Preparing a trade price list and margin sheet a distributor can read in two minutes

A trade price list that works fits on one page and answers four questions. What does the product sell for? What does the buyer pay? What does the buyer keep? What must the buyer order? Put MRP, trade price, margin in rupees and per cent, scheme and minimum order in one table. Add a validity date and say whether GST is included. A page like that gets forwarded inside a distributor's shop, while a long catalogue stays in a drawer.

Who reads it and where

It rarely gets read at a desk. A distributor's salesman forwards a photo of it to a shopkeeper, or the owner shows it to a partner who was not at the meeting. So it must survive a phone screen and a quick glance. Big numbers, few columns, no marketing paragraphs.

Write for the person who will ask, "What do I earn if I buy a carton?" If they cannot see the answer in two minutes, the sheet has failed.

The layout

Use one row per pack, not one row per product family. A distributor stocks packs, not ranges. Typical columns:

Beneath the table, three lines in plain words: validity date and version number ("Version 3, valid to 31 March"), whether prices include GST, and the delivery and payment terms. When a price changes, issue the next version and ask distributors to discard the old one. Above the table, your brand name, a product photograph and your phone or WhatsApp number.

Leave out your company history, certificates and slogans. They belong in the introduction, not on the sheet that earns the order.

Get the margin sums right

Many price-list arguments are arithmetic arguments. Here is one set of figures for a dish scrub pack. They are illustrative, not a recommendation of any rate.

The retailer can say "my margin is 20" (of MRP) or "my margin is 25" (on what was paid), and the distributor "10" or "about 14". All four are right, because the bases differ. Settle it by showing rupees per piece at each level. Then state once, at the foot of the sheet, "Percentages are on MRP."

If tax is included in MRP but not in the trade price, say so in the same place. Check how GST applies to your own invoices with your accountant. The sheet only needs to say what your price includes.

Schemes: keep them simple enough to forward

A scheme is a discount in disguise, and its wording decides whether it is understood. "Buy 10 cartons, get 1 free" is clear. "₹2 off per piece above 500 pieces on prepaid orders during the promotion" is not. Give a scheme a start and end date, state whether it combines with another, and show what it works out to per piece. If you cannot show that, the scheme is too complicated.

Do not run permanent schemes. A scheme that never ends becomes the price, and the real price becomes a loss.

Minimum order and the rest of the terms

State the smallest order you will send, by carton and by value, and what you charge for delivery under it. Put payment terms in one line. If you give credit to some and not others, do not print that on a sheet that travels; keep credit terms in your agreement. For a variant aimed at a different buyer, see trade price lists for garages and mechanics. What to offer above the list is covered in dealer incentives that do not damage margins.

For example: a Panipat maker of microfibre cloths

Imagine a small maker in Panipat with three pack sizes of microfibre cleaning cloths (the maker and the figures are invented). The first sheet is a four-page brochure with the founder's story, and the rates sit in a footnote. A distributor in Jalandhar glances at it and says they will call. They do not.

The maker asks a friend in the trade why. The answer is blunt: the distributor could not find the margin without a calculator, and nobody on the beat would have read four pages. So the maker redoes it as one page. Three rows, one per pack. Each row shows MRP, the distributor's price, the retailer's price, the rupee margin at each step, pieces per carton and a minimum order of five cartons, about ₹12,000. There is a single scheme for ten cartons, a validity date and a line saying percentages are on MRP.

The distributor photographs the sheet and sends it to two salesmen. When a retailer queries a margin, the salesman answers from the sheet in one sentence. The first order is only five cartons, and one retailer still wants a better rate than the sheet allows, so the maker holds the line and loses that shop. The earlier silence was a missing number, not the price.

Mistakes that kill a good list

• Printing MRP and trade price but no margin, so the buyer has to do the sum.
• Leaving off the date, so an old sheet keeps circulating after prices change.
• Mixing GST-inclusive and exclusive prices on the same page.
• Listing forty items when the distributor will stock four. Start with the packs you most want sold.
• Giving different sheets to different distributors in the same town, then being found out.

Try it on one distributor first

Draft the sheet, show it to one distributor and ask them to tell you, in their own words, what they would earn on a carton. If they need more than two minutes, cut the page. When the layout holds, produce it as a PDF and as a photo-friendly image.

Then check the sums on your own best-selling pack at both levels, in rupees, before you design anything. Makers of everyday goods will find the wider picture on our consumer products manufacturing sales and marketing page. If setting the numbers is the hard part, pricing and packaging strategy is that work, and you can tell us what you need.