Contract pricing tiers (5-10 per customer), Magento customer groups + advanced pricing

Industrial customers expect tiered contract pricing, 5 to 10 tiers per customer is normal. The Magento mechanics:

• Customer groups, native Magento feature. Each customer is assigned to a group (e.g. tier_a_industrial, tier_b_distributor, tier_c_oem). The group drives price visibility across the catalog.
• Tier pricing, native per-SKU. “100-499 units at $4.12, 500-999 at $3.85, 1,000+ at $3.41.” Works for volume discounts within a customer group.
• Catalog price rules + customer-group conditions, for category-wide discounts (e.g. “Tier A customers get 18% off all bearings”).
• Per-customer contract pricing, custom table for SKU-level pricing per customer (not per group). When Acme Plant has negotiated $2.81 on SKU 5503-A specifically, the price overrides the tier / group price. Native Magento doesn’t support this cleanly; either Adobe Commerce B2B (which has it) or a custom extension (~$3k, $8k of dev work).

For 5-10 tier hierarchies, the typical Magento model is:

1. Customer group sets the base tier price (Tier A vs Tier B vs Tier C).
2. Tier pricing within the customer group sets quantity breaks.
3. Per-customer overrides on specific SKUs handle negotiated lines.
4. Time-bound catalog price rules handle promotions (“15% off all fasteners through end of Q3”).

Performance gotcha: Magento’s native price indexer slows at 500k+ SKUs × 50+ customer groups × per-customer overrides. A denormalised customer_sku_price table updated by an async indexer keeps category pages fast.