How to write a price list

To write a price list, group products the way customers order them, give every line a code, a description, a unit and the price paid, and state on every page whether GST is included and when the prices take effect. Then put the things that change the bill, minimum orders, cut offs, discounts and delivery charges, right beside the prices rather than in small print. If consumers can see the list, the displayed price must be the total including GST.

Group by how customers order

A price list is read by someone building an order, not by someone admiring your range. Group lines by how they are bought.

The wholesale price list example on this site is from an invented Melbourne bakery, Ferndale Bakehouse, selling to cafes. It has seventeen products in four groups: sourdough and tin loaves, buns and rolls, pastry baked daily, and frozen par baked lines ordered weekly. The last group sits apart for an ordering reason, not a baking one: those lines are ordered on a weekly cut off and exist because the bakery does not deliver on Mondays.

The same thinking works in any trade. A salon groups by service length because that is how appointments are booked. An electrician groups call out, hourly and fixed price jobs because each is bought differently. A studio’s rate card example groups by role and then by hour, day and booked week, because clients buy time in those three units.

Inside each group, use the same columns in the same order. The bakery uses code, product, pack, unit price and pack price in every table, so a customer who has read one group can read all four.

Show the price actually paid

The most useful column on the bakery list is the one most price lists leave out. Cafes cost a menu from the unit price but pay by the pack, so the list shows both with the pack size between them: a 900 gram country loaf at $6.20 a unit, sold in packs of six, $37.20 a pack. Every pack price is the unit price multiplied by the pack, so the customer never has to do that sum.

Discounts get the same treatment. The bakery offers four volume tiers by weekly spend, from no discount under $600 to 7.5 per cent at $2,400 and over, applied to the following week. Then it works one example: a cafe spending $1,400 a week sits in tier 2, so a $37.20 pack of country loaf invoices at $35.34. The list also says what the discount does not do: it is not applied retrospectively and does not stack with a promotional price.

If you use from pricing, such as haircuts from $45, make sure the from price is genuinely available to an ordinary customer. business.gov.au warns that false or misleading statements about price are illegal even if you believed them correct at the time.

GST and the total price

Australian price display rules are short and strict. business.gov.au states that if you display or advertise prices you must include the total price, including all charges, taxes and fees such as GST, though optional charges such as delivery need not be included. If you show a part price, the total as a single figure must be as noticeable as the part price. Its example is a $100 concert ticket with a $5 booking fee, which must be shown as $105.

A wholesale list sent only to business customers is a different situation in practice. The bakery example prints all prices exclude GST in the footer of every page, beside the effective date, and its contact section gives the GST position. That footer is the minimum. If a list could reach consumers, for example a price list pinned up in a shop or posted on a website, show the GST inclusive price.

Two more rules from the same guidance are worth copying onto the page. A surcharge applying on certain days must be stated, with its percentage and the days it applies. And where an item is shown at more than one price, Western Australia’s consumer protection guidance says the business must sell at the lowest displayed price or withdraw the item until the list is corrected. Old lists left in circulation are how that happens, which is why dates matter.

Put the conditions beside the prices

A price only means something with its conditions: how much you must order, by when, and what delivery costs. The bakery puts four figures in a single strip above the first table: effective 1 September 2026, held until 28 February 2027, a $120 minimum order and a 2pm daily cut off. Everything is baked to order the night before, so the cut off decides whether an order exists at all.

Delivery charges get their own small table rather than a sentence: inner zone free over $250 or $18, outer zone free over $400 or $28, regional corridors $45 a run, each with the suburbs and days it covers.

The remaining conditions are eight numbered rules, each with a short bold heading: order by 2pm, no delivery on Mondays, the Christmas schedule, credit terms, short deliveries credited rather than redelivered, prices held to a date, standing orders and returnable crates. A cafe owner looking for one answer finds it by heading in seconds. The price adjustment clause page covers how to word the rule on changing prices if the list becomes part of a supply contract.

Updates and versions

Every price list is a version. Print the effective date on every page and say how long prices hold. The bakery holds its prices for six months unless flour or butter moves by more than fifteen per cent, gives thirty days notice of any change, and never applies a change to an order already accepted.

Keep old versions. When a customer disputes an invoice, the question is which list applied on the day of the order. business.gov.au’s pricing guidance also recommends checking market prices and trends regularly and testing price options, which is easier when each version is dated and kept.

Common mistakes

• Prices without units. $32.40 means nothing until the reader knows it is a pack of six.
• GST left unsaid. The reader assumes whichever answer suits them.
• Conditions on the last page. Minimums and cut offs change what people pay, so put them first.
• Undated lists. Two lists in circulation with different prices is a multiple pricing problem.
• Discounts described, not calculated. Work one real example.
• Everything in one table. Groups with the same columns scan far faster than one long list.

For the difference between a standing price list and a one off price for a single job, the question page on quotations is the companion, and the post comparing a quote, an invoice and a proforma covers the documents that follow an order. The pricing sheet example shows the software version of the same ideas, with per seat plans and a worked annual total.

Build it

A price list is mostly tables, and the document maker for tables is where to start. Describe the business, the product groups with each line’s code, unit and price, the thresholds, the discount tiers and the delivery zones, and the generator writes and lays out the document; a price list speaks for one sender, which is the kind of document a letterhead is reserved for. Check every pack price and discount example yourself before sending, because the arithmetic on a price list is the part customers test first.

The guide to every document component covers tables, key values blocks for the thresholds row, and callouts for a rule such as the allergen statement. Documents download as a PDF rendered on the server, which is the version to date, send and keep.