Decoration Pricing

Decoration Pricing controls how DecoNetwork calculates the decoration component of product prices and order totals across your webstore and Business Hub. By setting this up correctly, you protect your margins, keep customer pricing consistent, and reduce manual adjustments during quoting and production.

In this article

• Prerequisites
• Why decoration pricing matters
• Step 1: Open Decoration Pricing
• Step 2: Choose a Contract Price Level
• Step 3: Choose a Pricing Mode
• Step 4: Choose a pricing method (common options)
• Step 5: Optional: Combine quantities for price table breaks
• Step 6: Configure process-specific options
• Step 7: Save your changes
• Best-practice tips
• Troubleshooting
• FAQs
• Additional Resources

Prerequisites

Why decoration pricing matters

• Profit protection: ensures decoration charges reflect production effort (setup, ink/stitches, complexity) so you don’t undercharge.
• Consistent quoting: makes quotes and order totals predictable across webstore and Business Hub.
• Cleaner workflows: reduces manual overrides and “why is this order priced differently?” investigations.
• Customer clarity: helps customers understand why a dark garment, larger print, or higher quantity changes price.

Step 1: Open Decoration Pricing

1. Log into your DecoNetwork Website.

2. Go to Admin → Decoration Processes.

   

   

3. Select Decoration Pricing.

   

Step 2: Choose a Contract Price Level

Contract Price Level is available on Premium & Enterprise plans. Contract price levels let you maintain multiple selling tiers (e.g., Retail, Wholesale, VIP) and apply different decoration pricing rules per tier. The levels are defined via Admin → Products → Contract Price Levels. (See the Contract Price Levels help article for instructions).

1. In the Contract Price Level section, select the radio button for the tier you want to configure.

   
2. Repeat the pricing setup steps below for each tier you plan to offer.

Step 3: Choose a Pricing Mode

Pricing Mode determines the overall approach DecoNetwork uses to calculate decoration charges across the decoration processes you support.

1. In the Pricing Mode section, select an option:

   • Flat Pricing

     
     • How it works: You enter one flat fee and DecoNetwork applies that fee consistently when the process is used.
     • Why choose it: Flat pricing is ideal when you want a simple, predictable decoration charge (especially for early setup, smaller catalogs, or when production costs don’t vary much by design size/color/quantity). It reduces complexity and makes pricing easy to explain to customers.

     Good fit for: “One-price” decoration offerings, early-stage setups, or when you plan to manage edge cases manually.

   • Advanced Pricing

     If you want more flexibility in pricing, select Advanced Pricing, which will reveal configuration options for each supported decoration process.

     • How it works: You enter one flat fee and DecoNetwork applies that fee consistently when the process is used.
     • Why choose it: Flat pricing is ideal when you want a simple, predictable decoration charge (especially for early setup, smaller catalogs, or when production costs don’t vary much by design size/color/quantity). It reduces complexity and makes pricing easy to explain to customers.

     Note: Not all pricing methods are available for all processes (e.g., embroidery has stitch-based options).

Step 4: Choose a pricing method (common options)

With Advanced Pricing enabled, each decoration process can use a pricing method. The options below are common to most processes (process-specific options are covered later).

• Single Price

  

  How it works: Set a single fee per decoration area used (e.g., $5 per placement).

  Why use it: Use Single Price when your decoration cost is primarily driven by “number of placements” rather than size, garment color type, or complexity. It’s the simplest advanced option and is easy to explain and predict.

• White/light/dark

  

  How it works: Set different fees depending on whether the product color is classified as White, Light, or Dark. The fee will be applied each time the decoration process is used on a product. 

  Why use it: Many print workflows cost more on dark garments (e.g., underbase/pretreat/extra passes). This option lets you reflect those cost differences automatically and keeps pricing fair and consistent across your catalog.

  Why you might skip it: If your workflow cost does not meaningfully change by garment color type, a Single Price may be simpler and sufficiently accurate.

  Important: This method is not available for Embroidery.

• Area Pricing Single

  

  How it works: Charge by the decorated area (per square unit) with an optional Minimum price per decoration area. The minimum price is applied when it is more than the price calculated for the area used.

  Why use it: Area pricing is ideal when cost scales with print size (e.g., larger prints use more ink/time). It improves price accuracy without needing complex tables, while the minimum price protects you from undercharging on small prints.

  Area calculation determines how the area is calculated:

  • Calculate from actual graphic size – uses the actual area covered by the graphic. This option is better when you want pricing to reflect the true printed coverage. 
    Why: more accurate for designs with irregular shapes and transparent space.
  • Calculate from bounding box of graphic – uses the rectangle around the design’s max width/height. 
    Why: simpler and more predictable, and can better reflect setup/handling time for “wide” designs even if the filled area is smaller.

  Important: This method is not available for Embroidery.

• Area Pricing White/Light/Dark

  

  How it works: Combines area-based pricing with color-type pricing (White/Light/Dark), plus minimum price and graphic-area calculation selection.

