How to discount a number by a percentage

[Guest]

Hi all,

I am trying to think of the best way to discount a number from an access db.

Basically  it's an online hotel room tariff. So if someone clicks they want to  stay 5 nights I want to be able to call the base price from the db and  then times it by 5 and then discount a percentage per night. Or have I  just made this way too complicated and over looked an easier solution.

Thanks

Jonathan

[Amiya_Padhi]

The logic seems to be OK. I hope you are following the below steps.

1. Get the Base price from DB(100 for example)

2. Multiply it by 5(100 * 5 = 500)

3. Multiply the discount price by 5(10 * 5 = 50)

4. Get the difference(500-50 - 450)

In this way if you want you can display the Total Price, Discount Price and Actual Price to your customer.

[Guest]

Hi mate,

Thanks for you reply. sorry i did not make it clear but  what i want is if they stay for say 2 nights they can have a discount of  say 10% and if they stay for say 4 nights they can have a discount of  15% so on and so on.

maybe i could do what you have done and then  wrap it in a CFIF and then do a few of them with differnt percentage's  do you think that would work?

Thanks

Jonathan

[iSaid]

How many discount tiers are you going to have?  You could put them in a table and do a look up - eg; 2 (nights) 10 (%), 4 (nights) 15 (%) etc.  This would save doing a bunch of if/else statements and having to hard code the values in there.

[Guest]

Sounds like a good idea but i am not sure how i would use it  could to do a little example.

Thanks

Jonathan Hemmings

[Dan_Bracuk]

Why not start with the design of your new table.  What fields and datatypes sound appropriate?

[iSaid]

Without sitting down and planning, one way would be...

Table: Discounts (3 cols)

ID    Nights    DiscountRate

1     2            10
2     3            10

3     4            15

4     5            15

5     6            20

etc etc - you wouldn't need to go more then 30 nights I wouldn't think.

Code: (I'll just keep it brief)

NumberOfNights = 4

TotalStayBeforeDiscount = 400 ($100 per night = $400)

Select DiscountRate from Discounts where Nights = NumberOfNights

TotalStayDiscount = TotalStayBeforeDiscount * query.DiscountRate / 100 (should = $60)

TotalStay = TotalStayBeforeDiscount - TotalStayDiscount

With the above you could then display the rate before discount, the discount, and the final total.

You should also do some validation to make sure the query returns something, if it doesn't, then no discount is applied (or displayed).

Hope this helps.

[tclaremont]

By keeping your nights/discounts in a database table, it also makes it easier to adjust the table by date range. So, if your

busy season allows you to offer a lesser discount than the off-season, you can apply a date range to your

pricing table to allow for a 5 percent discount between x and y dates, and a 10 percent discount between some other range of dates.

The database table will make your life easier down the road, in ways that you probably have not imagined yet.

[tclaremont]

The other thing that occurred to me... are you taking the discount off the total bill, or are you discounting JUST the nights that are in excess of the

X number of nights?

If you discount 10 percent for three nights, do you pay full price for nights one and two, and then take 10 percent off for night three, or do you take 10 percent off the total for the three nights?

This is the kind of logic you need to sort through.