A structured audit for distributor pricing and margin leakage.
Your ERP records what happened. We investigate what should have happened — across 12–24 months of transactions, one line at a time.
20-minute conversation · No ERP integration required
Fixed scope. Fixed timeline. No ERP replacement.
You provide a historical transaction export. We analyze the data, identify high-value anomalies, quantify their potential impact, and return the underlying transactions for investigation.
- Timeline
- Typically 2–3 weeks from receiving a usable export
- Commercials
- Fixed-fee engagement, agreed in writing before work starts
- Input
- One flat file: 12–24 months of order or invoice lines
- Access
- No integration, no installation, no system access
- Deliverable
- Ranked findings, the transaction workbook behind them, and the control that appears to have failed in each case
You keep the findings document whether or not you do anything else with us.
Nobody decided to give away the margin.
Price gets set in a contract, adjusted by a rep, overridden at a branch, then quietly outdated by a supplier cost increase. Every step is defensible on its own.
The gap only appears when you line up what should have been charged against what was actually invoiced — one line at a time, across a year of orders.
A $5 gap on one transaction is noise. The same gap repeated across thousands of transactions, customers and SKUs is a pattern worth investigating.
The data exists. The problem is connecting the dots.
Realized margin is the product of decisions made in different places, at different times, by different people — each one reasonable on its own.
The challenge isn’t finding transactions. It’s determining which transactions deserve attention, why they are unusual, and whether the difference represents legitimate commercial behavior or potential leakage.
- Customer-specific pricingContract terms
- Supplier cost changesVendor updates
- Branch overridesLocal decisions
- Manual discountsOrder entry
- Historical transactionsERP export
Standard reporting shows the total. It rarely shows which combination of inputs produced it.
From anomaly to action.
Detect
Compare every line against the price that should have applied — contract, price file, quantity break or override — and isolate the ones that don't reconcile.
Quantify
Size each pattern in dollars and rank it, so you start with the finding worth six figures rather than the one with the most rows.
Investigate
Hand your team the exact invoices, customers and items behind each finding, so they can confirm or dismiss it in their own system.
Who this is for.
Likely a fit
- You run thousands of order lines a month across hundreds of active customers.
- Price varies by customer — contracts, price files, SPAs or negotiated discounts.
- Reps or branch managers can override price at the point of sale.
- Your ERP reports margin by branch or product line, but not by exception.
Probably not yet
- You already have an analyst reconciling pricing line by line every month.
- You sell from one published list with no customer-specific terms.
- You want a finished product to log into today.
What the audit looks for.
Pricing and margin leakage rarely shows up as one obvious error. It tends to appear as a set of smaller signals spread across customers, SKUs and branches.
Not every anomaly represents actual leakage — see what we don’t claim.
Signals we look for
- Supplier cost increases never passed through to price
- Contract and SPA pricing not applied at order entry
- Discounts granted below the customer's agreed floor
- Quantity breaks applied at the wrong tier
- The same item priced differently across branches
- Freight and handling charges not recovered
- Rebate-eligible purchases never claimed
- Margin drift on long-running repeat accounts
How the audit works.
- 01ExportYou pull 12–24 months of order and invoice history from your ERP. A flat file is fine.
- 02ReconstructWe rebuild what each line should have been priced at, from contract terms, price files, cost records and quantity breaks.
- 03CompareEvery invoiced line is measured against that expected price. Most will match — those are set aside.
- 04QuantifyRemaining gaps are grouped by cause, counted, and sized in dollars so the largest surface first.
- 05InvestigateYou get the underlying invoices for each finding, so your team can confirm or dismiss it against their own records.
- 06ImproveConfirmed findings point to the control that failed — a stale price file, an override with no approval, a contract never loaded.
Example of how an audit might quantify findings.
Every audit produces a ranked list of findings with the supporting transactions behind each one. The figures below are constructed to show the shape of that output — not a real engagement.
