Preisuntergrenze

A Preisuntergrenze is the price below which a service should not be offered at all. It comes in two versions and the difference between them matters. The short run floor is the sum of the costs that only arise because the service happened, so the consumables, the tube, the laboratory invoice for that sample, the payment processing fee and the labour cost of the minutes consumed, which is the output of a Stundensatzkalkulation. Below that price every appointment destroys money outright and volume makes the damage worse rather than better.

The long run floor adds a share of the costs that stand whether or not the appointment happens, so a portion of rent, heating, insurance and the base salaries that are on the payroll regardless, plus the owner's own time. The split between the two categories is set out under Fixkosten und variable Kosten, and the owner's hours are priced through a kalkulatorischer Unternehmerlohn, because an owner who works in the service for nothing is subsidising it out of household income. A price between the two floors keeps a service alive through a quiet stretch. A price permanently between them means the pharmacy is funding a service out of the rest of the business.

What this entry does not do is name a price. The floor is arithmetic and follows from the pharmacy's own costs. The price is a decision the pharmacy makes on top of it, and it turns on the local market, on what the room and the hours could otherwise be doing, on how the service is positioned next to the rest of the range and on how much risk the owner is willing to carry while uptake is still unknown. Two pharmacies with the same floor can reasonably land on very different prices, and neither of them is reading a recommendation off a table.

Once a price exists it has to be displayed correctly. A self pay service is advertised with the total price the customer actually pays, including tax, stated clearly and unambiguously at the point where the service is offered, and the requirements are set out under Preisangabenverordnung. Whether the price the pharmacy has set carries value added tax depends on how the service is classified and belongs with the pharmacy's Steuerberater before the first invoice, because a floor calculated net and a price displayed gross are not the same number.