Price Book Entry
A Price Book Entry in Salesforce (PricebookEntry in the API) is a standard junction object that connects a Product (Product2) to a Price Book (Pricebook2) and stores the price for that Product within that Price Book.
Definition
A Price Book Entry in Salesforce (PricebookEntry in the API) is a standard junction object that connects a Product (Product2) to a Price Book (Pricebook2) and stores the price for that Product within that Price Book. Each Price Book Entry holds a UnitPrice, a CurrencyIsoCode (in multi-currency orgs), an IsActive flag, a UseStandardPrice flag, and a ProductCode field denormalized from the parent Product. Every Product must have a corresponding Price Book Entry in the Standard Price Book before it can be added to any custom Price Book or used on an Opportunity, Quote, or Order. Custom Price Books can hold different prices for the same Product — for example, a "Government" Price Book offering a 20% discount on every item — by creating their own Price Book Entries. Price Book Entries are the reference rows that Opportunity Line Items, Quote Line Items, and Order Products copy from when they are created.
In plain English
“A Price Book Entry says "this Product costs this much in this Price Book." It is the row that connects a Product (like "Pro Subscription") to a Price Book (like "Standard 2026 Pricing") and pins the unit price. If the same Product is sold at three different prices for three customer segments, that's three Price Book Entries — one in each segment-specific Price Book.”
Worked example
A SaaS company sells a "Pro Subscription" Product at $99/month list price. The Salesforce admin creates the Product, then creates a Price Book Entry in the Standard Price Book with UnitPrice = $99 and IsActive = true. The company then introduces a "Nonprofit" Price Book offering 30% off; the admin creates a second Price Book Entry connecting the same Pro Subscription Product to the Nonprofit Price Book with UnitPrice = $69.30 and UseStandardPrice = false. When a sales rep adds the Pro Subscription to a nonprofit customer's Opportunity using the Nonprofit Price Book, the resulting Opportunity Line Item picks up the $69.30 unit price from that specific Price Book Entry — not the $99 list price.
Why Price Book Entry matters
The Price Book Entry data model has a strict prerequisite chain: every Product needs a Standard Price Book Entry before any custom Price Book Entry can exist for it. This catches new admins because the Standard Price Book is invisible by default and must be enabled before products can be sold. The IsActive flag on each Price Book Entry controls whether sales reps can select that price; setting it false on the Standard entry effectively retires the product from all Price Books that reference it through UseStandardPrice = true.
Multi-currency orgs add another dimension. When multi-currency is enabled, each Price Book Entry has a CurrencyIsoCode, and a single Product can have many Price Book Entries in the same Price Book — one per currency the org sells in. SOQL queries that don't filter on CurrencyIsoCode will return all currency variants, which is a common source of unexpected duplicates in price lookups and pipeline reports.
Once an Opportunity Line Item, Quote Line Item, or Order Product is created from a Price Book Entry, the line item snapshots the UnitPrice — subsequent changes to the Price Book Entry's price do not propagate to existing line items. This is by design (so historical pipeline values stay stable) but causes confusion when a price change is expected to update open deals. To reprice an open Opportunity, the line item must be removed and re-added, or its UnitPrice manually edited.
How organizations use Price Book Entry
Maintains separate Price Books for Standard, Enterprise, Government, and Education customer segments — each with its own Price Book Entry per Product holding the segment-specific price. Sales reps select the Price Book that matches the customer profile when creating Opportunities, ensuring deals are quoted at the right list price without manual discount calculations.
Sells the same set of Products in 12 currencies. Each Product has 12 Price Book Entries in the Standard Price Book, one per currency, with locally appropriate UnitPrice values reflecting purchasing-power adjustments rather than literal FX-converted prices.
Uses Salesforce CPQ on top of Price Book Entries. CPQ honors the Price Book Entry as the baseline UnitPrice and then layers configured discounts, contracted prices, and dynamic bundles on top — meaning even sophisticated CPQ pricing still depends on a clean, current Price Book Entry foundation underneath.
Trust & references
Straight from the source — Salesforce's reference material on Price Book Entry.
- PricebookEntry in Object Reference for the Salesforce PlatformSalesforce Developer Documentation
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