From transactions to rules to review
- 100,000transactions analysed
- 1,284flagged as unusual
- 137worth investigating
- 23potentially material
- 8pricing rules or exceptions to review
Synthetic example. Constructed to show the shape of an audit, not drawn from a client engagement. Potential impact requires customer investigation and validation.
| Finding | Transactions | Potential impact |
|---|---|---|
| Cost increase never passed through to price | 421 | $126.2K |
| Contract price not applied at order entry | 842 | $173.4K |
| Discounts below the customer's agreed floor | 317 | $74.6K |
| Same item priced differently across branches | 198 | $44.5K |
Supporting transactions
| Customer | SKU | Expected | Actual | Variance | Why flagged |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harlow Pipe & Supply | 50214 | $342.10 | $318.40 | -$23.70 | Cost +7% in March, price file unchanged |
| Kestrel Industrial | 88732 | $96.75 | $96.75 | — | Within contract terms — not flagged |
| Bridgeton Electric | 22109 | $154.60 | $138.90 | -$15.70 | Contract price not applied at order entry |
| Anchor Fastening Co. | 67450 | $41.20 | $34.85 | -$6.35 | Discount 15% below agreed floor |
An anomaly is not automatically an error. Findings are a starting point for investigation, not a conclusion about recoverable money.
An anomaly is not automatically an error.
Legitimate commercial agreements and business decisions create unusual patterns all the time. A variance is a reason to look, not a conclusion about recoverable money.
Probatus identifies where investigation is likely to be valuable. Your team determines whether a finding represents actual leakage.
Things that can explain a flagged line
- A negotiated exception nobody recorded centrally
- Promotional or campaign pricing
- A customer agreement with terms outside the standard file
- Special commercial terms for a strategic account
- A data quality issue in the export itself
- A deliberate business decision made for good reasons
We do not claim that every anomaly is recoverable revenue, and we do not report findings as if they were.
How your data is treated.
An NDA is signed before any file moves. Data is transferred by whatever method your team prefers, held only for the duration of the engagement, and deleted on completion with written confirmation.
It is never used to train anything, and it is never shared with anyone. If you would rather not send customer names, replace them with codes before exporting — the analysis works identically, and we can hand findings back keyed to your codes.
The full terms are agreed in writing before the engagement starts. See our Privacy page for how information is handled generally.
What happens if we find nothing
You get a documented answer that your pricing execution is sound, which is difficult to establish any other way and worth having.
We will tell you before the end of the first week if the data suggests there is nothing material here — rather than spending three weeks producing a report that says so at length.
Designed around economic impact.
No ERP replacement
You send a file. Nothing gets installed, integrated or migrated, and no one needs system access.
Lightweight starting point
One historical export answers whether there's anything worth chasing, before you commit to a project.
Evidence-first
Every number traces back to invoice lines you can look up in your own system and argue with.
Outcome-oriented
You get a ranked list of specific problems with dollar figures attached — not another dashboard to check.
Common questions.
Is this software or a service?
It is an analysis delivered by us, using tooling we built. You are buying the finding, not a licence — there is no platform to log into. The deliverable is a written set of findings plus the transaction-level workbook behind them.
What data do I need to provide?
An order or invoice line export covering 12–24 months: customer, item, date, quantity, unit price, unit cost, discount, branch and salesperson where available. Contract or price-file data helps but isn't required to start. A CSV from your ERP is enough — no integration, no system access, no IT project beyond running one report.
How is our data handled?
An NDA is signed before any file moves. Data is transferred by whatever method your team prefers, held only for the duration of the engagement, and deleted on completion with written confirmation. It is never used to train anything and never shared. If you would rather not send customer names, replace them with codes — the analysis works identically.
What does an audit cost?
It is a fixed-fee engagement, agreed in writing before any work starts, based on the scope and the size of your data. We do not bill hourly and the number does not change unless the scope does.
How long does it take?
Typically two to three weeks from receiving a usable export. If the data needs work before analysis can begin, we tell you that in the first few days rather than at the end.
What if you find nothing?
Then you have a documented answer that your pricing execution is sound, which is worth knowing and is difficult to establish any other way. We will tell you before the end of the first week if the data suggests there is nothing material here.
Ready to see what's in your data?
Tell us about your business and the transaction history you have available. We will tell you honestly whether this is a fit — including when it is not.
20-minute conversation · No ERP integration required