End-to-end test cases stand out in software testing namely because they go beyond testing the individual components of a software product (as is the case with the unit testing preceding it) and address the functionality of the solution as a whole. If your company’s business users expect to navigate their pricing solution without hiccups, this is where end-to-end functional testing and the test cases involved become important.

At Pricefx, with more than a decade of experience supporting businesses with their most complex pricing tasks with the help of our cloud-native pricing software, we know that User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is a definitive phase in software development – and your company’s chosen test cases are the backbone.

But with offhand references to “test cases” floating around in discussions of UAT and few truly illustrative examples of test cases for pricing out there, what end-to-end test cases actually look like in practice or what their results should be in a pricing software environment may not always be clear.

In this article, we’ll shed some light on what exactly the elusive end-to-end test case in pricing involves, including its purpose, step-by-step instructions for testing it, and the expected results testers should see to confirm whether that case has passed or failed, by walking you through a few examples from the Pricefx platform.

Before jumping into our test case examples, let’s first consider the action items you’ll need to check off in preparation for end-to-end functional testing.

When performing end-to-end functional testing, your testing group should keep things organized to ensure a smooth and efficient User Acceptance Testing period. To help, here are a few best practices to have front of mind when carrying out functional testing:

1. Ensure your production data is of a good quality and easily accessible for testing.
2. Store the final version of your test cases document in a test management tool, like Xray for JIRA, to track results efficiently.
3. Assign an ID for each test case for easy locating, reviewing, and reporting.
4. Assign a tester/testers to each test case so everyone knows what they should be doing during testing.
5. For each test case, outline the goal, step-by-step testing instructions for testing, and the results for each step a tester needs to see to decide if the test passed or failed.

By employing good documentation practices in its end-to-end functional testing, your testing group will be able to track and report on their progress easily, which will ultimately lead to a quicker path to final acceptance.

Based on your company’s business cases, your selected test cases for UAT should reflect the core functionalities you plan to use in the platform. Some goals for functional testing in pricing software UAT might involve verifying quote creation, approval workflows, dashboards, or data loads are set up well for users.

Because UAT is the last opportunity to play around in your own Pricefx environment and make sure your business users can carry out daily pricing tasks end to end without issues, you should select the most critical cases for testing. Also, keep in mind that because testers will need to go through the entire workflow of each test case step by step (and retest as many times as needed), you should also factor in how long each will take your testers to verify when choosing the number of test cases for the UAT period (which, if carried out efficiently, should only take a couple of weeks).

To offer a quick disclaimer before moving on to a few examples of test cases, while the “look and feel” of your test cases will be unique to your pricing software of choice, for learning purposes we’ll use our own modules as an example.

With that, here are some of the most common test cases your testing team might use for User Acceptance Testing and the processes involved:

Goal: Verify that a new quote can be created in the Pricefx application and will be correctly displayed in the CRM system.

Step 1: Log into your CRM system as a Sales Manager

Step 2: Select the customer and check the existing quotes for that customer

Step 3: Log into Pricefx as a Sales Manager

Step 4: Create a new quote for the customer (selected in step 2), use the standard parameters in the quote Header, adding several items to the quote, and select Submit

Step 5: Verify the quote was correctly submitted

Step 6: In the Workflow tab, indicate that the quote needs to be approved

Step 7: Verify that the quote created is correctly displayed in the CRM system

To mark a quote creation test case as passed, the tester should expect to see the following:

• After step 4, a new quote was created for the correct customer
• After step 6, the workflow tab indicates that the quote needs to be approved
• After step 7, the new quote is visible and correct in the CRM system

Goal: Verify that the data displayed in the Revenue and Margin dashboard is correct

Step 1: Log into Pricefx as a Country Manager 

Step 2: Go to the Revenue and Margin Dashboards

Step 3: Select the Business Unit and Customer you would like to test

Step 4: Display the Dashboard with the desired tested parameters

Step 5: Select “Date from” and “Date to”

Step 6: Select the time period

Step 7: Verify that the data in the Dashboard is correct for the selected customer and time period based on data displayed in the CRM system

To be able to confirm that the data shows up correctly in the Revenue and Margin dashboard, the tester would need to see these results:

• After step 7, the Dashboard is correctly displayed in the Pricefx application
• The data in the Dashboard is correct based on both the parameters used for filtering and the data in the CRM system

Goal: Verify that the Live Price Grid was correctly recalculated after changing some parameters

Step 1: Log into Pricefx as a Pricing Analyst

Step 2: Choose the product for testing and verify its Margin in the Country Live Price Grid

Step 3: Navigate to Master Data, then to the Product extensions, then to Cost, and change the cost for the tested product

Step 4: Go back to the Country Live Price Grid and verify the Margin in the Live Price Grid again

Step 5: Recalculate the Live Price Grid

Step 6: Verify that the margin for the tested product changed correctly after recalculating

To confirm the Country LPG has been correctly calculated, testers would look for the following:

• In step 3, the cost of the product was changed correctly
• After steps 2 and 4, the margin for the product remains the same
• After step 7, the margin for the product has been changed correctly

Goal: Verify that a quote created by a Sales Manager will require approval from the Country Manager

Step 1: Log into your CRM system as a Sales Manager

Step 2: Select the customer and check the existing quotes for that customer

Step 3: Log into Pricefx as a Sales Manager

Step 4: Create a new quote for the customer you’ve selected, with the valid parameters in the Header and in the Items, and press Submit

Step 5: Verify that the quote was correctly submitted

Step 6: Verify that it’s not possible for a Sales Manager to approve a quote

Step 7: Log into Pricefx as a Country Manager

Step 8: Open the quote created in this test

Step 9: Approve the quote and verify that it’s now in an Approved state

Step 10: Verify that the created quote is visible in your CRM system as “Approved”

Testers can sign off on the test scenario involving a manager’s approval on a quote once these items happen:

• After step 4, a new quote was created for the correct customer
• In step 9, the quote could be approved by a Country Manager
• After step 10, the quote is displayed correctly in your CRM system

Step 1: Log into Pricefx as a Pricing Analyst

Step 2: Go to Data Manager and select Data Loads

Step 3: Run the data load manually

Step 4: Verify that the correct data was loaded to the Datamart sales data

Step 5: Log into your CRM system and verify that the data there and in Datamart are the same

To ensure data can be successfully loaded to the data mart in the future, testers would need to see the following results:

• After step 4, the data is correctly loaded to the data mart
• After step 5, data loaded to the data mart is correct according to your CRM system

Now that you’ve explored end-to-end test cases in detail, you might want to better understand how they fit into the User Acceptance Testing phase in a broader sense.

To learn more about the phases of UAT, consider checking out our article which breaks each down for you step by step: