A product category can carry two pricing margins, and every product created in that category is priced from them. It saves working out the same two numbers by hand on every new product, and it keeps a whole category consistent.
Find it under Inventory, Categories. Click Edit on any category, or set them while creating one, under Pricing defaults.
**The two margins**
- Minimum sell margin sets the product's Minimum Sell Price, the floor nobody should sell it below.
- Dealer margin sets the product's Dealer Price, what wholesale accounts pay.
**Margin means a share of the selling price**
This is the same margin your Profit Margins report shows, not a markup on cost. At a $100 cost, 40% is a price of $166.67, not $140. Setting 40% here means a product created in this category reads as a 40% margin on the report, which is the point.
A margin of 100% or more is refused, because there is no price that produces it. So is a negative one.
**Categories inherit from their parent**
Leave a box empty and the category takes the value from its parent, and the screen tells you which category that is. Each margin inherits on its own: a subcategory can set its own minimum sell margin and still inherit the dealer margin from above it.
Set the margins once on a top-level category and every subcategory beneath it follows, unless you deliberately give one its own.
**When they apply**
Only when a product is created, and only to a box you left empty. Manifold shows you the figure it would use as a greyed-in suggestion on the new product form as soon as you pick the category and enter a cost. Type your own number over it and yours is kept.
They are never applied to a product that already exists. Changing a category's margin does not reprice anything you already carry, and editing an old product does not quietly move its prices.
A product with no cost yet gets nothing, since there is no cost to work a margin from. Fill the cost in and the suggestion appears.
**On a price sheet import**
Products created by a vendor price sheet are priced the same way, from the category each sheet section was matched to. Products you already carry are left alone unless you tick Minimum sell price or Dealer price on the import screen.
**What a category does not set**
Low stock and max stock levels are not category settings. Those are numbers a shop arrives at per product, by watching what actually moves, and they stay on the product page where you can see the stock beside them.
**Permissions**
You need permission to manage categories. The suggested prices are worked out from cost, so a person without permission to view costs sees the price boxes without them.