Margin Master
Documentation
Guides and reference for Margin Master
Categories
Getting Started
Add Items from Catalog
The Add from Catalog feature lets you manually add items from your vendor's catalog into your Margin Master data. This is useful when your store carries items that are not yet in your POS system or when you want to include catalog-only items in your pricing analysis.
Automatic Updates & Snooze Options
Margin Master automatically checks for new versions in the background so you always know when an update is available. When a new version is found, you are shown a notification with the option to install immediately or **snooze** the reminder for a period of time. You can also check for updates manua...
Cloud Vendor Data Sync
Margin Master keeps your local database up to date with the latest product catalog and pricing information from your vendor. This process -- called **Cloud Vendor Data Sync** -- downloads new and changed records from the RetailerSoft cloud servers to your local SQL Server. It is incremental, meaning...
Data Import Workflows
Margin Master supports several ways to bring data into the system from your POS (Point of Sale) system, vendor files, FTP servers, and Excel spreadsheets. This guide covers each import method and when to use it.
Database Creation
Database Creation is a guided feature that walks you through creating a new Margin Master database from within the application. The **Create New Database** dialog collects your store information, auto-generates a database name, validates your license, and then builds the full database -- schema, tab...
Database Restore
Database Restore allows you to recover a Margin Master database from a backup file. Backups can be standard SQL Server `.bak` files or compressed `.zip` archives. You can restore from local files or download backups stored in the cloud.
Database Connection Setup
Margin Master stores all pricing data, strategies, and configuration in a Microsoft SQL Server database. Before you can use the application, you need to either create a new database or connect to an existing one. The **Database Setup** window appears automatically on first launch or whenever a valid...
Demo Mode
Demo Mode lets you explore Margin Master with a fully populated sample database for a specific vendor. It downloads a pre-built database from the cloud, switches the application to use it, and marks the window so you always know you are working with demo data. Your real database is never modified.
Edit Columns
Edit Columns controls which columns are visible in the main data grid and in what order they appear. You can create multiple named column views and switch between them to see different sets of data columns.
Edit Selection Boxes
Edit Selection Boxes lets you customize the selection panel on the left side of the main window. The selection panel contains tabs (like "Basic Selections" and "Price Selections"), and each tab contains filter fields. This dialog lets you choose which tabs appear, which fields are on each tab, and i...
Field Manager
The Field Manager lets you customize the display names of fields (columns) throughout Margin Master. Each field has a system default name, and you can assign your own custom label that will appear in column headers, selection panels, and other places that reference the field.
Firewall and Network Requirements
This guide provides the network endpoints, domains, and ports that Margin Master requires for full functionality. Share this document with your IT team or network administrator so they can configure firewalls, proxy servers, and security appliances to allow the application to operate correctly.
Installation and First Launch
This guide walks you through installing Margin Master on your computer and what to expect the first time you launch the application. Margin Master is a Windows desktop application that requires a SQL Server database and an active license from RetailerSoft.
Main Window Orientation
This guide gives you a tour of the Margin Master main window -- where everything is, what the menus do, and how to navigate the application. Once you are comfortable with the layout, you will be able to find any feature quickly.
Quick Find
Quick Find lets you search for a SKU across all of your loaded main tables by SKU number or description. Once you find the item you are looking for, you can navigate directly to it in the center grid or open its SKU Detail screen.
Transfer Settings from Database
Margin Master lets you copy your configuration -- pricing strategies, rounding schemes, views, and other settings -- directly from one database to another. When you create a new database or migrate to a new server, you do not need to re-enter all your settings by hand. The transfer reads settings st...
Edit Sort Sequence
The Edit Sort Sequence dialog lets you control how rows in the main data grid are ordered. You can sort by up to three fields, choose ascending or descending direction for each, and save frequently used sort combinations as presets for quick recall.
Store Configuration
After connecting to a database, Margin Master needs to know which store you are managing. This screen collects your store details and validates your software license with RetailerSoft. You will see this screen on first launch, or if store information has not yet been configured for your database.
Pricing & Analysis
Cost Break Analysis
Cost Break Analysis divides your products into cost ranges (brackets) and shows you the profitability of each range. This helps you set **target margins** by cost level -- for example, you might want a higher margin on low-cost items and a lower margin on expensive items. Cost break models can be re...
