Set a floor price and discounts

Read time: 5 minutes. Last updated: July 3, 2026 Who it's for: Merchants who want to protect their margin during negotiation - setting a floor they won't price below, applying discounts, and understanding how the floor guards both manual sends and automation.

A negotiation is only safe to run at volume if you know your offers can't drift below your margin. QuotWay's price floor is a maximum discount below your catalog price - a line you set once and every send, manual or automated, is checked against. This article covers where to set it, what it does in the proposal editor and in automation, and how discounts fit in.

What is the price floor?

The price floor is the deepest discount below catalog you'll allow, expressed as a percentage. A 20% floor means no line should be priced more than 20% below its catalog price. It's checked per line - one deep-discount line can't hide inside an otherwise full-price quote - and against the right baseline: for Shopify B2B (company) quotes, that's the buyer's company-location catalog price when one exists.

Set it in two places:

Shop-wide default - Settings → General → "Price floor - default max % below catalog". One number that covers everything; leave it empty for no floor.
Per automation rule - auto-send and auto-accept rules each have their own Price floor field. A rule's floor overrides the shop default, so a "small orders" rule can run tighter (or looser) than the rest of your automation.

It's a guardrail, not a price the buyer sees.

What does the floor do when I send a proposal myself?

The proposal editor warns you and asks before it lets a below-floor price out the door:

Any line priced below the floor shows a Below floor warning badge with the exact discount ("18.5% below catalog - your floor is 15%") while you edit.
When you hit send, QuotWay checks every line. If any are below the floor, the send pauses and lists them - sending takes an explicit "Send below floor anyway" confirmation.
A confirmed below-floor send is recorded in the quote's Activity trail, so a deliberate exception is always visible later.

A mistake can't slip through, but a deliberate exception takes one click - the floor never hard-blocks a decision you make on purpose. Draft saves are never gated, and lines without a catalog price (like custom lines) aren't flagged - you're looking right at them. The editor safeguard works on every plan.

How does the floor interact with automation?

Automation rules can respond to a quote for you - and the floor is what makes that safe:

Auto-send and auto-accept check every line before acting. If any line is priced below the effective floor (the rule's own floor, or your shop default), the rule skips and the quote waits for a human. The skip shows up in the Automation page's Recent activity with the reason "under-floor", so you can always see why a rule held back.
Auto-send can counter at the floor instead. Each auto-send rule has a "When a line is below the floor" choice: Skip and wait for a human (the default) or Counter at the floor price - the offending lines are re-priced to exactly the floor and the proposal goes out. The buyer sees your price next to what they asked, exactly like a manual re-price.
Auto-accept never counters. It only ever closes a deal at the price the buyer themselves requested - a below-floor ask always waits for you.
A rule that can't verify the floor (a line with no catalog price) also skips. Automation never prices blind.

⚠️ Automation, including auto-send and auto-accept, requires the Professional plan or higher. The shop-wide floor setting and the proposal-editor safeguard work on every plan.

You can also use the floor as a condition: the "Deepest line discount %" condition matches on the single deepest line discount in a quote, so you can auto-decline requests that ask far below your floor, or add an approval step for proposals that price close to it. It's available in automation rule conditions and in approval workflow steps.

QuotWay never uses AI to set or negotiate prices; automation is rule-based, with conditions you define. For the auto-accept action and its safety conditions, see Automation rules.

What discount types can I apply?

In the proposal editor you control pricing at two levels:

Per line - edit any line's unit price directly. The editor shows each line's catalog reference (and a margin hint on B2B quotes), so you can give a deeper cut on one product and leave another at list.
Whole quote - apply one quote-level discount, either a percentage or a fixed amount, on top of the line prices.

Both flow into the proposal total and into the version diff, so both sides can see exactly what moved between rounds. Discounts and the floor work together: the discount sets what you're offering this round; the floor is the boundary every round is checked against.

How does hide-price relate to floor price and discounts?

Hide-price and the price floor solve different problems:

Hide-price controls what buyers see on your storefront before they request a quote - you can hide a product's price and show the Request a quote button instead. Available on the Starter plan and above (a visual hide); on Professional and above, search-engine-safe hiding also keeps the price out of the page source and structured data for signed-out visitors.
The floor and discounts control the numbers inside a proposal, after a quote request comes in.

They're complementary. Hiding the storefront price brings buyers into the quote flow without anchoring them to a list price; the floor and discounts then govern how you price the proposal you send back. See Add the quote button to your store for how the storefront button and hide-price work together.

Build and send a proposal - where you set unit prices, discounts, and expiry.
Counter-offers and buyer prices - keep every counter inside your floor.
Approval workflows - add a sign-off step when a discount needs approval.