MYOB Acumatica Volume Pricing vs Volume Discounts: How Australian Distributors Set Quantity Breaks

MYOB Acumatica handles volume pricing two ways. The Volume Pricing feature gives each sales price a Break Qty, so a line at $13.80 for 1 to 4 units drops to $12.00 at 5 and $10.00 at 10 in MYOB’s own example. The Customer Discounts feature instead applies a percentage once a line passes a break point. One changes the unit price, the other shows a discount.

At a glance

• Who it is for: Australian wholesalers and distributors on MYOB Acumatica whose customers buy by the carton, pallet or hundred, and whose reps still look up “the price for 50” in a spreadsheet.
• Problem it solves: quantity-based pricing that is applied by the system on the sales order line, held with effective dates, and pushed to a connected online store, instead of being re-keyed or overridden by hand.
• Platforms: MYOB Acumatica (formerly MYOB Advanced), Distribution and Manufacturing editions; the pricing forms are the same across editions.
• Typical cost: no additional licence; Volume Pricing and Customer Discounts are switched on under Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) per the MYOB Acumatica help. Configuration is partner or administrator time; day rates are in our MYOB Acumatica cost guide.
• Typical timeline: one to three working days to design the tiers, load them through a worksheet and test a sales order, in our experience; longer if the price file needs cleaning first.
• Last verified: 1 November 2026 against the MYOB Acumatica help pages on volume-based prices, price selection rules and automatic volume line discounts.

Most Australian distributors sell the same item at three or four prices depending on how many the customer takes. The carton price, the pallet price, the contract price for the account that buys a container a quarter. The question we get asked on nearly every MYOB Acumatica scoping call is which of the two mechanisms to use for that, and the answer depends on whether you want the customer to see a lower price or a discount off a higher one. This post walks through both, how the system picks between them on an order line, and the Australian GST detail that catches people.

How does volume pricing work in MYOB Acumatica?

With the Volume Pricing feature enabled, every row on the Sales Prices (AR202000) form or in a Sales Price Worksheet (AR202010) carries a Break Qty column. The MYOB help activity on volume-based prices builds a three-tier base price for one stock item: Break Qty 0 at $13.80, Break Qty 5 at $12.00 and Break Qty 10 at $10.00, all with the same effective date. On a sales order line for two units the system inserts $13.80; at five it inserts $12.00; at ten or more it inserts $10.00. Change the quantity and the unit price changes with it.

Three details from the help pages decide how you design the tiers:

• Break Qty 0 is the first tier, not a blank. The bottom row is the price for any quantity below the next break. Leave it out and small orders fall through to whatever price sits lower in the selection order.
• Tiers live on each price type. The Sales Prices general information page lists volume-dependent pricing as a property of non-default prices, and the retail connector page says those prices can be Base or Customer Price Class type. So a trade class can have its own ladder, separate from the public one.
• The item’s Default Price cannot be tiered. The same general information page describes the Default Price on the stock item as the fallback for items whose price does not vary by quantity, season or customer. If you want tiers, the price has to be a Base, Customer Price Class or Customer row.

The tiers can also carry an effective date and an expiration date. The effective period page explains that when you add a price the system checks for overlaps with existing records of the same type, code and currency, which is what stops two conflicting $12.00 tiers being live on the same day.

Which price does the system pick when a customer has a class and a contract?

The tier only matters once MYOB Acumatica has decided which price list applies. The rules of price selection page sets the order: a Customer price first, then a Customer Price Class price, then a Base price, then the item’s Default Price, then a price calculated from the sales unit of measure. Inside each level a promotional price beats a regular one, a price for the line’s unit of measure beats one for the base unit, and a warehouse-specific price beats a general one. The search stops at the first match, and the same page adds that if the matching price list has tiers, the tier for the line quantity is used. The user can still override the result.

The practical consequence is that a volume ladder on the Base list does nothing for a customer who has a contract price, because the Customer row wins before the system ever looks at Base. If the contract customer should also get quantity breaks, the breaks go on their Customer rows. We covered the class design side in our post on customer price classes and sales price worksheets; this post is about the quantity axis on top of it.

One exception from the selection page worth repeating: Accounts Receivable documents such as direct invoices carry no warehouse, so warehouse-specific tiers are ignored there. If your reps raise invoices without a sales order, build the tiers on the general price rather than a warehouse price.

When is a volume discount the better tool than a volume price?

