Effective-dated pricing

Effective-dated pricing means every price in a catalog carries the dates from which — and until which — it applies, and publishes are versioned rather than overwritten. The system can answer not just "what is the price" but "what was the price on the day this quote went out," which is what lets a quote from March render in September exactly as the customer received it.

Why it matters

Machinery price books refresh on the manufacturers' schedule, and quotes outlive price lists. Without effective dating, every update silently rewrites history: margins become unexplainable, and an old offer becomes unreconstructable exactly when a customer disputes it.

Common confusion

Effective dating is not a price-change log. A log records that something changed; effective dating makes the historical state addressable — the difference between an audit trail and a time machine for your catalog.

Where we use it

The publish-and-history steps of the price-list update path, and the versioned-snapshot architecture in Where an AI quoting system gets its prices.