Price list by quantity: how to build a process × quantity-break matrix

By Redazione VERC · 21 agosto 2026 · 9 min read

In many manufacturing companies the price list does not exist as a document. What exists is a folder holding the quotes of the last three years, and when a request comes in you look for the most similar job and adapt it. It works as long as the same person always does the quoting, with the criteria in their head. It stops working the day that person is on holiday, or when the company grows and the people become two.

The price list by quantity structured as a matrix is the tool that solves this problem. It is not just a tidier file: it is a different way of representing price, one that makes quoting repeatable and margin measurable.

In brief

• A price matrix crosses two dimensions: the process in the row and the quantity break in the column. Each cell is a unit price.
• The structure is needed because the unit price in production is not linear: the fixed make-ready costs are spread over different volumes.
• Six to ten breaks cover almost all real cases. Beyond that, you add maintenance without adding precision.
• The rule on in-between quantities should be decided once and codified, not improvised on every quote.
• The real value arrives when the matrix stops being a spreadsheet and becomes the source from which the quote generates itself.

Why the unit price is not linear

Take any process that requires a setup: printing, die-cutting, embroidery, laser cutting, engraving. The total cost is made up of three parts.

• Make-ready cost: machine time and material consumed for the setup. It is fixed, it does not depend on how many pieces you will produce.
• Variable cost per piece: raw material and machine time of the actual production.
• One-off costs: dedicated tooling, matrix, cutting die, plate.

If the make-ready costs 80 euros and the variable cost is 0.12 euros per piece, the unit cost on 200 pieces is 0.52 euros and on 10,000 pieces is 0.128 euros. A fourfold difference on the exact same product.

A price list with a single unit price and a percentage volume discount cannot represent this curve. The discount is linear, the cost is not. The result is that on short runs you work at a loss and on long ones you are out of the market, often without realising it.

The anatomy of the matrix

The minimum structure is this.

The numbers are illustrative. What matters is the logic: each row is a process that can be sold separately, each column is a quantity break, each cell is the unit price of that process at that volume.

The quote becomes a sum of cells. Five thousand boxes printed in four colours, laminated, die-cut and glued: you read four cells in the 5,000 column, add them up, and multiply by the quantity. No recalculation, no formula to rewrite, no risk that two different people arrive at two different numbers.

How many rows

As many as the processes you sell as distinct items. The temptation is to break everything into micro-steps to have more control: this is a mistake. If a step is never sold separately and is never optional, merge it in. A matrix with 60 rows of which 45 are always selected together is a matrix that nobody keeps updated.

How many breaks

Six to ten. The criterion is not mathematical, it is commercial: the breaks must match the quantities your customers actually ask for. Look at the quotes of the last twelve months, sort the requested quantities and see where they cluster. Almost always natural clusters emerge around round numbers.

Choosing the breaks from historical data rather than at a desk has an immediate practical effect: most requests fall exactly on a break, and the problem of in-between quantities almost disappears.

The problem of in-between quantities

The customer asks for 3,700 pieces. The matrix has 2,500 and 5,000. What does the system do?

Option A — lower break. You apply the price for 2,500. It is the prudent choice: the margin is protected, the price is higher. You risk looking expensive on requests just above the threshold.

Option B — higher break. You apply the price for 5,000. You are more aggressive commercially, but you are selling 3,700 pieces at the unit cost of 5,000: if the curve is steep, you lose out.

Option C — linear interpolation. You calculate the proportional price between the two breaks. It is the most correct option from a cost point of view and the hardest to do by hand consistently, which is exactly why it should be delegated to the software.

There is no right answer in absolute terms. There is a right answer for your company, and the rule is that it must be decided once, written down, and always applied. The damage does not come from having chosen option B: it comes from having three salespeople applying three different ones without knowing it.

One-off costs: keep them out of the matrix

Cutting dies, clichés, plates, matrices, samples and dedicated tooling do not belong in the matrix. They follow a different logic: they are paid once, they apply to all future repeat orders, and the decision whether to charge, spread or absorb them is a commercial one, not a price-list one.

Keep them as separate line items in the quote, with three possible states:

• Charged — first order, new customer, product unlikely to come back.
• Amortised — spread over the run, typical when the customer does not want to see the item on the invoice.
• Not charged — a repeat of a job with tooling that already exists.

If you drown these costs in the unit price, in six months you will no longer know why that job had that price, and the repeat order will start from the wrong base.

Why Excel holds up only to a point

A matrix can be built perfectly well in a spreadsheet. The problem is not building it, it is keeping it alive.

When the paper cost rises you have to update the cells of every row that uses that stock, in every file where that price list was copied. When a salesperson prepares a quote, they usually duplicate the file: from that moment there is a copy of the price list that will never receive another update, and that someone will use three months from now.

After a year you have dozens of versions of the same price list scattered across desktops, shared folders and email attachments, and nobody knows which is the good one. This is the point where the matrix stops being a control tool and becomes a source of errors: the subject is explored in depth in managing quotes with Excel: the mistakes that cost margin.

The solution is not a better Excel. It is moving the matrix to a single place, where it is updated once and from which every quote reads it at the moment it is created.

From price list to automatic quote

When the matrix is centralised, quoting changes its nature. The flow becomes:

1. You select the customer, who brings their own conditions (dedicated price list, discounts, currency, payment terms).
2. You select the processes.
3. You enter the quantity.
4. The system reads the cells, applies the rule on in-between quantities, adds the one-off costs and assembles the document.

The time to produce a quote drops from tens of minutes to a few. But the biggest benefit is another: the price becomes a property of the company, not of the person doing the quoting. Whoever answers the request, the number is the same. When you update a row, all future quotes are already updated.

And, something that in Excel is almost never done, you can place next to every price cell the corresponding cost. At that point the quote shows the margin while you are building it, not as a final reckoning three months later. The method for building those costs is described in how to calculate the margin of a job.

Checklist: is your matrix well made?

• [ ] The processes in the rows correspond to items you sell or that the customer can choose not to take
• [ ] The breaks derive from historically requested quantities, not from round numbers chosen at a desk
• [ ] The rule on in-between quantities is written down and the same for everyone
• [ ] The one-off costs are separate line items, with an explicit state
• [ ] There is a single version of the price list and everyone knows where it is
• [ ] For every price there is a corresponding cost, so the margin is visible
• [ ] The update of an input is reflected in a single place
• [ ] The customer-specific price lists are derived from the base price list, not independent copies

If you answered no to more than three items, the price list is already producing errors you have not yet seen.