How to price lab reagents per test, vial or kit on a NUPCO tender

A NUPCO tender line asks for one unit, such as EA, TET, KIT or VIA. A lab reagent is packed in layers: a carton of kits, a kit of vials, a vial of tests. To price a line, find how many of the line's units one unit of your price holds, then convert. At SAR 2,000 for a kit of 4 vials of 100 tests, one test costs 2,000 ÷ 400 = SAR 5.00.

Why lab products cause the unit headache

Most products are bought by the piece; lab products are not. The same reagent can be written as one test, one vial, one kit or one carton, and the buyer picks the unit on each tender line. Your price list rarely matches it: it is usually per kit or per box. Three things make it harder:

• The unit is the thing counted, not a packaging level. A carton rarely appears as a unit on NUPCO tenders; lines are counted in pieces, tests, vials, kits or bottles.
• The same material code changes unit between tenders. It can be one test (TET) in one tender and one piece (EA) or one pack in another, so the price you worked out last time may be per the wrong thing now.
• The code alone is not enough. EA on a line named TEST, … usually means one test, and PAC can mean a procedure pack, a test or a 500 mL bag; the item's name and description decide. NUPCO's files use more than a hundred different spellings of units.

What the unit codes mean on a NUPCO tender

Always read the item's name and description with the code: they carry the counts (2X50 TEST/KIT, 576 RXN, 50 TEST / VIAL).

How to convert a kit price to a price per test

Converting takes two steps: write the packing as counts, then divide or multiply by the counts between your price's level and the line's unit.

1. Write the packing: carton = 10 kits, kit = 4 vials, vial = 100 tests.
2. Count the tests in your price's unit: one kit = 4 vials of 100 tests = 400 tests.
3. Divide: SAR 2,000 ÷ 400 tests = SAR 5.00 per test.
4. For any other unit, count the tests it holds and multiply: one vial = 100 tests = SAR 500.00; one carton = 4,000 tests = SAR 20,000.00.

The traps that misprice a lab line

• A kit price used as a price per test. The error is the number of tests in the kit. Always divide.
• Reading EA as a kit. On a line whose name starts with TEST, EA usually means one test, so check the description before you price.
• Counting a carton in kits, not vials. A carton of 10 kits of 4 vials holds 40 vials, not 10.
• Mixing a mass and a volume. A milligram never converts to a millilitre, so do not convert between them.
• Reusing last tender's conversion. The same code changes unit, so read the unit again on every tender.
• Rounding to two decimals. A price per test needs four.

Doing it in ProcDuck

ProcDuck keeps the packing and one price per product and converts it to each line's unit. You enter the packing once (carton, kit, vial, tests per vial) and say what your price is per; the tender page then shows what each line's unit means for that product, flags the ones it is unsure of (such as an EA line named TEST, …), and prices from your catalog in the line's own unit. The full steps are in the guide Packing levels: price per test, kit, vial or carton. The unit chips are in Tender lines, the pricing in Price from catalog, and the product fields in the Products guide.