How to read a price check report

Every MarginTide check produces the same kind of report, whichever workflow it comes from — a rival's storefront, a supplier's quote, a competing rate card or an ad platform's spend numbers. Once you know the shape of one report, you know the shape of all of them.

A research unit

A research unit is one check MarginTide runs and grades — the meter your plan's monthly cap counts against. Every report on this page starts life as one research unit.

The three sections of a report

Evidence. Evidence comes from the sources you connect: a storefront, a supplier document, a public rate card, or a spend export. The report keeps a trail back to exactly what it read, so a recommendation is never a black box.

Grading. A graded recommendation is drafted from the evidence and checked before it ever reaches your approval queue. Grading is what separates a raw price sighting from something worth acting on — a small, expected fluctuation grades differently than a move that actually threatens your margin.

Recommendation. The report ends with a plain-language recommendation — hold, match or move, depending on the workflow — along with the evidence that supports it. Nothing in the report changes a live price, a live rate card or a live campaign by itself. You decide whether to act.

Reading severity

Not every report calls for the same urgency. A report that surfaces a routine, expected change reads differently from one that surfaces a move that threatens your margin today. Severity is there so you can triage a stack of reports at a glance instead of reading every one in full.

What to do with a report

Start with the recommendation, check the evidence trail if anything looks surprising, and approve or dismiss it from your queue. Reports accumulate over time into a history you can use to see how a rival, a supplier or a channel has trended — not just where it stands right now.