What is automatic price updating?
Keeping purchase prices up to date for every component individually, every time a supplier changes their price list, is time-consuming – and easy to forget until a quote turns up with outdated prices. Through the library, you can leave this matching to the provider instead.
Your benefit: the purchase prices in your library stay up to date automatically, without you comparing price lists by hand. Components you newly add to a project use them straight away; in existing projects, a green dot in the bill of materials shows where a new price is available. Your own calculation surcharge stays untouched – you keep control over your margin, not the provider.
Price updates are their own collection type – separate from product catalogues (see article: Product Catalogues from Wholesalers). They update only the prices of components already in your library. They don't add new components. You can also subscribe to a price update on its own; if a catalogue depends on the same provider's price update, Eturnity subscribes you to it automatically when you subscribe to the catalogue. If your wholesaler offers both, it's best to subscribe to both: for components you newly add from the catalogue, the manual matching step then disappears (see the section “How price updates work with the product catalogue” below).
Prerequisites
Administrator role: only company administrators can subscribe and manage subscriptions; all other users can only view them
The Subscriptions menu item in the library only appears if your company is set up at Eturnity as a subscriber. If it's missing, contact support@eturnity.com or via chat in the Help Center in Eturnity Expert
Which price updates are available depends on your country and licence – for example Krannich, Solarmarkt, Solexis or IGH Kataloge in Switzerland, Tepto in Germany. Your licence also determines whether you see the Supplier & Article number field in the component details
Subscribing to a price update
Navigate to Library > Subscriptions
In the Subscriptions table, find the supplier in the Provider name column and the row where Collection type shows Price updates. Click Subscribe in that row
If the provider requires approval, it first needs to confirm your request – this can take a few days. Until then, the status shows In progress; afterwards it switches to Active / Automatic. Without approval, the subscription is Active / Automatic straight away
Updating automatically or manually
Every subscription runs in one of two modes, switchable from the three-dot menu in the Subscriptions table:
Automatic – when the provider publishes new prices, Eturnity applies them in the background on its own. Options: Switch to manual update or Pause
Manual – nothing changes until you trigger it. Options: Trigger a manual update or Switch to automatic update
If the supplier of a component in the library has been changed, Subscribe, Trigger a manual update and switching between automatic and manual updating are blocked for the new supplier for 10 minutes. The Action currently blocked window shows when the action becomes available again.
Setting a discount
Some wholesalers supply your individually agreed price directly, for example Krannich, Solarmarkt, Solexis and Tepto – no discount needs to be set then. If the provider only supplies a generic list price, such as IGH Kataloge, set your usual discount (0–100%) once per subscription via Edit discount in the three-dot menu – it's then automatically deducted from the list price on every following price update, instead of you recalculating it for every component. The discount only has an effect on price updates; product catalogues don't have this menu entry.
What happens to your prices during an update
The cost price of your price breaks is updated. If the provider has a price break that you don't have, Eturnity usually adds it and takes the calculation surcharge and installation costs for it from the two neighbouring price breaks, using the higher value in each case. The calculation surcharge and installation costs of your existing price breaks stay unchanged; the sales price in the library then follows automatically from the new cost price, your surcharge and your installation costs. Existing projects keep their price for now (see below).
The next update also overwrites cost prices you changed by hand. If you want to set a component's cost price yourself, switch off the Price update enabled toggle in its component details and save.
Scope: Main components and Other components
If the prices from Krannich, Solarmarkt or Solexis in your library are at 0, one of the following steps is usually missing. This is because components from the component database typically start with a cost price of 0 and no supplier, which means no price updates. The subscription alone doesn't change any price: Eturnity only updates components that have a supplier and article number under Supplier & Article number in their component details and have the Price update enabled toggle switched on.
Main components (modules, inverters, etc.): open the component once in the library, select the matching supplier in the Supplier & Article number field in the component details (the Price update enabled toggle switches on by itself) and save – only then is the price updated automatically. This also applies to components that were already in your library beforehand. For many main components at once, tick them under Library > Components, open the three dots in the selection bar and choose Set Supplier: Eturnity sets supplier and article number wherever the supplier has an article number for the product, and switches the price update on
Other components are your own, freely created items without a fixed provider identifier – enter supplier and article number once in the component details so a match is possible and this item is also updated automatically. In addition, Price type and Price dependency must match the provider's; otherwise Eturnity skips the item and gives the reason in the report
Components you newly assign a supplier to receive the provider's price with the next update: with automatic updating as soon as the provider publishes new prices, with manual updating via Trigger a manual update.
How price updates work with the product catalogue
If the same wholesaler also offers a product catalogue (see article: Product Catalogues from Wholesalers), it's worth subscribing to both: when you newly add a component from the catalogue, Eturnity sets the supplier and article number and switches the price update on – the manual step described above is then no longer needed for these components. For components that were already in your library beforehand, select the supplier as described above.
Checking an update
After every update, your company's administrators usually receive an email with an Excel report – one report per subscription. For each of the provider's items, the report's Status column shows either Success (price updated) or the reason nothing was updated – for example No active Component found in Company Library. (no component in your library carries this supplier article number) or Update is disabled for this component (price update switched off for the component). These texts are always in English. If an update fails, you receive an email without a report instead.
In the component details, Last updated also appears under Supplier & Article number, with the date and time of the last update. If you change the cost price by hand, it disappears until the next update.
If the library price of a component already used in a project changes, Eturnity marks the affected row in the Bill of materials or on the Recurring costs page, and the menu entry, with a green dot – so you can see that the price calculated there differs from the current library price. The price in the project stays until you apply it there with Refresh price from library.
Managing a subscription
From the three-dot menu, you can stop an automatic subscription with Pause; the status then shows Inactive. To resume it, choose Switch to automatic update or Switch to manual update. The menu offers Unsubscribe as long as the subscription isn't paused.