Managing the European Price Indication Directive in Shopify

The European Price Indication Directive (PID) may apply to merchants selling in the European Economic Area and can require merchants that announce a price reduction to show the lowest price they previously charged for the product within the last 30 days. In this article we'll cover two ways to implement this automatically on your Shopify store with the Ablestar Bulk Product Editor.

Note: This article explains how to automatically display a product's lowest price for the last 30 days (the 'prior price'). Your are still responsible for reviewing and using the information appropriately. Nothing here is legal advice. You can read some more about the European PID on Shopify's help site.

How to show the lowest price for the past 30 days

When you have the Ablestar Bulk Product Editor installed it keeps track of each time your products prices are change. You can view the price history for a product by going to a variant in the Shopify admin and selecting More actions → View price history from the menu at the top of the page.

Because the app stores the price history it's able to return the lowest price for a product in the last 30 days (provided that the app has been installed that long). This value can be used in edits so you can set a field in Shopify to be equal to the product's prior price.

There's two ways you can store the prior price:

• As the 'Compare Price' for a variant - this is the quickest way to show the value but provides less flexibility
• As a metafield - this allows you to customize your theme and show the prior price where you want to

There are also two ways that you can set the prior price with the Ablestar Bulk Product Editor. You can use either:

• An in-app edit that you run manually each time you update your prices
• Automatic product rules so the prior price is automatically updated as soon as your prices change

Creating a metafield definition to store the prior price

If you want to store the prior price in a metafield you need to define that metafield in the Shopify admin first. To do this:

1. Open up the Shopify Admin and go to Settings -> Metafields
2. Click on Variants and then on the Add definition button to create a new metafield definition
3. Enter a name for the metafield and set it's type to 'Decimal'. Click on Save to save the definition
4. Open up the Ablestar Bulk Product Editor and go to Settings -> Metafields in the left-hand menu
5. Click on Refresh button in the 'Metafields Definitions' section. This will ensure the app is aware of the new metafield

Setting the prior price with an in-app edit

You can perform an in-app edit to manually set the prior price (the lowest price for the last 30 days):

1. In the app, search for the products you want to edit. All products will be included by default
2. Click on the Edit Products button at the top of the page
3. Click on the 'Field to Edit' button (or press enter) to choose the field to edit. This will either be the 'Compare Price' field or the new metafield you created before
4. In the 'How to edit' dropdown select 'Set to lowest price from last x days'
5. Verify that the data in the preview looks correct and click on Run Edit

The app will now go through and set the field you chose (either the 'Compare Price' or your new metafield) to the variant's lowest price for the last 30 days. If you use this method to show the prior price you will need to repeat the process if your prices change.

Setting the prior price with an automatic product rule

You can use automatic product rules to have the prior price be automatically updated whenever your prices change. This means you will no longer have to run an in-app edit each time you update your prices. To use automatic product rules:

1. In the app, search for the products you want to edit. All products will be included by default
2. Click on the Create Rule button at the top of the page
3. In the 'Add Modification' popup that appears, choose the 'Compare Price' or your metafield from the 'Field to Edit' drop down
4. In the 'How to edit' drop down select 'Set to lowest price from last x days' and click on Add Modification
5. Add a title to your rule and click on Save Changes at the top of the page. This will create your new product rule
6. After the rule is created, click on the Run button. This will run the rule against all matching products to set the initial prior price.

Now the app will wait for price changes and automatically update the prior price if it sees a new lower price.

Caveats

The app can only see the price history for a price while it is installed. If you install the app today, it cannot see what the price was for a variant from last week. If you want to include prices from before the app was installed you can temporarily change the prices to their older values and then revert the change. This way the app will have a record of that lower price.

Displaying the compare-at price in the European Union

By default Shopify will hide the compare-at prices for visitors from the European Union if your primary market is outside of the EU. You can change this setting by:

1. Going to the Shopify admin
2. Navigating to Settings → Markets → Preferences
3. Unchecking the checkbox for "Hide compare-at prices for European Economic Area (EEA) customers".

This will show the compare-at prices to all visitors. Note that if your primary market is in the European Union the compare-at prices will always be shown.