Quote margin guard — missing charges and the margin floor

This Watch reads a quote before the customer answers it and asks two questions: did we forget a charge the supplier is going to bill us for, and is there enough margin left in this to be worth doing? In Settings → Workspace → Watches it sits under Financial as FI-3.

The FI-3 Watch open in its detail panel, showing the margin floor presets and the custom value field.

What it watches for

Charges the quote omits. A charge the supplier will bill for exactly what the customer asked for, that the quote does not carry:

Setup, per imprint location.
Additional colors, or a run charge.
A PMS color match.
A less-than-minimum charge.
A proof charge.
A rush charge.
Freight.

Margin below the floor. A quote whose margin, worked out from real net cost, falls below the floor your workspace set — or below what this particular account has historically paid.

Why it matters

A forgotten setup charge on a three-location order is the difference between a profitable job and a free one, and it is the single most repeated mistake in promotional quoting. It is also completely invisible at the moment it happens: the quote looks finished, the customer approves it, and the charge appears six weeks later on the supplier invoice with nowhere to go but your margin. The floor check catches the other version of the same problem — the job that was priced accurately and still is not worth doing.

This Watch books as Margin on the Found ledger.

What it needs connected

Required: a mailbox. The quote Scout reads is the one your rep emailed the customer, lines and all.
Helpful: a supplier feed, your accounting system, a CRM. The supplier feed is where the charge schedule and net cost come from; accounting is where the account's own history lives.

What the point looks like

A point is one item Scout raises with the proof behind it. This one arrives in the Inbox as a recommendation:

The Barks & Rec leash quote is missing two setup charges — Barks & Rec · quote sent this morning

Cole Hart asked for the logo on the leash and a second imprint on the handle. The quote carries one setup charge; the supplier bills setup per location, and there is no PMS-match charge on the quote for the brand navy the artwork specifies. Corrected, the margin on this job is 34 percent; as quoted it is 21 percent, below the workspace floor of 30 percent.

Evidence: the sent quote in Gmail with its lines and charges · the supplier's published charge schedule for the part · the margin calculation from net cost.

Prepared by Scout: a corrected quote with both charges added.

The setting that tunes it

Margin floor: Off, 25%, 30% or 35%, or a custom value anywhere from 0 to 100 entered under Custom value. The default is Off, which turns the floor check off entirely and leaves the missing-charge check running. Setting a floor is the single most useful thing most shops do on this screen.

One rule is worth knowing: a margin point is never raised without a cost source. If Scout cannot see a real net cost, it does not guess at your margin and it does not raise the point.

When it arrives

This is one of the launch-wave Watches. It is not raising points today — its row in Settings reads Coming soon. You can turn it on and set a margin floor now, and the panel confirms that your choice is saved for when the Watch launches. We do not publish a date for it.

Good to know

Setting the floor to Off does not turn the Watch off. The missing-charge half still runs.
Scout never edits a quote or sends one. It writes the corrected version for you to review.
A cost that moves after the quote went out is SI-5, supplier price change, not this Watch.
Freight specifically has its own estimator behind it — see SI-7, freight and transit estimates — and this Watch calls it rather than inventing a freight number.
"Below what the account has historically paid" is a softer signal than the floor, and the point says which of the two triggered it.