How Cost and Price Are Determined on Quotes & Sales Orders

When you add an item to a quote or sales order, 10X automatically figures out two things: the cost of the item (what it costs you, which drives your gross profit) and the selling price (what the customer pays). This article explains how each is determined, starting with cost.

Part 1: How Cost Is Added to a Line

10X looks for the item's cost in a specific order and uses the first source it finds. This is the cost hierarchy:

Committed lot cost – If specific inventory has been committed to the line, 10X uses the actual cost of those exact lots. This is the most accurate cost because it reflects what you truly paid for the units being shipped.
Linked purchase order cost – For any quantity not yet covered by committed inventory, if the line is linked to one or more purchase orders, 10X uses the weighted-average cost of those PO lines.
Average Cost – If there is no committed lot or linked PO, 10X falls back to the item's Average Cost (the weighted average cost of the item's on-hand inventory lots).
Vendor Cost rules – If the item has no inventory on hand, 10X calculates a cost from the Cost rules set up for the item's primary vendor.
$0.00 – If none of the above are available, the cost defaults to zero. A $0 cost usually means the item has no inventory, no linked PO, and no vendor cost rule yet.

Note on quotes: Quote lines don't commit inventory, so steps 1 and 2 don't apply. A quote's cost typically comes from the item's Average Cost, then Vendor Cost rules, and finally $0.

Loaded Cost: an optional layer (off by default)

By default, a line's cost is just the base cost described above. 10X can optionally add extra cost layers to form a Loaded Cost, which is then used to calculate the gross profit percentage (GP%) shown on your quotes and sales orders. These layers do nothing until you enable them:

Landed cost – freight, duties, tariffs, and other add-on costs, allocated across received inventory. This stays $0 unless the Landed Cost setting is turned on.
Working cost – a configured percentage of the line's sale (typically your SG&A expenses), added to the loaded cost. This stays $0 unless the Working Cost setting is turned on.
Non-keep cost – the cost of any labor or non-inventory service components on the line.

When these are enabled, Loaded Cost = Base Cost + Landed Cost + Non-Keep Cost + Working Cost, and your GP% is calculated from it. When they're off, Loaded Cost simply equals your base inventory cost, so GP% reflects the base cost alone. Turning on Landed Cost also adds those add-on costs to the value of your received inventory.

Turning on Loaded Cost

Go to Admin → Settings and open the Loaded Costs section, where you can enable:

Landed Cost – then choose a Landed Cost Allocation Method (Relative Value or Relative Weight), which controls how add-on costs are spread across the received items.
Working Cost – then set the Working Cost Percentage.

Additional landed-cost options can be adjusted under Admin → Orders.

Overriding the cost on a line

If the manual cost override setting is enabled for your company, you can type over the Loaded Cost directly on an order or quote line. When you do, 10X keeps your entered value and remembers the original system-calculated cost for reference. On items priced by components, overriding a component's cost rolls up to the line total.

Important: A manual cost override applies to the sales order line's display and gross-profit figures only. It does not carry through to invoicing. Once the line ships and is invoiced, the invoiced cost (and the amount that posts to your COGS/GL) is recalculated from the actual committed inventory lot cost. In other words, your manual override will revert to the true inventory/lot cost at invoice.

Part 2: How the Selling Price Is Calculated

Once cost is known, 10X determines the selling price using pricing rules. Rules can be set up for specific items, item groups, customers, and customer groups.

Where pricing rules live

Pricing and cost rules can be managed in several places:

Item – open the item and go to the Pricing tab (manages both price and cost rules for that item).
Customer – open the customer, go to the Settings tab, then the Pricing sub-tab (customer-specific price rules).
Vendor – open the vendor and go to the Pricing tab (vendor cost rules).
Admin – go to Admin → Pricing → Rules for the master list of all rules, along with price groups, rounding, and defaults.

See Creating Price and Cost Rules in 10X ERP for setup steps.

Calculation methods

Every rule has a Calculation Method. The options you'll see depend on whether you're setting up a price rule (what the customer pays) or a cost rule (a vendor cost), because the two use different method names.

Price rules offer these methods:

List Price – Uses the exact price you enter. Commonly used for negotiated customer-specific pricing.
Multiply List Price – The item's list price is multiplied by a factor (for example, 0.90 for a 10% discount). Commonly used for customer-group discounts or markups.
Multiply by Inventory Cost – The item's current inventory cost is multiplied by a factor (for example, 1.5 for a 50% markup over cost). The price automatically adjusts as the cost changes. When a Multiply by Inventory Cost rule exists for an item, only that method is considered and other price rules are ignored.
Add to List Cost – Takes the item's list cost and adds a fixed amount to set the selling price (for example, list cost + $5.00).
Multiply by List Cost – Takes the item's list cost and multiplies it by a factor to set the selling price (for example, list cost × 1.25).

