Multi-location aftermarket businesses face a constant tension: should every location charge the same, or can they vary by market? The right answer is "constrained variance" — HQ sets a price floor and a discount cap, locations adjust within them.
The inheritance model
SalesThumb HQ works on two levels:
1. HQ catalog — each service's base price, set at the org level 2. Location overrides — unless HQ locks pricing for a service, each shop can override that base price for itself
On top of that, HQ can define network-wide pricing rules that bound what any location is allowed to charge — a price floor and a maximum discount, per service category or service name.
Step 1 — Set the HQ catalog base price
HQ → Catalog is a shared template you push out, not a live-inherited base price. Add a service once with a name, category, starting price, and duration, then click Push to N shops to create it at every location that doesn't already have a matching service. Once a service exists at a shop, that shop's price is its own from then on — pushing again only fills in shops still missing the service, it never overwrites a shop's existing price (unless HQ has locked that service's pricing, in which case the shop can't change it at all).
Step 2 — Set network pricing rules (floor + discount cap)
HQ → Pricing Rules. For a service category or a specific service name, you can set:
- Minimum price — the floor. Locations can charge more, never less.
- Max discount — a cap on how much any location can discount that service, expressed as a percentage.
There's no "recommended" middle tier and no ceiling — just a floor and a discount cap. Add a rationale note so the rule makes sense to whoever's reading it later. (There's no way to set a start/end date on a rule from this screen today — it stays in effect until you disable or delete it.)
Example: set a $1,800 floor and a 10% max discount on Full Front PPF, and no location can quote it below $1,620 (10% off the floor) under any circumstance.
Step 3 — Per-location price overrides
At the location level: Settings → Services → each service shows whether HQ has locked its price ("Pricing locked by HQ — your franchisor controls service pricing") or left it open for the location to set its own price, subject to the network pricing rules from Step 2. There's no approval workflow, and nothing stops a location from typing a below-floor price into Settings → Services — the floor and cap aren't enforced there. They're enforced later, when that service is added to a quote: SalesThumb automatically caps the discount on that line so the net price can't come in under the floor or the discount can't exceed the cap.
Step 4 — Service catalog variance
If a location genuinely doesn't offer a service (say, a tint-only shop with no PPF bay), leave that service's price at $0 or don't quote it — SalesThumb doesn't have a per-location "hide this service from the catalog" toggle today, so an unused service will still exist in that location's catalog, just unquoted.
Step 5 — Reporting variance
Use your existing reports (revenue and margin by location, from the HQ reporting surfaces) to spot patterns manually:
- A location consistently pricing near your floor is worth a look — are they slipping below what the market supports, or is that genuinely their market rate?
- A location discounting heavily and often may have more discretion than you want it to have — SalesThumb's discount control today is the org-wide max-discount rule from Step 2, not a tiered per-role permission, so if front-desk staff are discounting more than you'd like, that's a training/process fix rather than a settings toggle.
Common questions
### Should all locations have the same price?
It's tempting from a brand-consistency standpoint but rarely optimal. Different markets bear different prices. A $89 detail in Seattle = $69 detail in Birmingham at equivalent margin.
The exception: customers who travel between locations need a consistent experience. If a customer books at HQ for $189 and then goes to location 2 expecting the same service, getting charged $229 will damage trust.
The middle path: same service, modest price variance (10-20% max), explicit per-location pricing visible on the booking page.
### What about service quality variance?
Pricing variance is fine; service variance is not. Every location should deliver the same quality at the price they charge. If location 3 is cheaper because their tint installer is less skilled, that's a problem — customers notice.