Supplier price change, price expiration or discontinuation
A quote you sent last week was priced on last week's cost. This Watch keeps an eye on the cost side of every open quote and tells you when it moves. In Settings → Workspace → Watches it sits under Supplier Integration as SI-5.
What it watches for
- A price, a quantity break or a charge that changed on a product sitting on an open quote or an unplaced order — with the effect on your margin worked out.
- A price validity that expires inside the window the customer is still deciding in.
- A product that has gone to closeout, or that is no longer sellable at all.
- A supplier's price-increase or tariff-surcharge announcement, matched to the specific open quotes it touches.
Why it matters
Distributors quote at a margin, not at a price. When a supplier raises a cost after the quote goes out, the margin is what absorbs it — quietly, and usually without anyone noticing until the supplier invoice arrives. The same is true of an expiring price: you honor the number you sent because you sent it, and you pay the difference. Catching the change while the quote is still open turns a loss into a re-quote, which customers accept far more often than distributors expect.
This Watch books as Margin on the Found ledger.
What it needs connected
- Required: a mailbox. The open quote Scout compares against is the document your rep emailed the customer, and its lines are read from there.
- Helpful: a supplier feed, a CRM. The supplier feed is where published prices, quantity breaks, charges and price expiry dates come from; without it, Scout works from the supplier announcements in your mail.
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:
Alpha Apparel raised the price on the Tidal Tails cape quote — Tidal Tails · quote open 9 days
The 480-unit break on the quoted cape went up on September 1. At the price you quoted Jess Nakamura on August 26, the margin on this job drops from 38 percent to 29 percent. The quoted price was valid through August 31.
Evidence: the sent quote in Gmail with its lines and prices · the supplier's new price with its effective date · the margin calculation.
Prepared by Scout: a re-quote at the current cost, and an alternative note offering to hold the old price if the order is placed now.
Where a price is about to expire rather than having already changed, the prepared draft is the other kind of message entirely — a nudge to place the order before the date, which is often the better outcome for everyone.
The settings that tune it
None. Its settings block reads No adjustable thresholds. The decision window this Watch uses is the validity date the supplier published, not a number you pick.
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 now; there is nothing else to configure. We do not publish a date for it.
Good to know
- Scout never re-sends a quote or changes a price anywhere. It writes the re-quote for you to review and send.
- This Watch is about the cost moving after the quote went out. A quote that was wrong when it went out — missing a charge, or under your margin floor — is FI-3, the quote margin guard.
- Only open quotes are considered. A quote the customer already declined is not worth anyone's attention.
- A closeout is not always bad news. The point names it so you can decide whether to sell the remaining stock or move the customer off the product.
- Stock behind the same quote is SI-4.