Manage Custom Groups
Custom Groups let you define named collections of SKUs that can be targeted by specific pricing strategy steps. Instead of applying a price rule to all products or filtering by vendor attributes, you can create a group of hand-picked SKUs and assign them unique pricing, rounding, and store-level set...
Future Pricing
The Future Price Panel is where you define what the future price of a product (or group of products) should be. It appears within pricing strategy steps and SKU-level exceptions. You select a base price level, optionally add a plus/minus adjustment, apply rounding, and configure advanced options lik...
Load Saved Selection
Load Saved Selection lets you restore a previously saved pricing selection (also called a "saved selection") from your active strategy. A saved selection captures a snapshot of your selection panel filters, column views, and sort settings so you can quickly return to a specific view of your data.
Min/Max Strategies
A Min/Max strategy sets price guardrails -- a minimum floor or maximum ceiling -- that constrain the future price calculated by your pricing strategy. For example, you might say "the future price should be the **maximum** of the calculated price and **Level 1 plus 5%**" to ensure no item is priced b...
Price Sensitivity & Awareness Codes
Every product in your vendor's catalog carries a classification code that reflects how price-sensitive that item is to consumers. Vendors assign these codes based on market research, consumer shopping behavior, and competitive analysis. In Margin Master, these codes appear in the **Pricing Strategy*...
Pricing Strategies
A pricing strategy is the core of Margin Master. It defines a set of ordered rules (called **steps**) that determine how future prices are calculated for your products. Each step targets a specific group of SKUs based on conditions (department, class, vendor, etc.) and sets a future price using a pr...
Profit Analyzer
The Profit Analyzer breaks down your profitability across different dimensions -- by price range, vendor vs. non-vendor SKUs, department, class, or velocity code. It shows you where your margins are strong and where they need attention, helping you make informed pricing decisions.
Rounding Schemes
A rounding scheme controls how Margin Master rounds calculated prices to consumer-friendly values. Without rounding, a pricing strategy might calculate a price of $4.37 -- but customers expect to see prices like $4.49, $4.39, or $4.35. A rounding scheme defines the rules that transform raw calculate...
SKU-Level Exceptions
SKU-level exceptions let you override the pricing strategy for individual products. While the strategy handles pricing in bulk by department, class, or vendor, exceptions let you set specific pricing rules for individual SKUs -- a plugged retail price, a fixed margin, or a cost deviation.
Strategy Backup & Restore
Strategy Backup & Restore lets you save all of your critical Margin Master configuration -- pricing strategies, rounding schemes, custom groups, SKU-level exceptions, application settings, and more -- to a single file and restore it to any Margin Master database. This is useful for transferring sett...
Strategy Execution Cloud Tracking
Every time you execute a pricing strategy in Margin Master (Strategy > Execute Strategy), the application automatically sends a detailed record of the execution to the cloud. This includes a snapshot of each step's configuration and its results -- how many SKUs were affected, what price changes were...
Vendor-Specific
Mapp_Pricing — Ace MAP & IMAP Pricing File
The `Mapp_Pricing` file contains Ace Hardware's Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) and Internet Minimum Advertised Price (IMAP) data. These are advertising price floors set by Ace at the product level. For more details on how MAP and IMAP pricing works in Margin Master, see [Ace Hardware MAP & IMAP Pric...
MARGIN_MASTER — Ace Catalog File
The `MARGIN_MASTER` file is the primary Ace Hardware catalog file. It contains the core product attributes for every SKU in the Ace catalog — descriptions, departments, vendor information, and pricing strategy codes. This file is the foundation of the Ace data pipeline; zone pricing and other supple...
margin_mstr_plano — Ace Planogram File
The `margin_mstr_plano` file contains Ace Hardware planogram definitions — shelf layout plans that describe how products should be displayed. Each record maps a planogram type and code to a description.
SAP_STORE_DEPT_ZONE_MARGIN_MASTER — Ace Store Zone Assignment File
The `SAP_STORE_DEPT_ZONE_MARGIN_MASTER` file maps each Ace store and department to a pricing zone. This determines which zone's pricing overrides the national defaults (zone 99999) for a given store. Without this file, all stores would use only the national zone pricing.
