That doesn't make sense. On the one hand, you have a price calculation formula in the pricelist. Then you have a minimum margin, but to get the minimum margin to work, you have to restrict access to change prices. Now the user will only get the price created in the formula but still not be getting the minimum margin. If we use this advice, the minimum margin is a useless field that will never work regardless of your permissions.

Everything works out of the box without needing changes, once you understand how to set things up. The documentation helps a lot. Permissions changes are only needed it you want an ENFORCED price instead of a SUGGESTION. Pricelists work with price calculations AND margins, not one or the other. Margins dictate the floor or ceiling that the calculation must work within. If the calculation works out to be below or above the margin limits, then they are used instead. If you are not seeing that you should post a screenshot of your rule. https://doc.odoo.com/book/6/6_16_Sales/6_16_Sales_pricing/

The part of your assumption that isn't correct is "The purpose of the minimum margin is to stop this kind of behavior". Permissions stop changes that pricelists suggest. A pricelist will never create a price that can't be changed.

Ok well that explanation actually makes sense. That the minimum is only used to control the formula you provide in price.

I just found http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23359684/dont-allow-to-quote-below-the-sales-price-of-a-product-in-openerp - it shows how you can create a function to 'validate' any change a user makes to a price and warn them about it.

Yeah I think I saw that before and there was another one like it. There's also some community modules that protect against price change. This question was more about my confusion about how the minimum margin works, which you cleared up. I'm pretty sure there are ways to write a module that can handle my use-case but I was just thinking the minimum margin was what I was thinking. Which it wasn't. Thanks for coming back and posting a followup info.