How pricing works

NineOffer calculates a price by starting from a base and adding to it. Nothing subtracts unless you tell it to, and nothing replaces the running total.

The calculation

1. Start with the flow’s base price.
2. Walk the rule groups in order. A group whose conditions do not match the visitor’s answers is skipped entirely.
3. Inside each matching group, walk its rules in order. Each rule that fires adds its amount to the running total.
4. The result is the estimate.

That is the whole model. Its usefulness comes from the four things a rule can add — see Pricing rules.

Base price

The base price is the floor: what the job costs before anything specific to this customer is considered. A call-out fee, a minimum charge, the cost of turning up.

If your work genuinely has no floor, set it to zero and let the rules do the work. But most service businesses have one, and stating it as the base rather than burying it in a rule makes the rest of the pricing easier to read.

Groups

A group is a set of rules behind a shared condition. The group’s condition is checked first; if it does not match, none of its rules are even considered.

Groups exist so you don’t have to repeat the same condition on eight rules. If your commercial jobs price differently from your residential ones, make two groups gated on that answer rather than adding “and if commercial” to every rule.

Groups can also be disabled without deleting them, which is the safe way to try a pricing change you might want to reverse.

Order matters

Rules apply in sequence, and a percentage rule takes its percentage of the running total at the moment it fires — not of the base price.

This is the one part of the model worth thinking carefully about. A 20% urgency surcharge placed before a €500 materials rule takes 20% of a total that does not yet include the materials. Placed after, it includes them. Both are legitimate; they are different prices.

Tip

Put percentage rules — surcharges, discounts, tax-like adjustments — last. That way they apply to the complete job, which is almost always what you meant.

Checking your work

The preview in the Widget Builder shows the running total as you answer. Change one answer at a time and watch the number: it is far quicker than reasoning about the rule list, and it catches ordering mistakes immediately.