Rule scope: merchant, vendor, PO & one-off
When you teach Tangerine Star something, you decide how far it reaches. The same decision — say, "round prices to .95" — can apply to just one product, everything from a vendor, one purchase order, or your entire catalog. Choosing the right scope is what turns a fix into a rule that keeps paying off.
The four scopes
Store (merchant)
Applies to every product in your catalog, now and going forward. This is your default behavior — set on the Rules hub.
Vendor
Applies to everything from one supplier. The natural home for most rules, since a vendor's quirks are consistent across their orders.
This PO
Applies to the order in front of you — a one-time correction for this document without changing anything else.
One-off
Applies to a single product or line — just this item, nothing else.
How you choose
When Tory previews a change, she asks how wide to apply it. Pick the scope that matches the reason for the change:
- The name is wrong on this one item? One-off.
- This vendor always jams the size into the title? Vendor.
- You want every product to round to .95? Store.
Which rule wins
Scopes can overlap — you might have a store-default markup and a special rule for one vendor. When they do, the more specific scope wins. For pricing, the ladder is:
Vendor-supplied price
If you accept a vendor's price, it beats everything.
Vendor rule
A rule scoped to that vendor beats your store default.
Store default
Your catalog-wide default applies when nothing more specific is set.
The same "most specific wins" idea holds across the rule families: a vendor rule overrides your store default; a change you make to a single product overrides the vendor rule for that item.
Seeing it all
Two views keep scope honest:
- The Rules hub lists your store defaults and flags "Vendors with special pricing" — every exception to your default, in one place.
- Each vendor page shows the rules resolved for that supplier, and warns you when recent POs are arriving with prices that override the rule you set.