Turning On Centralized Pricing
Centralized pricing gives every item one price across all of your stores, and Back Office walks you through it — comparing your stores' prices first, showing you what disagrees, and letting you decide which price wins before anything changes.
How Centralized Pricing Works
Access requirements. You need settings view access to open Pricing rules, settings edit access to change your pricing structure, and price edit access at every store to activate centralized pricing — because activating writes a price at all of them.
This only applies to multi-store accounts. The "Pricing structure" section appears on the Pricing rules page only when your account has more than one store.
Turning it on is a guided check, not a switch. Back Office compares every item's price at every store, tells you how many are priced differently, and asks how you want those settled. Nothing changes until you press "Activate centralized pricing."
Warehouses count as stores. They're compared alongside your retail stores and get their own column in the comparison.
Prices calculated by a price-level rule aren't compared. A price level is a second price an item can carry for a particular sales channel or customer group, on top of its ordinary retail price; you set them up under "Price levels" further down the same Settings → Pricing rules page. Only your retail prices and the price-level prices you set by hand are checked — rule-calculated prices rebuild themselves from the shared price afterward.
Switching back is instant. Going back to store-specific pricing is a single click and keeps every price exactly as it is.
Where to Access Each Feature
To… | Go to |
Start turning on centralized pricing | Settings → Pricing rules → Pricing structure, then "Centralized pricing" |
Resume or abandon a check already in progress | Settings → Pricing rules — the banner at the top of the page |
Review the run that turned centralized pricing on | Settings → Pricing rules, then "View the completed price consolidation" |
Switch back to store-specific pricing | Settings → Pricing rules → Pricing structure, then "Store-specific pricing" |
Starting the Price Check
Step 1
Go to Settings → Pricing rules and find the "Pricing structure" section at the top of the page.
Step 2
Click the "Centralized pricing" card. It carries the note "We check your prices across stores before turning this on."
Step 3
Wait on the "Centralized pricing" page while the check runs. It reads "Checking prices across [number] stores" and updates on its own when the check finishes.
Choosing How the Shared Price Is Picked
Step 4
Read the heading at the top of the result. If every item already agrees, it reads "Your prices are aligned" and there's nothing to decide — skip ahead to activating.
Step 5
If prices disagree, the heading reads "[number] items priced differently across [number] stores," followed by "Pick how the shared price should be chosen. Nothing changes until you confirm."
Step 6
Under "Resolution strategy," pick one of the four options.
Option | What each item takes |
Use one store's prices | The price from the store you choose as the "Source of truth store." |
Highest price wins | The highest price the item has at any store. |
Lowest price wins | The lowest price the item has at any store. |
Most recently updated price wins | The price that was changed most recently. |
Step 7
If you picked "Use one store's prices," choose a store from the "Source of truth store" list that appears below it. Nothing is previewed until you do.
Step 8
Let the page reload. There's no save button here — each time you change your selection, the preview recalculates and the "Resolved price" column updates.
Reviewing What Will Change
Step 9
Read the comparison table. Every row is one item at one price level, with a column for each of your stores.
Column | What it shows |
Item | The item name, with its SKU underneath — the short product code your catalog uses to identify that item |
Price level | "Retail" for the ordinary price, or the name of the price level |
One column per store | What that item costs at that store today |
Resolved price | The price the item will carry everywhere once you activate |
Step 10
A dash or a $0.00 in a store's column means the item isn't priced at that store. Those items aren't conflicts — they take the price they already have elsewhere, and need no decision from you.
Step 11
If your catalog is large, the table shows only the first 25 items alphabetically and says so. Use "Export CSV" for the complete list.
Step 12
Open the CSV if you want a record before you commit. It lists every item, its SKU, its price level, each store's current price and last cost, and the resolved price.
Activating Centralized Pricing
Step 13
Click "Activate centralized pricing" in the top right. Until you've picked a strategy the button stays greyed out with the hint "Choose a strategy first."
Step 14
Read the confirmation and accept it: "Activate centralized pricing? The prices shown here will apply at every store, and price edits are paused while that happens."
Step 15
Let the CSV download that starts on its own — when there's something to align, Back Office saves you a record of the changes before it applies them.
Step 16
Wait while the prices are written. The page shows "Applying prices across stores" and "Price edits are paused until this finishes. This page updates on its own."
Step 17
Confirm the result. When it's done the page reads "Centralized pricing is on," with a count of how many items now carry one price at every store.
Switching Back to Store-Specific Pricing
Step 18
Go to Settings → Pricing rules and click the "Store-specific pricing" card.
Step 19
That's the whole change — it takes effect immediately, no check runs, and the card tells you "Switching back keeps every price as it is."
What It Looks Like in Back Office
A check in progress follows you back to Pricing rules. A banner sits at the top of the page with "Resume" and either "Abandon" or "Stop." It reads "Checking prices across stores. Centralized pricing turns on once you have reviewed the result." while the check runs, "Centralized pricing is being applied. Price edits are paused until it finishes." while prices are being written, and "You started turning on centralized pricing. Pick up where you left off, or abandon it to keep everything as it is." while it waits on you.
Price edits really are paused while it applies. Try to save a price during that window and you'll get "Prices are being reconciled across stores right now. Finish the reconciliation under Pricing rules, then you can update prices."
Your pricing structure is locked while it applies too. Clicking either card gives you "Centralized pricing is being applied — Wait for it to finish before changing your pricing structure."
Abandoning tells you exactly where it left things. Before anything has been repriced: "Abandon this reconciliation? Your pricing structure and prices stay as they are." Once some items have been repriced but it isn't currently running: "Abandon this reconciliation? Your pricing structure stays as it is, but the items already repriced keep their new price." While it's still applying: "Stop applying centralized pricing? Your pricing structure stays as it is, and any items already repriced keep their new price."
Once it's on, the "Centralized pricing" card is no longer a button. It's shown as selected, described as "Same price across all stores. Edits from any surface update every store," with a link to "View the completed price consolidation."
Pricing screens then say where a price lands. With centralized pricing on, pricing surfaces note that the price applies to all of your stores, and a price field you can't edit explains why — for example, "This price applies to all [number] stores and you have edit access at only some of them."
Troubleshooting
Clicking "Centralized pricing" refuses with "Centralized pricing needs the guided flow": the old one-click switch is being declined. Use the card as described above — it starts the check for you.
"Activate centralized pricing" is greyed out: hover it and you'll see "Choose a strategy first." Pick a resolution strategy — and if you chose "Use one store's prices," pick the source store too.
"Export CSV" is greyed out: same cause. The file's resolved prices come from your strategy, so there's nothing to export until one is picked.
You're told "Prices changed at one or more stores since this check ran": someone edited a price after the check. Abandon this one and start it again so it compares your current prices.
The run stops with "Reconciliation failed part way through": the items already repriced keep their new price. Click "Retry" and it picks up where it stopped — you don't start over.
The check itself fails with "Checking prices failed": nothing was changed. Abandon that one and start it again.
An apply seems stuck and prices are still locked: click "Stop" on the banner. That's the way out, and any items already repriced keep their new price.
You can't start a second check: only one can be open at a time. Clicking "Centralized pricing" takes you back to the one already in progress.
The store you chose as source of truth has no price for an item: a missing or $0.00 price counts as "not priced there," so that item falls back to its most recently updated price from another store.
You get an access error when activating: activating writes a price at every store, so it needs price edit access at all of them — not just the ones you normally manage.