Tracking Discounts: the difference between Pricebook List and a discounted sale

[MFcsrwire]

We have a situation where we discount  prices in three different Customer types.  We have our standard price book and then three discounted price books, one for each customer type. Accounting has requested that the standard price as well as the discounted price both be in the opportunity so that we can have a formula field that calculates the difference between those prices, the discount given.  That of course can then be reported on.

Any ideas on the best  practice to accomplish this?

[echeung]

Hi,

How about if you store the standard price not only in the Standard price book, but also as a custom field on the Product object?

You may need to create a workflow rule to pull in the custom field from the Product to the OpportunityProduct when you add it to the Opportunity, but then you have the double benefit of

- your users still get the benefit of using the discounted pricebook when adding products; and 

- you get to report on the discount provided from standard list, as well as any incremental discount offered from the "discounted list"

The potential downside to this is if you use multiple currencies.  You would need as many custom fields as you have currencies, but if you are all in one currency, then this should not matter