How to Create a Price Rule in QuickBooks Online

Manually adjusting prices on every invoice is a time-consuming task that’s prone to human error. If you’re using QuickBooks Online Plus or Advanced, you can use the built-in Price Rules feature to automate custom pricing for different customers, products, or promotions. This article provides a complete walkthrough on how to set up, apply, and manage price rules to ensure pricing consistency and save valuable time.

What Are QuickBooks Online Price Rules?

Price Rules are a powerful automation feature that automatically adjusts the rate of your products and services on sales forms like invoices and sales receipts. Instead of remembering to apply a 15% discount for a preferred customer or manually changing prices during a seasonal sale, you can create a rule that tells QuickBooks to do it for you based on conditions you set.

This is perfect for a variety of common business scenarios:

• Client-Specific Discounts: Offer all non-profit clients a 10% discount on all your services.
• VIP or Wholesale Pricing: Provide special, reduced pricing to your most valuable customers or wholesale partners.
• Promotional Sales: Run a seasonal promotion, like a "20% Off All Gadgets" sale, for a specific period.
• Bulk Discounts: Adjust the price of a service when a customer buys a large quantity. Note: Advanced users can also set rules by quantity.

Using Price Rules correctly reduces manual data entry, minimizes pricing mistakes, and guarantees that every customer gets the right price, every time. It systematizes your pricing strategy directly within your accounting software.

First, Turn on Price Rules in Your Settings

Before you can start creating rules, you first need to enable the feature in your company settings. For many QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced tiers, this feature is off by default. Here's how to turn it on.

1. Navigate to the Gear icon in the top right corner of your screen and select Account and settings.
2. In the menu on the left, click on the Sales tab.
3. Find the Products and services section and click the pencil icon on the right to edit it.
4. Check the box next to Turn on price rules.
5. A message will appear warning you that once you turn this feature on, you can't turn it off. This is because disabling it could create inconsistencies in your old transaction data. Confirm you want to proceed.
6. Click Save and then click Done.

With the feature enabled, you are now ready to set up your first rule.

How to Create a Price Rule in QuickBooks Online: A Step-by-Step Guide

Once you've enabled the feature, you can access the Price Rules dashboard to create and manage all your pricing automations. Follow these steps to build your first one.

Step 1: Go to the Price Rules List

The Price Rules engine lives within your company lists.

1. Click the Settings (Gear) icon in the top right.
2. Under the "Lists" column, select All lists.
3. On the Lists page, click on Price Rules. This will take you to your Price Rules dashboard, which will be empty if this is your first time here.

Step 2: Start a New Price Rule

On the Price Rules dashboard, click the green Create a rule button in the upper right. This will open the main configuration screen where you will define the rule's conditions and actions.

Step 3: Define the Rule's Conditions and Details

This is where you tell QuickBooks who this rule applies to, which products or services it affects, and during what time frame. The screen is broken down into intuitive sections.

• Rule Name: Be specific and descriptive. A name like "VIP Client 15% Discount" or "Spring 2024 Service Sale" will be much easier to identify and manage later than "Price Rule 1."
• Customers: Use the dropdown menu to decide who this rule applies to. You can select "All customers" or choose one or more individual customers. You can also apply it to specific Customer Types. We highly recommend using customer types (e.g., "Wholesale," "Non-Profit," "Retail") to group clients so you don't have to manually select each one.
• Products & Services: Next, define what items are affected. You can apply the rule to "All products and services," individual items, or by Category. Using product and service categories can save a significant amount of setup time for sales affecting entire product lines (e.g., all "Consulting Services" or "Hardware Parts").
• Date Range: For ongoing discounts like preferred pricing, you can leave the start and end dates blank. For temporary promotions, check the box and specify a Start date and an End date. The rule will automatically activate and deactivate on these dates.

Step 4: Set the Price Adjustment

After defining the "if," it's time to set the "then." You need to tell QuickBooks how to adjust the price when the conditions you set are met. In the “Set the adjusted price” section, choose your adjustment method and a few options will appear.

• Percentage: A menu will prompt you to choose "increase" or "decrease" and then to enter a percentage value (e.g., decrease by 15.0%). You also have the option here to apply rounding for the final amount. Common options are to round to the nearest dollar or .99 cent value.
• Fixed amount: This allows you to choose either an increase or decrease value, but in a fixed dollar amount rather than as a percentage. This is a common method for bundled packages or promotions on single items with differing price amounts.
• Custom price per item: This allows the creator to set the resulting sales price at a specific amount. Once chosen, a table of potential items that may be affected by the rule will appear. The user enters into the “Adjusted Price” column the new standalone price on any line they’d like included in the a-la-carte item list of adjusted prices.

Step 5: Review and Save Your Rule

Once you've configured all the settings, review them one last time to ensure everything is correct. An error in the customer or product selection could result in incorrect pricing. When you're confident, click Save and close to activate the rule (or click Save and new to immediately start another one).

Using Your Price Rule on a Sales Form

Now for the fun part: seeing your automation at work. Create a new invoice or sales receipt to test your rule.

1. Click + New and select Invoice.
2. In the Customer field, choose a customer who meets the conditions of the rule you just created.
3. In the Product/Service section, select an item that is included in your rule.
4. Watch as the Rate field automatically adjusts. You will see the item's standard rate crossed out, with the new, rule-adjusted price shown below it. QuickBooks also adds a small tag that says "Price rule" so you explicitly know the automation was applied.

If the customer or item selected does not meet your rule's conditions, the price will appear as normal. The change only occurs when all conditions of an active price rule are met.

Managing and Prioritizing Overlapping Rules

What happens if an invoice meets the criteria for multiple price rules? For example, a "VIP Customer" (who gets 15% off) buys a "Promotional Item" (that's currently 20% off). Which discount applies?

By default, QuickBooks applies the rule that gives the customer the biggest discount. In the example above, the customer would receive the 20% discount on that specific item.

For more advanced control, you can manually set a priority. On the main Price Rules dashboard, you'll see a Prioritize Rules button. Clicking this allows you to drag and drop your active rules into a specific order to force an application sequence. However, for most users, QB's "best discount" logic is sufficient.

From the action menu on the Price Rules dashboard, you can also easily Edit an existing rule, create a Copy to use as a template, or Make inactive to temporarily disable a rule without deleting it.

Final Thoughts

Automating your pricing with Price Rules is an excellent way to reduce administrative work, eliminate costly mistakes, and create a consistent customer experience. By investing a small amount of time upfront to configure your rules, you can ensure your pricing strategy is applied uniformly across your sales transactions.

Getting your pricing logic in place is just one piece of the puzzle. When clients ask complex advisory questions—like how discounts affect sales tax nexus in different states or the tax implications of specific pricing structures—you need definitive answers quickly. We designed Feather AI to be your AI tax research assistant, delivering citation-backed answers from authoritative IRS and state guidance in seconds, so you can stop digging through tax code and focus on providing strategic advice.