SAP_ZONE_PRICE_MARGIN_MASTER — Ace Zone Pricing File
The `SAP_ZONE_PRICE_MARGIN_MASTER` file contains the retail pricing for every Ace SKU, organized by pricing zone. Zone 99999 is the national default — every SKU has a zone 99999 price. Regional zones only contain SKUs whose pricing differs from the national default. This file is the source of all Ac...
Taxonomy — Ace Product Classification File
The `Taxonomy` file defines the Ace Hardware product classification hierarchy — a four-level tree of category codes and descriptions. This data is used for reference and classification lookups within the Ace vendor context.
Ace Critical Retail Pricing
Ace Hardware's Critical Retail Pricing program identifies items in your store where prices fall outside acceptable thresholds. Margin Master gives you a dedicated tool -- **Strategy > Ace Critical Pricing** -- that lets you find these items instantly and either review them on the spot or save the an...
Ace Hardware MAP & IMAP Pricing
Margin Master provides built-in support for Ace Hardware's **Minimum Advertised Price Policy (MAPP)** pricing data. This includes two price types:
CTLD — Do It Best Catalog File
The `CTLD` file is the primary Do It Best catalog file. It is a fixed-width record format containing the complete product catalog for a single RSC (Retail Service Center), including product details, costs at multiple membership tiers (Classic, Vision, PAR), retail pricing, margins, and operational f...
PCDITEMXREF — Do It Best SKU Classification File
The `PCDITEMXREF` file maps Do It Best SKUs to their product classification IDs. Combined with the PCDPRODCLASS hierarchy file, this creates the four-level taxonomy tree that appears as DIB_Taxonomy1 through DIB_Taxonomy4 in the main table.
PCDPRODCLASS — Do It Best Product Classification Hierarchy File
The `PCDPRODCLASS` file defines the Do It Best product classification hierarchy as a tree of nested XML elements. Each node has an ID, description, and classification type, with parent-child relationships expressed through XML nesting. Combined with the PCDITEMXREF file (which maps SKUs to classific...
POS Systems
AS/400 POS Import
AS/400 is a legacy IBM midrange system still used by some retailers. Margin Master imports AS/400 data exports to build pricing analysis tables.
Bistrack POS Import
Bistrack is the most feature-rich POS import in Margin Master, supporting five different import variants to accommodate different store configurations. It can import from comma-delimited files or connect directly to a live Bistrack SQL Server database.
Catalyst POS Import
The Catalyst import is the only POS import in Margin Master that uses Excel `.xlsx` files as its source. It processes the spreadsheet through a BCP pipeline with JSON-based header format detection, supporting two alternate header layouts.
CounterWorks POS Import
CounterWorks is a point-of-sale system for hardware and building supply retailers. Margin Master imports CounterWorks CSV exports to build pricing analysis tables. CounterWorks is unique in that it provides monthly margin percentages instead of standard unit sales history.
Dimension POS Import
Dimension is a point-of-sale system used by some hardware retailers. Margin Master imports Dimension data exports to build pricing analysis tables. Dimension uses a direct import method rather than BCP staging.
EagleVision POS Import
EagleVision is a point-of-sale system used by a small number of Margin Master customers. Data import for EagleVision is supported, but detailed documentation is pending.
ECS POS Import
The ECS import (also referred to as Advantage or ECI) reads pipe-delimited text files exported from your ECS point-of-sale system. It is one of the simpler POS imports in Margin Master, with a straightforward direct import pipeline and no BCP staging step.
Epicor Eagle FTP Import
The Epicor Eagle FTP import downloads a proprietary binary inventory file from your Epicor Eagle server via FTP or SFTP and decodes it into Margin Master for pricing analysis. This is the standard import method for Epicor Eagle stores that pair with Ace Hardware or Emery Jensen vendor data.
Epicor MySQL Compass Import
The Epicor MySQL Compass import reads inventory data from a MySQL Compass data warehouse running on your local network and loads it into Margin Master for pricing analysis. This is an alternative to the Epicor FTP import for stores that have a Compass data warehouse available. It supports both Ace H...
Falcon POS Import
The Falcon import reads inventory data directly from an Excel spreadsheet (.xlsx) exported from the Falcon POS system and loads it into Margin Master for pricing analysis. This import was recently rewritten to use Excel files instead of the older text-based pipeline.