  Why use it: This is a strong option when both size and garment color materially affect cost (e.g., larger prints on dark garments require more time/materials). It reduces manual overrides and keeps pricing aligned with production reality.

  Important: This method is not available for Embroidery.

• Price tables

  

  How it works: Select an existing price table, or click Add Price Table to create one.

  If no tables have been configured, the message, "You have no tables defined. Click here to create a price table." is displayed. Clicking on the link lets you configure one immediately.

  

  Why use it: Price tables are best when you need structured pricing that changes by quantity breaks and/or complexity variables (depending on the process). They’re ideal for trade/wholesale customers, larger runs, and situations where you want consistent, repeatable breakpoints rather than manual quoting.

  Good fit for: Screen printing runs with clear quantity breaks, embroidery stitch-based pricing, or any workflow where volume materially reduces unit cost.

  Further details about Price Tables can be found in the price table articles tailored to each specific decoration process that uses them.

Step 5: Optional: Combine quantities for price table breaks

Determine price table quantity break using all placements of the same uploaded design file groups quantity breaks based on the total number of placements that use the same uploaded design file across decoration areas.

Why use it: This helps you price larger runs more naturally when the same logo/design is repeated across multiple placements (e.g., left chest + back) or across items, so the customer benefits from a unified quantity break rather than separate smaller breaks per placement.

Step 6: Configure process-specific options

Some pricing methods have pricing options that are unique to the decoration process. These settings affect how pricing is calculated or displayed. They are described below. Configure these when applicable.

Embroidery

• Default stitch count (when using Price Table)
  How it works: Sets an average stitch count used to display a default embroidery price in listings/Designer before a design is added.
  Why it matters: Prevents “$0.00” or misleading pricing before artwork is supplied, while still allowing the final price to update automatically once the stitch count is known (estimated from raster/vector uploads or read from an embroidery file).
• Approx stitches per sq cm
  How it works: Sets an estimated stitch density used to calculate an estimated stitch count for uploaded artwork that requires digitizing.
  Why it matters: Gives DecoNetwork a consistent way to estimate stitch count from non-embroidery artwork so your stitch-based price tables can calculate a realistic price before the final stitch file exists.

Screen Printing

Screen printing pricing commonly includes setup fees because creating screens is a fixed upfront cost that doesn’t scale linearly per unit.

• Charge setup fee
  How it works: Enables a setup fee for screen preparation.
  Why it matters: Ensures you recover fixed setup costs, especially on short runs where setup time is a larger proportion of total effort.
• Fee per screen
  How it works: Sets the setup fee amount per screen/color.
  Why it matters: Aligns pricing with the real cost driver (number of screens/colors), keeping complex designs priced appropriately.
• Charge a screen setup fee for white base
  How it works: Controls whether the white underbase counts as a setup-fee screen.
  Why it matters: Lets you match your shop policy: some businesses treat underbase as standard overhead, while others charge it explicitly because it increases setup and production steps.

Step 7: Save your changes

1. Review the settings for each process you support (and each contract tier, if applicable).
2. Click Save.

Best-practice tips

• Start simple, then add complexity: If you’re unsure, begin with Flat Pricing or Single Price, then move to Area Pricing or Price Tables once you’ve confirmed your production cost drivers.
• Use minimum prices with area pricing: This prevents undercharging on small prints where setup/handling still exists.
• Be consistent with color-type classification: White/Light/Dark pricing only works well if product colors are classified correctly in product setup.
• Use price tables for volume strategy: If you regularly quote larger runs, tables reduce manual quoting and make pricing consistent across staff and channels.
• Document your intent: Keep a short internal note explaining why you chose each method (helps future admins avoid “mystery pricing”).

Troubleshooting

• My decoration price doesn’t change when I expect it to.
  Check whether the product is using a product-level override: Admin → Products → Manage → Edit Product → Pricing, and whether Product Groups apply.
• White/Light/Dark pricing seems wrong for some products.
  Confirm the product’s colors are assigned the correct color type (White/Light/Dark) in the product’s Colors setup.
• Area pricing looks too high (or too low) for irregular shapes.
  Switch between actual graphic size and bounding box to match how your shop estimates effort/cost.
• Price table breaks aren’t combining as expected.
  Confirm each decorated area contains only a single design element and that you’re not expecting text elements to be included in the combined quantity logic.

FAQs

• Do these settings affect existing products?
  These settings define defaults and available options. If a product has its own pricing configuration, it may not automatically inherit changes made here.
• When should I use Advanced Pricing instead of Flat Pricing?
  Use Advanced Pricing when cost varies meaningfully by design size, garment color type, stitch count, or quantity breaks – and you want DecoNetwork to calculate those differences automatically.
• Why isn’t White/Light/Dark available for embroidery?
  Embroidery cost is typically driven more by stitch count and run time than garment color type, so embroidery uses stitch-based pricing logic instead.
• What’s the benefit of “Default stitch count” for embroidery price tables?
  It provides a realistic displayed starting price before the final stitch count is known, then recalculates once artwork is added.

Additional Resources

• Decoration Processes Overview
• Decoration Process – General Settings (All Decoration Methods)