MYOB Acumatica has a second mechanism that looks similar on the order but behaves differently in the books. With the Customer Discounts feature enabled, you create a discount code on the Discount Codes (AR209000) form with Discount Type set to Line and Applicable To set to Item, then a discount on the Discounts (AR209500) form with Discount By set to Percent and Break By set to Quantity. The help activity on automatic volume line discounts builds 5% at 5 units, 10% at 11 and 20% at 20, each break point entered as a pending quantity, percent and date, then made live with Update Discounts. On a line for six units the unit price stays at $13 and the Discount Percent column shows 5%.

Sources: MYOB Acumatica help on volume-based prices, automatic volume line discounts, customer discounts general information, line discounts with tiers by amounts, retail connector price synchronisation.

Our rule of thumb from implementations: if the tier is permanent and the customer thinks of it as the price, use a volume price. If it is temporary, tied to a lot you need to move, or something sales wants to measure as a concession, use a discount. The customer discounts general information page notes that line discounts are simply deducted from the amount the customer pays, while group and document discounts hit a separate expense account, which is why finance teams usually prefer tiered prices for the permanent ladder and discounts for the campaigns they want to see on a report.

The mistake we see most is a distributor building a beautiful three-tier ladder on the base price, then wondering why their biggest accounts never get it. Those accounts have a customer price, and a customer price wins before Acumatica ever looks at base. Decide which level owns the tiers before anyone opens a worksheet.

Bill Alvarez, Practice Manager, Auboros

How do you load hundreds of tiered prices without typing them?

Nobody keys 400 items by three tiers on the Sales Prices form. The sales price uploading page describes the Sales Price Worksheets (AR202010) route: create an empty worksheet, click Load Records from File, and select an Excel file with the prices. The worksheet accepts base, class and customer prices, including promotional, unit-of-measure and warehouse rows, and the only type it will not take is the Default Price. The effective date is set once in the worksheet summary and applies to every row, and nothing is live until you release the worksheet.

Two settings on the Accounts Receivable Preferences (AR101000) form shape how this behaves over time. The Price Retention setting keeps either the last price or a fixed number of months of history, with 12 months as the default, which is what lets you answer “what did we charge them in March” a year later. The Line Discount Basis setting decides whether line discounts are calculated on unit price or extended price, which changes the maths when a discount and a tier land on the same line.

A practical sequence that avoids rework:

1. Fix the levels first. Decide which customers are on a Customer price, which classes exist, and which ladder belongs at Base. Our price classes post has the design steps.
2. Build the Excel file with one row per item, per price type, per tier. Break Qty 0 on every item, then the higher breaks. Keep the unit of measure consistent; a tier for CARTON does not fire on a line sold in EACH.
3. Load into a worksheet, review, release. Check a handful of items on a test sales order at quantities just below and just above each break before the effective date arrives.
4. Add discounts last, and only where they belong. Clearance and promotions as discount sequences with an expiration date, so they fall away without anyone editing the price list.

Does GST change how you set up tiered prices?

For Australian businesses the usual approach is to hold tiered prices GST-exclusive and let the item’s tax category and the customer’s tax zone add the 10% on the document. MYOB Acumatica does support tax-inclusive price lists, and the tax-inclusive prices page explains the mechanics: enter the GST-inclusive figure, name the included tax in the Tax column of the Sales Prices form, and assign customers to tax zones. When the included tax applies to the line, the price is used as is and processed as inclusive; when it does not apply, the tax amount is stripped from the price.

That matters for tiers because a GST-inclusive ladder has to be entered inclusive at every break, and a customer in a zone where the tax does not apply gets each tier net. Mixing inclusive and exclusive rows on the same item is the fastest way to a pricing dispute, so pick one basis per price list and keep it. If you also sell online through the MYOB Acumatica ecommerce connector, check the store’s own tax display setting matches, because the retail connector page exports base tiers as a bulk pricing table with a minimum quantity column and class tiers as customer group price lists, and the store displays whatever number it receives. Our GST calculator and wholesale price calculator are handy while you are building the file.

Tiered pricing is one of the pieces we configure inside MYOB FastStart for wholesale distribution, the fixed-scope 12 week program, and it is usually the second workshop after price classes. For a wider look at what a distributor’s system needs to cover, see our page on ERP for wholesale distribution in Australia. If you would rather talk it through with a MYOB Acumatica partner in Brisbane, that is what we do.

Goes well with

• MYOB Acumatica customer price classes and sales price worksheets
• MYOB Acumatica sales orders: order types, back orders and credit holds
• MYOB inventory management in Australia: where each MYOB product stops

Ready to move your price ladder out of the spreadsheet?

We configure volume pricing, price classes and discounts for distributors across Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Queensland, and we will tell you which mechanism fits before anyone builds a worksheet. If you want a second opinion on your tiers, book a free 1-hour scoping call. No pitch, just a look at your price file and a straight answer.