MI9 POS Import
MI9 is a retail management system used by larger multi-store operations. Margin Master imports MI9 data files and builds team-based pricing analysis tables, supporting the most fields of any POS system at over 75 fields.
PacSoft POS Import
PacSoft is a point-of-sale system for retail operations. Margin Master imports PacSoft CSV exports to build pricing analysis tables.
Paladin POS Import
The Paladin import reads a tab-delimited text file exported from the Paladin POS system and loads it into Margin Master for pricing analysis. Paladin uses a BCP staging pipeline to process the data.
Propello POS Import
Propello is a point-of-sale system with a file-based Excel import and CSV/Excel export integration in Margin Master. For the full Propello integration guide including export functionality, see [Propello POS Integration Guide](propello.md).
Prosperity POS Import
The Prosperity import reads tab-delimited text files exported from the Prosperity point-of-sale system. It uses a BCP staging pipeline and includes 13 months of individual sales history fields that map to Margin Master's standard history columns.
ProStix POS Import
ProStix is a point-of-sale system used by a small number of Margin Master customers. Data import for ProStix is supported, but detailed documentation is pending.
RockSolid POS Import
The RockSolid import reads inventory and sales data from a RockSolid POS Microsoft Access database file (.RS) and loads it into Margin Master for pricing analysis. RockSolid pairs with Do it Best vendor data.
RockSolid Max POS Import
RockSolid Max imports your store's inventory and sales data from pipe-delimited text files exported by the RockSolid Max POS system. **Note:** RockSolid Max is completely separate from the standard RockSolid POS -- they use different file formats, different field layouts, and different import pipeli...
Spruce POS Import
The Spruce import (also known as SprucewareNet or Spruceware.Net) pulls your store's point-of-sale data directly from a remote Spruce SQL Server database. Unlike most POS imports, Spruce does not use a local file -- it connects over the network to query your Spruce system's `vw_MarginMaster` view.
Sympac POS Import
Sympac is a point-of-sale system used by a small number of Margin Master customers. Data import for Sympac is supported, but detailed documentation is pending.
Transact POS Import
The Transact import reads a pipe-delimited text file exported from the Transact POS system and loads it into Margin Master for pricing analysis. Transact pairs with Do it Best vendor data.
Westlake POS Import
Westlake is a point-of-sale system used by Ace Hardware stores. Margin Master imports Westlake data files to build your pricing analysis tables, supporting the largest text-based field set of any POS system at 47 fields.
MI9 Data Pipeline — Import to Main Table
This document walks through the complete MI9 data pipeline — from the tab-delimited export files your MI9 system produces, through import and team-based aggregation, to the final main table that Margin Master uses for pricing analysis.
MySQL/Compass Connection Configuration
Epicor stores that use the Compass data warehouse connect Margin Master to a MySQL database to import POS inventory and sales data. This screen configures the MySQL connection credentials and import behavior. Once configured and verified, Margin Master can pull store data directly from the Compass M...
Propello POS Integration Guide
MarginMaster integrates with the **Propello** point-of-sale system via file-based Excel import and CSV/Excel export. Propello is supported for both **Ace Hardware** and **Do it Best** vendor types, with vendor-specific field mappings and post-import enrichment.
Database
Resetting Vendor and POS Data
Margin Master provides two reset utilities under **File > Utilities** that allow you to clear different categories of data and start fresh. These are useful when data has become corrupted, when switching configurations, or when support asks you to perform a clean re-sync or re-import.
SQL Optimization Tools
Margin Master includes a suite of built-in database optimization tools that help keep your SQL Server database running efficiently. Over time, as data is imported, strategies are executed, and tables are rebuilt, database performance can degrade due to fragmented indexes, outdated statistics, and ac...
SQL Server Express Install & Upgrade
Margin Master includes a built-in guided installer for SQL Server Express. This feature lives on the Database Configuration tab and handles everything from detecting your current SQL Server installation to downloading, installing, backing up, restoring, and verifying -- all without leaving the app.
Support
Support Issue Management
Margin Master includes a built-in support issue system that lets you report bugs, request features, track open issues, and communicate with RetailerSoft support — all without leaving the application. The system has six main capabilities:
