A Unit Price Specification is a conceptual entity that specifies the price asked for a given Offering by the respective Business Entity. An Offering may be linked to multiple Unit Price Specifications that specify alternative prices for non-overlapping sets of conditions (e.g. quantities or sales regions).
A Unit Price Specification is characterized by (1) the lower and upper limits and the Unit of Measurement of the eligible quantity, (2) by a monetary amount per unit of the Product or Service Instance in the given Unit of Measurement specified as a literal value of type float in combination with a Currency, and (3) whether this prices includes local sales taxes, namely VAT.
Example: The price, including VAT, for 1 kg of a given material is 5 Euros per kg for 0 - 5 kg and 4 Euros for quantities above 5 kg.
The eligible quantity interval for a given price is specified using the object property hasEligibleQuantity, which points to an instance of Quantitative Value. The currency is specified using the hasCurrency datatype property, which points to an ISO 4217 currency code. The unit of measurement for the eligible quantity is specified using the hasUnitOfMeasurement datatype property, which points to an UN/CEFACT Common Code (3 characters).
In most cases, the appropriate unit of measurement is the UN/CEFACT Common Code "C62" for "Unit or piece", since an Offering is defined by the quantity and unit of measurement of all items included (e.g. "1 kg of bananas plus a 2 kg of apples"). As long at the Offering consists of only one item, it is also possible to use an unit of measurement of choice for specifying the price per unit. For bundles, however, only "C62" for "Unit or piece" is a valid unit of measurement .
Whether VAT and sales taxes are included in this price is specified using the datatype property valueAddedTaxIncluded (boolean).
The price per unit of measurement is specified as a float value of the hasCurrencyValue property. The currency is specified via the hasCurrency datatype property. Whether the price includes VAT or not is indicated by the valueAddedTaxIncluded datatype property.
The property priceType can be used to indicate that the price is a retail price recommendation only (i.e. a list price).
If the price can only be given as a range, use hasMaxCurrencyValue and hasMinCurrencyValue for the upper and lower bounds.
Important: When querying for the price, always use hasMaxCurrencyValue and hasMinCurrencyValue.
Note: Due to the complexity of pricing scenarios in various industries, it may be necessary to create extensions of this fundamental model of Price Specifications. Such can be done easily by importing and refining the GoodRelations ontology.