# Introduction - Rate Lists

A rate list overrides an item's own price for a chosen customer, vendor or document.

**Video coming soon:** Building a contract rate list, and watching it fill in a rate on an order.

An item carries one selling price and one cost price. A rate list is how the same item goes out at a different number for a contract account without anybody editing the item or remembering a discount by hand.

![The Rate Lists screen, subtitled Manage markup and per-item rate lists. Columns read Name, Type, Details, Currency, Rounding, Status and Created At. Rows include Rossendale Supply Agreement and OEM Contract Rates 2026 typed Unit Pricing with Per Item Rate details, and Ex-Works Collection Discount at 4.00 per cent Markdown, Scotland and Islands Carriage Uplift at 6.00 per cent Markup, Crown Commercial Framework RM6174 at 12.50 per cent Markdown and Trade Tier 3 UK National Accounts at 15.00 per cent Markdown, all typed All Items and priced in GBP.](https://www.sorviai.com/help/inventory/rate-lists/rate-lists-list.png)

*Fourteen lists on one screen. Type says how the rate is worked out; Details says by how much.*

## Two shapes of list

The Type column separates them, and the choice is made once when the list is created.

- **All Items** (a percentage): Marks every item up or down by one figure. New items are covered automatically, because the list names no items at all.
- **Individual Items** (shown as Unit Pricing): Names the items and their exact rates. This is what a negotiated contract usually is, and an item absent from the list keeps its own price.

> **Warning:**
>
> **A per-item list goes stale quietly**
>
> An item added to the catalogue after the list was built is not in it, so it sells at its own price with no warning. Percentage lists do not have this problem, which is the main thing they have going for them.

## Sales and purchases both

A list applies to one side or the other, never both at once. The Transaction Type is set on the list and cannot be mixed.

| Transaction type | Attached to | Fills the rate on |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Sales | A customer | Sales orders and invoices |
| Purchase | A vendor | Purchase orders and bills |

## What it changes, and what it does not

| Rate lists change | Rate lists do not change |
| --- | --- |
| The rate on a document line | The item's own selling or cost price |
| What a named customer is charged | What the item is valued at |
| What a named vendor charges you | Stock on hand, in any depot |
| The default, still editable per line | Anything already posted |

This is worth being clear about because the two look alike on screen. A rate list is a pricing decision; valuation is what your stock is carried at, and it comes from what you actually paid on the receives that brought the goods in. Changing a rate list never moves a valuation.

> **Note:**
>
> **Rate lists have to be turned on**
>
> The field only appears on documents once rate lists are enabled under item preferences. A second setting decides whether one document can mix rate lists line by line, and it is off by default.