Automating Contract Pricing

 

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• Automating Contract Pricing (Table of Contents)

  • Create a Perpetual Care Line Item
  • Create an Inventory Item
  • Assigning Inventory Item to a Property Type
  • Adding the Property to a Contract

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You can now combine Property Types and the Price Catalog to automatically apply dynamic pricing in your contracts. This makes adding fees like perpetual care, services, and taxes faster and more accurate—saving time and reducing manual calculations.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to:

• Create a Perpetual Care item with dynamic pricing
• Link it to an Inventory item
• Assign the inventory item to a Property Type
• See how everything comes together when adding a location to a contract

Lets break it down:

 

Create a Perpetual Care Line Item

Perpetual Care is a common cemetery fee used to fund ongoing maintenance. This fund may not always be a flat amount, and could base its pricing on contract or property values.

The Perpetual Care item type can a fixed or dynamically changing price type, depending on your needs. Lets walk through setting one up.

 

Step 1

Hover over the "Contracts" icon on the left side menu and select "Price Catalog" 

Step 2

Select the "Perpetual Care" Item type.

Step 3

You can create as many different kind of Perpetual Care items, each with it's own function to calculate the pricing information, and group them based on things like the kind of burials, or sections in your Cemetery.

Select "Add Item", or, create a category, and then select "Add Item" in that category.

Step 4

Lets break down the Item Details and how they work:

* = Required Field

• Name* - The name of the Care item.
• SKU - Stock Keeping Unit number.
• Price*/Percent - Changes based on the Price Calculation Type.
• General Ledger Code - alphanumeric code used to categorize and track financial transactions within a company's general ledger.
• Price Calculation Type - How this item will calculate its price when added to a contract.
  • Fixed - Simply reflects the amount entered in the Price field.
  • Contract Percent - Calculates a percentage of the total price of the Contract (before taxes) and makes that the price of the line item. Adding a Negative percentage will make the item a discount to the total price of the contract.
  • Property Percent - Calculates a percentage of the total price of the Location (before taxes) and makes that the price of the line item. Adding a Negative percentage will make the item a discount to the total price of the Location.
  • Property Percent Of Total- Calculates a percentage of the total price of the location (before taxes), and makes that the price of the line item while also reducing the price of the location by the same amount, keeping the total the same.
  • Function (For Advanced Users) - This feature is useful if you understand JavaScript Syntax. It allows you to write your own function for a custom Price type. For example:

    if ( > 1000) return 100; 
    return  * 0.10;

    This would always return 100 dollars if a location's price was above $1000 and would return 10% of the location price otherwise.
• Description - Description of the item.
• Effective Dates - Set when the item becomes active.

This is especially useful if your fees change depending on the time of the year, due to holidays or anticipated changes in volume. Here's how they work:

• If it is before the Effective Start Date, or after the Effective End Date, then this line item is inactive and will NOT be added to a contract when a location with this property type is added.
• If a Effective Start Date is added but no Effective End Date is added, then the item will become "Active" once the Start Date is reached and will remain active indefinitely.
• If an Effective End Date is added but no Effective Start Date is added, then the item is "Active" immediately and becomes inactive once the End Date is reached.
• If neither a Start or End Date is added, then the Item is always "Active".

Fill in the details and select "Save".

Example: the Item will price itself based on 10% of the full price of the contract it is in, and it will only automatically be added to the contract from 4/7/2025-6/9/2025.

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Create an Inventory Item

Inventory items define the base pricing for property types and allow you to bundle other line items like Perpetual Care or services.

Step 1

Hover over the "Contracts" icon on the left side menu and select "Price Catalog" 

Step 2

Select the "Inventory" Item type.

Step 3

Select "Add Item", or, create a category, and then select "Add Item" in that category.

Step 4

Lets breakdown the Item Details:

• Name: The name of the Inventory item (this will not appear on the contract).
• SKU: Stock Keeping Unit number.
• Price: The cost of the item for the customer. The locations with the property type that this inventory item is assigned to will inherit the Price information entered here. 
• GL Code: General Ledger Code.
• Cost: The cost of the item for the Cemetery.
• Description: description of the Inventory item.
• Toggle whether the item is "Taxable" or "Refundable".

 

Enter the details, and click "Save".

Step 5

Select the Item to see its details.

In this step, we'll add some additional Line Items to add our Perpetual Care, and any other items or fees. 

Under "Additional Line Items", select "Add Line Items".

Step 6

Select the Item Type to browse the item you want to add.

Step 7

First, we'll select our Perpetual care by clicking the "Perpetual Care" type, and selecting the "Check Box" next to the item you want to add.

You can click "Save" here if you're done, or, if you'd like to add another item, you can continue browsing.

Lets also add a Service charge for this Inventory item. 

Select "BACK" and lets browse our Services.

Select the "Services" Item Type.

Find your Service item and select the "Check Box" next to it, then select "Save" if you're done.

Step 8

We have finished setting up our Inventory Item. When the Property Type containing this Inventory item is added to a contract, the property will inherit the Price of $750, and it will automatically include the Mausoleum Service charge of $3925.00, and Perpetual Care at 10% of the total price of the Contract (before taxes).

Now lets setup our Property Types.

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Assign Inventory to a Property Type

Lets combine our Perpetual Care and Inventory item to create the property type for our location.

Step 1

Hover over "Settings" and select "Property Types" from the left side menu.

Property Types are a great way to organize your cemetery locations. This can make searching for your locations much faster by providing an additional parameter to search for:

Examples of property types cemeteries may use are:

• Niche
• Crypt
• Child/Infant
• In-Ground
• Single
• Double

Step 2

Select on the Property Type (or Create a new one).

Step 3

Property types can also contain pricing information. If a location is assigned a Property Type, it will use that pricing logic when the added to a contract.

Select "Assign Pricing":

Step 4

The pricing information can be added using a Line item from your Inventory in your Price Catalog. Browse and select the relevant Inventory item to see it in more detail:

Step 5

The property type will inherit:

• The Price, taxability, and refundability settings from the inventory item.
• All additional line items included in that inventory item.

Select "Assign" to Confirm.

You can make changes anytime by selecting "Change Pricing".

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Add the Property to a Contract

Lets see it in action by adding our property type to the location, then adding it to the contract to be purchased.

Step 1

Search by Location

Step 2

Edit the Details of the burial location to add the Property type and hit "Save".

Step 3

Create, or browse for the contract.

Step 4

Add the property with the added property type to the Contract.

Step 5

The result:

1. The Property is added to the contract with the base price of $750, which it inherited from the Property Type.
2. The Mausoleum Service item was added automatically with it's original fixed price of $3,925.
3. The Perpetual Care is also added and it priced itself based on 10% of the contracts total before taxes ($750 + $3,925 = $4,675 x 0.10 = $467.50)

Success!

You’ve now created an automated, efficient contract pricing setup. With this structure in place, adding properties and their associated fees to contracts becomes as simple as a single click.

You can customize dynamic pricing to suit your cemetery’s needs. If you’d like help setting this up or have any questions, please Submit a Request or email us at support@webcemeteries.com.