Despite my desire to get to a single hourly rate system, I still offer a discount to my those long-standing clients who have been with me for years.

In my new Microsoft Office SBA program, I figured I’d handle this with a % discount under the Price Level functionality.

So…

I get the invoice template all customized and pull in my first client’s billing to test the invoice. He’s one that gets the “longevity” discount. And, there’s my standard rate. And it STAYS there.

So I begin research…I went to the Microsoft site, which was sadly lacking in “tech support” type info for this new package.

I Googled it. Nothing.

I thought maybe it was me, so I went back to double check my price level settings. I even pulled up a new client invoice and had the same problem.

After quite a bit of time, I gave up and used the discount option on the invoice… but it haunted me. I didn’t want a bunch of “discounts” showing up in my books. I wanted to keep the new system clean and streamlined. Afterall, making things clean and integrated is why I undertook this mess at the beginning of this year, right? And it’s still not tweaked to suit me…

After revisiting all my searches and struggling with it, I went down and switched it to a tester Price Level I had created initially… and it WENT to that price level.

When I switched it back to the preloaded price level for the long-term client, Voila! It then registered the new price level.

MS Small Business Accounting will pre-load a specific price level for a given client (something you set in the details tab of the individual client) — but it won’t apply that price level until you click OFF of the price level at the invoicing level (it’s in the lower right hand corner) and then re-select the right price level.

As I go through this hair-jerking-out process, I figured I’d share with others. After all, maybe someone else trying to Google this, will hit on my blog.

I wish someone had written about this when I was looking!

Now, it’s time to get back to setting up my banking online… sigh.

*Am a word person… and am hating life while I’m forced to be a bean counter!* Grrrrr.