Manual Pricing

What is Manual Pricing?

Manual pricing is when humans set and adjust prices through direct decision-making rather than automated calculations. A pricing team analyzes costs, market data, and customer requirements to determine what to charge for each deal or product tier.

This contrasts with automated pricing systems that calculate prices based on predefined rules or algorithms. Manual pricing is standard in B2B SaaS for enterprise contracts, custom implementations, and complex deals that require negotiation and strategic judgment.

Why Manual Pricing Exists

Pricing software could theoretically automate every price decision. But many B2B situations involve factors that resist algorithmic treatment.

Enterprise deals often include custom service levels, non-standard payment terms, or bundled products that don't fit standard pricing tiers. Strategic considerations matter: winning a reference customer in a new industry, displacing a competitor, or establishing a foothold in a new market segment.

Revenue operations teams use manual pricing when the value being delivered varies significantly between customers, when competitive dynamics require flexibility, or when the cost to serve differs enough that standard pricing would be unprofitable or uncompetitive.

How Manual Pricing Works

Manual pricing typically involves several teams and multiple steps.

Research and Analysis

Pricing teams gather data from multiple sources. They review cost structures from finance, competitive intelligence from sales, and market research. For usage-based billing products, they analyze infrastructure costs per unit of consumption. For subscription products, they model customer lifetime value and acceptable payback periods.

The goal is understanding what it costs to deliver the product and what customers are willing to pay.

Price Determination

With data in hand, pricing teams make decisions. They might use cost-plus pricing, starting with costs and adding a target margin. Or value-based pricing, where they estimate the economic value delivered to the customer and price as a fraction of that value.

These decisions happen in pricing meetings where representatives from finance, sales, product, and revenue operations debate tradeoffs. Should you price lower to win market share? Higher to maximize margin? How will this price affect renewal rates?

Implementation

Once prices are set, they need to be updated across systems. Quote templates in the CRM, pricing pages on the website, billing configuration in systems like Meteroid, and contract templates all need updating. This coordination takes time and creates opportunities for error if not managed carefully.

Ongoing Adjustment

Prices don't stay static. Manual pricing requires periodic review. Quarterly pricing meetings examine win rates, margin performance, and competitive moves. Prices get adjusted based on what's working and what isn't.

When Manual Pricing Makes Sense

Manual pricing is most valuable in specific situations.

Complex enterprise deals almost always require manual pricing. When a customer wants custom infrastructure, non-standard support SLAs, or unique payment terms, no automated system can properly evaluate all the factors. A human needs to assess the cost to serve, strategic value, and competitive positioning.

New products without pricing history benefit from manual pricing. You need market feedback to understand what customers will pay. Starting with manual pricing lets you test different price points and models before committing to automation.

Strategic accounts where relationship factors matter often justify manual pricing. Reference customers, partnership opportunities, or market positioning considerations affect pricing in ways that are hard to encode algorithmically.

Complex bundling across multiple products or services typically requires manual evaluation. Each customer's usage patterns and needs differ enough that human judgment improves outcomes.

When to Automate Instead

Manual pricing has limits. It doesn't scale well.

Self-service products with standard tiers should use automated pricing. If customers can sign up and start using your product without talking to sales, the pricing should be automated.

Usage-based billing calculations need automation. When you're billing based on API calls, compute hours, or transactions processed, manually calculating each invoice is impractical and error-prone.

High-volume transactions overwhelm manual processes. If you're processing hundreds or thousands of deals per month, you need automation for the standard cases and reserve manual pricing for exceptions.

Renewal pricing for existing customers usually works better automated. If a customer is renewing with no changes to service level or terms, automated renewal pricing reduces friction and processing time.

Challenges with Manual Pricing

Manual pricing creates operational overhead. Each pricing decision requires hours of analysis, multiple meetings, and cross-functional coordination. For companies with limited pricing resources, this becomes a bottleneck.

Consistency is hard to maintain. Different salespeople or regions may apply discounts inconsistently. Pricing approvals can become a political process rather than an analytical one.

Manual processes introduce error risk. Prices get entered incorrectly into systems. Old pricing sheets get used by mistake. Communication gaps between teams lead to customers getting quoted different prices for the same thing.

Documentation often lags reality. When prices change frequently or deal-specific adjustments are common, keeping pricing documentation current requires dedicated effort. Without it, institutional knowledge lives in people's heads.

Making Manual Pricing Work Better

Organizations can improve their manual pricing processes even without automation.

Clear approval authority prevents bottlenecks. Define who can approve what level of discount or deviation from standard pricing. Sales reps should know when they can make decisions versus when they need escalation.

Standardized templates for pricing proposals reduce errors and save time. Even if each deal requires manual review, starting from a consistent template improves efficiency.

Regular review cycles keep pricing current. Quarterly pricing reviews that examine win rates, margin trends, and competitive intelligence help teams make better decisions.

Documentation of rationale for pricing decisions builds institutional knowledge. When you deviate from standard pricing, document why. Future pricing teams benefit from understanding past reasoning.

The Hybrid Approach

Most successful B2B SaaS companies don't choose between manual and automated pricing. They use both.

Standard product tiers get automated pricing. Customers can see prices on the website and sign up without human intervention. But enterprise deals with custom requirements go through manual pricing processes.

Usage-based billing calculations are automated, but volume discounts for large customers get manually negotiated. Self-service renewals happen automatically, but expansions or plan changes trigger sales involvement.

The key is identifying which decisions benefit from human judgment and which don't. Automate what's standardizable. Reserve manual pricing for situations where strategic context and relationship factors matter.

Billing systems like Meteroid support this hybrid approach by automating standard calculations while providing flexibility for manual overrides and custom pricing arrangements when needed.

Manual Pricing and Revenue Operations

Revenue operations teams increasingly own manual pricing processes. They sit at the intersection of sales, finance, and product, making them natural owners of pricing decisions.

RevOps teams build the systems and processes that enable manual pricing to work at scale. They create pricing calculators that help sales teams quote consistently. They establish approval workflows that balance control with speed. They analyze pricing performance to inform future decisions.

As manual pricing processes mature, RevOps teams also identify opportunities for automation. They see which pricing decisions follow predictable patterns and which truly require human judgment.

Looking Forward

Manual pricing isn't disappearing. As long as B2B relationships involve complex, high-value transactions with strategic considerations, humans will need to make pricing decisions.

But the tools supporting manual pricing continue improving. Better data analysis helps teams make informed decisions faster. Workflow automation reduces implementation overhead. Integration between systems reduces errors.

The companies that excel at pricing combine human judgment on strategic decisions with automation for operational efficiency. They know which prices to set manually and which to automate. They build processes that capture pricing expertise rather than relying on individual knowledge.

Manual pricing remains essential for B2B SaaS companies navigating complex enterprise relationships. The goal isn't eliminating human involvement in pricing. It's making human pricing decisions more informed, consistent, and scalable.