Cost rules offer these methods:

List Cost – Uses the exact cost you enter.
Multiply List Cost – The item's list cost is multiplied by a factor.

Clearing up two easy points of confusion

"Multiply by List Cost" vs. "Multiply List Cost" – They sound almost identical but live in different places and do different jobs. Multiply by List Cost is a price rule: it uses the item's list cost as the base and produces the selling price. Multiply List Cost is a cost rule: it uses the item's list cost to produce a vendor cost. In short, one sets what the customer pays; the other sets what the item costs you.
"List cost" vs. "inventory cost" – List cost is the cost defined by your cost rules for the item. Inventory cost is the item's actual on-hand (average) cost, which moves with what you've paid over time. "Multiply by List Cost" prices off the defined list cost; "Multiply by Inventory Cost" prices off the live inventory cost.

Price rule hierarchy

When more than one rule could apply, 10X uses the most specific match, in this order:

Customer + Item (highest priority)
Customer Group + Item
Item Group + Customer
Item Group + Customer Group
List price (lowest priority)

How overlapping rules combine (stacking)

More than one rule can apply to the same line, and they don't always resolve to a single winner. It helps to know how 10X handles overlap:

One rule sets the base price. The most specific matching rule (per the hierarchy above) establishes the starting price.
Multiplier rules layer on top and compound. Any applicable multiplier rules are applied on top of that base, and multiple multipliers multiply together. For example, a customer discount of 0.5 combined with a quantity-break multiplier of 0.9 produces 0.45, not 0.5 or 0.9 on its own.
A specific set price stops the stacking. When a specific rule (for example, a Customer + Item rule) provides an actual fixed price, 10X uses that price and does not layer broader rules on top of it.

Because multipliers compound, it's worth reviewing your rule setup when a price comes out lower or higher than you expected. A customer-group discount and an item quantity break, for instance, will both apply unless you intend only one of them to.

Quantity breaks

Rules can include tiered pricing based on order quantity. For example:

1–9 units: $10.00 each
10–49 units: $9.50 each
50+ units: $9.00 each

10X automatically selects the correct tier for the quantity ordered. By default, quantity breaks from different rules can combine. Enabling Do Not Stack Quantity Breaks on a rule stops earlier rules from compounding: 10X resets the running discount and applies that rule's breaks from a clean slate.

Price rounding

Calculated prices are rounded according to your configured rounding rules, which set the number of decimal places for different price ranges. Rounding is not applied to vendor (cost) pricing, to specifically negotiated customer-item prices, or when a customer has Disable Pricing Rounding turned on.

Assembly / "Price By Components" items

Items marked Price By Components are priced by adding up the prices of their components (each component's price × its quantity). If a component has no price, it contributes $0.00 to the total and 10X shows a warning that the subcomponent is missing pricing, so the assembly still returns a price, but it will be understated.

Examples

Example 1: Fixed customer price

Setup: Item A, Customer X, List Price of $10.00.
Result: Customer X always pays $10.00 per unit for Item A, regardless of quantity or other rules.

Example 2: Group discount with quantity breaks

Setup: Item Group "Electronics", Customer Group "Wholesale", Multiply List Price with breaks at 1 / 10 / 50 and multipliers 0.90 / 0.85 / 0.80.
Result: 10% off for 1–9 units, 15% off for 10–49, and 20% off for 50+.

Example 3: Cost-based pricing

Setup: Item B, Multiply by Inventory Cost of 1.5.
Result: If Item B's cost is $20.00, it prices at $30.00. If the cost changes, the price updates automatically.

Example 4: Overlapping rules that stack

Setup: Item C has a list price of $100.00. Customer Group "Retail" has a 10% discount (Multiply List Price of 0.90), and a quantity break gives an additional 5% off at 10+ units (multiplier 0.95).
Result for a Retail customer ordering 15 units: $100.00 × 0.90 × 0.95 = $85.50 per unit. The two multipliers compound rather than 10X picking just one of them.

Troubleshooting

Cost is showing $0.00 – The item likely has no inventory on hand, no linked purchase order, and no vendor cost rule. Add a vendor Cost rule or receive inventory to establish a cost.
A price rule isn't applying – Check the rule's effective date range, confirm it hasn't been deleted, and verify the item/customer/vendor it's attached to.
The price isn't what you expected – Multiple rules may be combining. Consider whether Do Not Stack Quantity Breaks should be enabled on a higher-priority rule.
A Multiply by Inventory Cost rule isn't working – The item must have a valid, non-zero cost for a cost-based price to calculate.
Assembly price looks too low – A component may be missing a price; it contributes $0.00 and 10X flags a warning. Add pricing for every component.

10X records the reasoning behind each calculation. When you open the pricing details on a line, you'll see messages explaining which rules were applied and how the final cost and price were reached.