Markdown management in LS Central: planning and applying clearance pricing

Pricing · 8 min read

A markdown is a pricing decision with a start, a scope, and an end. In LS Central it is not a price someone re-types at the till: it is an offer, built centrally, enabled once, and left to run for its period. Most markdown trouble — wrong items discounted, two offers stacking, a clearance price that never ends — comes from picking the wrong object or skipping the verification step. This guide covers both.

First, pick the right object

LS Central gives you two different markdown vehicles, and they are not interchangeable:

• The Offer (Offer table) works as a price change. It results in a changed price at the POS rather than showing a discount from the former price. Use it when the shelf and the till should simply show the new, lower price — the classic clearance ticket.
• The Discount Offer is a periodic discount: it gives a discount from the regular price. LS Retail counts Discount Offer, Multibuy Discount, and Mix & Match together as Periodic Discounts, and periodic discounts carry higher priority in the discount calculation. Use it when the reduction itself should be visible as a discount — a seasonal percentage off, for example — rather than absorbed into the price.

That single choice drives everything downstream: how the reduction appears on the receipt, how it reports, and where it sits when other prices compete for the same line.

Offer vs Discount Offer

If you cannot say which column you want before you open the system, stop and decide. Rebuilding a live markdown in the other object mid-event is how errors get in.

Plan before you touch the system

Write these four decisions down first — on paper is fine:

• Scope. Offer lines can target a single item, a product group, an item category, or all items, and a special group can be selected. Items can also be kept out with the Exclude check box — the standard pattern for “the whole category except this line.” Decide the scope and the exclusions together, not as an afterthought.
• Period. A validation period can be set on all offer types; with no validation period, the offer is not restricted by a time period at all. A clearance markdown without an end is not a clearance — it is a silent permanent price cut.
• Audience. Triggers limit which customers can benefit from an offer; if no trigger fields are filled in, the offer is valid for all customers. Leave triggers empty only when “everyone” is genuinely the intent.
• Depth. On a Discount Offer, the Benefits FastTab percentage or amount applies to all lines as the default and can be edited per line — so plan the standard depth and the exceptions, instead of editing line by line and losing the pattern.

One more planning note: LS Central pricing is built on the Business Central price structure, and an item can hold multiple prices valid on different dates or times. A markdown sits on top of that structure — it does not replace the item's regular retail price, and the regular price is what the markdown is measured against.

Apply it: the procedure

1. Build the offer in Disabled status. Offer information and settings can only be changed while the offer is Disabled, and only Enabled offers are sent to — and triggered on — the POS terminals. Create the Offer or Discount Offer, add the lines (item, category, product group, or special group), set the exclusions, the benefit, and the validation period.
2. Set the trigger deliberately. For a spend-threshold markdown, set the Amount to Trigger on the Triggers FastTab: the periodic offer fires only when the total sale is over that amount and the other requirements are fulfilled. Otherwise, confirm the trigger fields say what you planned — including “valid for all customers” if that is the decision.
3. Review it as a customer would. Check the scope against the plan: every included group, every excluded item, the start and end of the validation period. Starting and ending dates are visible in the Validation Period FactBox — use it.
4. Enable it once. Change the status from Disabled to Enabled. That is the act that sends the offer to the POS terminals. Do not enable a draft to “test it live” on a production terminal.
5. Verify at the POS and in Price Overview. Ring a test-scope item and confirm the price or discount matches the plan. Then open the item in the Price Overview page (from the Price Overview Item List): it manages retail and customer prices including price changes from promotions, and shows whether the item is part of an active offer.
6. Close it out on purpose. When you need to modify or delete the offer, change the status back to Disabled first. And note the trap: statistics on a discount offer cannot be updated if the offer is modified — LS Retail advises disabling the offer you want to modify and creating a new one instead, so the new markdown keeps clean statistics.

What success looks like: every in-scope item rings at the planned price or discount, out-of-scope and excluded items ring at their regular price, the offer shows as active for the item in Price Overview, and the validation period end date is set — so the markdown stops by itself instead of being remembered.

What wins when prices overlap

Markdowns rarely run alone. LS Central resolves the competition in a fixed order, documented on the Price Overview page:

1. The Retail Price is found first — the most specific price in the store in question, after all valid promotions are calculated.
2. A Periodic Offer that applies is calculated next, against that retail price.
3. If no periodic offer applies and the sale is connected to a customer with a special price, that price or discount is compared with the retail price — the customer gets the better of the two. (That customer layer is covered in our guide to customer-specific pricing.)
4. A Deal overwrites all the other offers.

The price that comes out of that chain is then the basis for the remaining offer calculations, including Line Discount Offers and Total Discount Offers. For overlapping Discount Offers, Multibuy, and Mix & Match, priority can be set up explicitly — change it by drilling down on the Priority value on the General tab. When a markdown “didn't work,” work this list top-down before changing any numbers: often the price itself is correct and something higher in the order is winning.

Close-out and reporting

After the event, the Statistics FactBox on the offer shows the total sales and profit triggered by it — the numbers you need to judge whether the depth was right. That is exactly why the modify-instead-of-recreate trap matters: a mid-event edit breaks the statistics trail for that offer. File the result with the plan (scope, depth, period) so next season's markdown starts from evidence, not memory. When the period ends, confirm the offer is no longer active for its items in Price Overview; an offer that should have ended but is still Enabled is a margin leak, not a rounding error.

FAQ

Should a clearance use an Offer or a Discount Offer? If shoppers should see a new lower price, use the Offer — it works as a price change at the POS. If the point is a visible percentage off the regular price for a dated event, use a Discount Offer.

Why did the POS ignore the markdown? Check status first: only Enabled offers are triggered on the POS, and the validation period may not have started. Then check Price Overview priorities — a Deal, or a higher-priority overlapping offer, may be winning.

Can a markdown be limited to one category except a few items? Yes. Lines can target an item category or product group, and individual items can be kept out with the Exclude check box on the line.

Does a markdown change the item's regular price? No. The markdown operates on the retail price the system finds for the store; the underlying price structure stays in place, which is why the regular price returns when the offer ends or is disabled.

General information only, based on LS Retail's published LS Central documentation as accessed in October 2026. Offer behaviour can vary by version and configuration — verify against your own system before a live event.