A rate card was originally a document provided by a newspaper or print publication containing the organization's rate for advertising. Today, the term rate card is used in other industries to express the costs or fees for products or services presented in a matrix with a set of numbers (prices) laid out in tabular form, in rows and columns. It is easy to manage a single rate card in CRM, using the records of an entity, and integrate it with a Quote report. The rate card prices are merged as a table, in a Word document. It is more difficult to implement multi-layer rate cards in CRM. As an example, a US freight forwarder will have different rate cards for different customers (in the US and Canada) for shipping from different zones, in the US and Canada, to European countries. Each destination country is a rate card with its own destination zones and shipping quantities. When quoting from a multi-layer rate card, you need to select, for a customer, the relevant rate cards, and include them in one price quotation.
The solution offers is based on the Matrix entity. Each record stores the column headers, rows and cells contents of one rate card. We also use a Rate Card Selector entity that provides a mechanism, using dynamic pick lists, to select the relevant cards from over 300 rate cards records.
A Silverlight application imports a CSV file of rate card prices and stores it in a record on the matrix entity. With the aid of another Silverlight application, the user can select and open a matrix card record and display it as a rate card, on the screen. The user can modify the prices, save and click to create Service Rates records which are linked to the quote entity and viewed within the quote form as a grid. Last step in this process, the user selects the print Rate Card quote which inserts the tables in a nicely laid out document as in the following images:
Open Rate Card
Two Rate Cards associated with one Quote
Print Quote
by DNN Integration Dynamics CRM