Understanding Setup of Preference Hierarchies
The system applies pricing adjustments to service contracts, work orders, warranty claims, supplier recovery and cases in the order that you determine on the pricing hierarchy. The system uses the pricing structure to calculate price adjustments and updates. For this reason, you should set up the hierarchy to search from specific combinations to general combinations.
Before you define each pricing hierarchy, you must create a master record called the preference master. You can create as many different preference hierarchies as you need.
You define the hierarchy and then attach it to an adjustment definition. You can create a hierarchy for each adjustment definition, or you can use a single hierarchy for many adjustment definitions. Although you can create as many different preference hierarchies as you need, we recommend that you set up the fewest number of hierarchies possible to accommodate all of the adjustment definitions that the company requires.
A preference hierarchy enables you to specify the order in which pricing adjustments are applied. You identify the pricing hierarchy by typing numbers at the intersections of the rows and columns. The pricing search begins at the intersection where you type 1 and looks for records defined for that customer and item combination. If no adjustment details are found for that combination, the system moves to the next combination in the hierarchy, identified by the number 2 in the intersection, and so on.
The system selects the first combination found during a search. Therefore, you should set up the most specific method of pricing first in the hierarchy and then continue defining the hierarchy to the most general pricing.
Although you can enter as many as nine numbers, searching takes system time and resources, so you should limit the hierarchy to three or four numbers. Each number represents a system search and increases system processing time. The Sold To and All Customer rows are the only fields that Service Management can recognize.