Gasology's Design manager gives you powerful tools to design fuel prices for any forward period with flexibility and control.
In this article we will cover how to build and create prices for future months or years.
Base price components
The first step in creating a price for future time periods is to create a base product price.
First, make sure you have selected the right facility for your new price. Base prices are facility specific and cannot be transferred to other facilities. Next, navigate to the Design manager found on the merchant portal menu to get started.
Pick your product
After confirming your facility selection, start by choosing the product you are ready to price from the drop-down menu at the top of the page. The list of products in this menu corresponds to the products you have added in Merchant Settings > Products tab for the selected facility.
Pick the time period
Next, choose the time period for when you want to deliver the fuel you are currently pricing.
- The price Design manager defaults to Month-long time periods. Choose Day, Month, or Year, then click on the actual time period that you are designing a price for.
- The Design Code and Design Description boxes will be pre-populated with default values.
- Click Save.
Note: if you need to edit a price you have previously created, select it from the Summary table or the Design List on the bottom half of the screen.
After clicking Save, users are taken to the Blending tab to set the blend components of their product.
Set your product's blend
In this step, you will set a price for the actual product itself, before adding adjustments. If required, blending components can also be added here.
Before setting your product’s price index, pick an option for Originator or Contingent. If contingent is selected, you will be prompted to pick a supplier price that your product price will be based on. For more information on contingent prices, visit this article.
When you arrive at the Blending tab, the product you are pricing will be selected as the first component of your blend. To set the price of this component, you will link a price index to your fuel product that reflects its cost. Indexes are all of the components that, when organized together, create a product base price. For instructions on how to create an index, please take a look at the linked article.
Select the desired price index from the drop-down menu. The index value will appear in green text in the black field. To edit an index, click the pencil to the right of the field; remember that edits will be reflected in any designs that use the index throughout the platform. To add a new index from this page, click the plus sign to the right of the black field.
Add a blending component
To add an additional product component, click Add Blend Component in the blend table, and select the correct price index for Component 2. Set the blend percentage (Blend %) of all components, making sure that the percentage total sums to 100. To delete a product component, click the red circle under "Delete" in the Blending table.
Note: Pay particular attention to blend ratios. Ratio Result automatically adjusts to notify a user if their blend ratio is balanced (or not).
Click the blue Publish button at the bottom of the page after selecting your blend components and setting the correct price index for each.
In the following example, we blend regular unleaded gasoline with ethanol for a final mixture that is 10% ethanol.
- Click on component 1. The source product "Regular Unleaded" is selected.
- From the Price Index drop-down menu select the price index that will be linked to the product. Here, the index that the example merchant created called "RU 87" denotes 87 octane regular unleaded fuel.
Here, you can select either manual or Excel sourced indexes. - In similar fashion, click on component 2. Now, select the source product for the blending product, ethanol.
- Enter in 10% for the Blend % field, and then 90% for the regular unleaded Blend %.
- Don't forget to click Publish to save your changes.
Add in additional costs
With our product blend set and price indexes selected, any additional costs and margins need to be added to arrive at the final base price. Under the Adjustments tab select the appropriate indexes reflecting any associated product costs.
Possible indexes that can be added as adjustments include:
- Transportation Index - a cost component reflecting the transportation cost of the product
- Additives Index - an additional cost component based on the price of any additives combined with the product
- Margin Index - an index used to cover the profit requirement for a product
- Location Index - an additional cost adjustment based on the physical location of the product
- Quality Index – a cost component, or price adjustment based on the quality of the product
- Other Index – a versatile catchall index created to meet customer pricing requirements. You may add three ‘other’ indexes.
To adjust your base price by using any of these optional indexes, select the corresponding index from the appropriate drop-down menu. The dollar value will populate in the black field to the right of the menu.
Any index can be edited from this location by clicking on the pencil next to the index value.
Important Note: Updating an index used in any price will update the price system-wide, even if the price has already been turned on. This platform feature allows you to rapidly update your product prices by updating only a handful of indexes.
Click Publish before navigating away from this tab to save your changes.
Set the quantity offered for sale
With the price designed and the future delivery period set, the last step in creating your base price is defining the number of gallons you wish to offer for sale at this price. To set the quantity available for sale, you will use an order index. Just like price indexes, order indexes can be created in the Index manager or by clicking the + button to create a new index without leaving the Quantities tab.
Under the Quantities tab, the Order Index drop-down list contains a list of user-defined order indexes used to set the amount of fuel sold for the period. Set the number of gallons you would like to offer at the designed price by choosing the appropriate order index from the drop-down menu.
Excel index source
The above instructions and examples show how to create prices with manual indexes created in Gasology that remain static until edited by the user. It is also possible to use the Gasology Excel add-in to allow for dynamic index updates. This tool allows you to tie your Gasology indexes to off-platform price indices and is discussed in the second half of this course.
When designing prices and picking indexes, manual and Excel based indexes can be used interchangeably.
Please contact the Gasology support team with questions about using the Excel add-in, or consult the following group of articles on Gasology’s Custom Access Excel tools.
Make your prices visible
To make your price visible to customers, toggle the price to ON in the Design manager. For more information on activating your prices, visit the linked article.
Next steps
The next article for this course introduces another innovative Gasology pricing feature, contingent pricing.