We're running an older system for our stock management, invoicing etc. and the system allows up to 5 prices per product, which we use to apply various levels of discount depending on how good a customer we're dealing with.

Can the same kind of functionality be provided in openERP? I see mentions of pricelists etc. but have so far not found much supporting documentation that really goes through the basics of how to use pricelists.

Does anyone have a nice guide to how to use pricelists, or can point to the relevant documentation? Can we use pricelists to automatically apply discounts based on number of (same) items purchased on one invoice? Can we automatically apply a certain discount or better prices to our better customers? I see you can manually apply a discount at invoice time, but we wouldn't want for the staff to always have to remember this and what discount applies to which customer...

Thanks in advance... ZIS

Yes, you can set up as many pricelists as you want and select them per sale.

http://doc.openerp.com/v6.0/book/6/6_16_Sales/6_16_Sales_pricing.html

On the Customers page on form view there is a tab sales and purchases where there is a field sale price list, here you specify the particular pricelist you want this customer to have by default. put his special discounts there.