Markup / Discount Problems

At the bottom of this page you will find a section for making practice problems along with the answers. Additionally worksheets and answer keys can also be generated and printed.

    TERMS AND FORMULAS YOU NEED TO KNOW

      Cost, Markup, Markup%, Selling price, Regular price
    1. Cost (C) -- the amount of money a store pays for an item (the wholesale price of the item).
    2. Markup percent (M%) -- the percent of the cost that a store marks up and item.
    3. Markup (M) -- the amount of money a store adds to the cost of an item to find the selling price.

    4. M = M%•C     ----     Markup = Markup% • Cost
    5. R = C + M     ----     Selling price or regular price (R) = Cost + Markup

      Discount, Discount%, Sale price
    1. Discount percent (D%) -- the percent of the selling price that a store reduces its price by.
    2. Discount (D) -- the amount of money a store reduces the regular price by to get the sale price.

    3. D = D% • R     ----     Discount = Discount% • Selling price.
    4. S = R - D     ----     Sale price = regular price - the discount.


Here is an interesting problem. Beause you are dealing with money all answers must be rounded to two decimal places. But do you wait until you are finished with all the math and then round the final answer or do you round the numbers as you go?

You wait until you are finished with the problem and then round the final answer. For example, suppose an item regularly priced at $1.50 is on sale for 5% off. If you calculate the discount you get $.075. If you round this off as you go then the discount is $.08 and the sale price would be $1.42. If you wait to round until you are finished the discount will be $.075 and the sale price will be $1.425. Rounding the sale price you end up with $1.43 instead of $1.42.

This seems like no big deal until you realize that retailers sell several hundred thousand items each month and the loss of even 1 penney for every two items that fall into this category adds up to a significant amount of lost profits.



Problem # 1