QuickBooks Online Price Rules: How to Turn Them On and Set Custom Pricing

QuickBooks Online includes a Price Rules feature that lets you charge different rates for products and services depending on the customer, the item, or other factors. The capability has been rolling out in beta, and a number of users have asked how to switch it on and actually configure a rule. Here is what the accepted community guidance says.

What Price Rules Do

Pricing rules give you control over the amounts that appear on sales forms. You can offer discounts, apply a markup, or charge different rates by item. You can also vary pricing based on which employee performed the work — useful for service businesses where billing rates differ by technician or professional.

The feature applies your defined adjustments automatically when conditions on a sales transaction match a rule you have set up, rather than requiring manual entry on every invoice or estimate.

Availability and Plan Limitations

Because the feature is still in beta, access is limited. Not every QuickBooks Online subscriber can toggle it on yet, and it is explicitly unavailable on two plans:

• QuickBooks Online Simple Start — not supported
• QuickBooks Online Essentials — not supported

If you are on QuickBooks Online Plus or Advanced and do not see the option described below, the beta may not have reached your account yet.

Step 1: Turn On Price Rules

Before you can create any rules, you need to enable the feature in your account settings:

1. Open Settings (the gear icon) and select Account and Settings.
2. Click the Sales tab.
3. In the Products and services section, select Edit.
4. Check the box labeled Turn on price rules Beta.
5. Select Save, then Done.

If that checkbox is missing entirely, you are either on an unsupported plan or the beta has not been extended to your account.

Step 2: Create a Price Rule

Once the feature is active, you build individual rules from the lists area:

1. Go to Settings and select All Lists.
2. Choose Price Rules.
3. Select Create a rule. (For subsequent rules, the button reads New price rule.)
4. Give the rule a descriptive name.
5. Optionally, set Start date and End date fields to control when the rule is in effect.

Targeting Customers and Products

By default, a new price rule applies to all customers and all products and services on your books. You can narrow both:

• Customers — Open the Select customers dropdown and choose Select individually, then add the specific customers you want the rule to cover. If you have customer types defined, you can also target by type.
• Products and services — Open the Select products or services dropdown and pick the specific items the rule should affect.

Setting the Adjustment

The Price adjustment method and Rounding dropdowns control how the rule changes your base prices. You can increase or decrease by a fixed amount or a percentage, and apply rounding so the resulting prices land on clean numbers.

How Rules Behave on Transactions

One detail worth noting: if you change the date or the customer on an existing sales transaction after it has been created, QuickBooks may prompt you to decide whether to apply your price rules or keep the current rates already on the form. You will see two options:

• Keep rates — prevents the price rule from updating the amounts already entered
• Apply price rules — recalculates the line items using the matching rule

Choosing carefully at that prompt matters. Selecting the wrong option can overwrite manually adjusted prices or leave a discount unapplied.

A Note on the Beta Status

Because this is still a beta feature, the interface and behavior may change. Users who rely on price rules heavily should test rules on sample transactions before depending on them across live invoicing. If you need broader help with QuickBooks Online sales and invoicing settings, the configuration options around products, services, and pricing tend to interact — changing one rule can affect forms in ways that are not immediately obvious.