How Selection Boxes Work

What is this?

Everything in Margin Master starts with a selection: the set of rows the grid shows, the Summary counts, the Profit Analyzer analyses, and - saved with a camera click - the set of SKUs a strategy step prices. The selection panel at the top of the main window holds the selection boxes, one per field, on tabs. This page explains how to pick values in a box, how include and exclude work, how boxes combine, and the special boxes for prices, margins, quantities and dates.

Walk through it in the app: lesson 1005 — Selection box area, guide 2008 — Keeping items out of a price change and lesson 2020 — Narrowing a price change. Margin Master can walk you through these steps live: turn on Training / Guide Mode from the Help menu, then type the number into the Lessons & Guides box — or ask Margin Master support to run it with you.

A standard box

A standard box lists every value the field has in your data - departments, classes, vendors, zones, price-sensitivity codes. Each box has:

• ALL at the top, ticked when nothing is selected. Ticking ALL clears the box.
• Wildcard just below ALL on boxes with more than a handful of values - see Wildcard Selection Filters.
• The values, with a tooltip on each showing the field and value (for coded fields, the meaning: S : Sensitive, A : Price Sensitive).
• A grey count beside the title on the Store Number box.

How to select

Type to scroll: hover the mouse over a box and start typing. The list jumps to the first value that starts with what you typed - PAI lands on PAINT. The typed text resets after half a second, so pause and type again to jump elsewhere.

The grid refreshes as you change selections; the Records Found count on the button row tells you what the selection produced.

Include and exclude

A box works in one of two directions:

• Include - the box keeps only the values you ticked. Department 10 and 14 means "rows in department 10 or 14".
• Exclude - the box drops the values you struck through. Excluding 10 and 14 means "every department except 10 and 14".

One box cannot mix the two. The moment any value in a box is excluded (right-clicked), the whole box becomes an exclude box and any values that were merely ticked stop counting - only the struck-through ones matter. Read a box as "all of these included" or "all of these excluded", never a mixture. If you want both, use two selections or a saved selection per case.

Exclusion is available on the standard boxes only; the price, cost, quantity and date boxes below are single-choice.

How boxes combine

• Within a box, the ticked values are OR'd: Department 10 or 14.
• Across boxes, the boxes are AND'd: Department (10 or 14) and Class (100) and Vendor (ACE).

So the more boxes you use, the narrower the result. A row must satisfy every box that has something selected; a box left at ALL imposes nothing. The Records Found count is the quickest check that a combination did what you meant.

Special boxes

Number, price and date fields do not list values - they compare. Each has two tabs (1 and 2) so you can apply two conditions to the same field, for example greater than $10 and less than $50.

The first row of each list (Any Retail, Any Cost, Any Percent, Any Number, Any Date) means "no condition" and is ticked by default. When an operator needs an amount, the From and To editors appear below the list; a Manual choice shows its amount on the row itself.

The PSRule box

PSRule lists the strategy steps that priced items on the last strategy run, so it is built from live data rather than a fixed list. Until a strategy has run it says Execute the strategy to view affected items (or No active strategy selected). Ticking a step shows exactly the rows that step ended up pricing - the fastest way to audit one rule. PS Rule History lists every step of the active strategy by number and shows rows a step touched even if a later step overrode it.

Store Number and how stores are written

Multi-store databases have a Store Number box. For point-of-sale systems whose store identifiers differ from the vendor store numbers (Epicor), each row can be shown as **Vendor store

(POS #)** - for example 00042 (1715) - or the other way round, or one number only, and sorted

by either. Choose this on Tools > Options > Epicor > Store Number Display & Sorting. The display is cosmetic: the vendor store number is always what filters and saved selections use, so a saved rule keeps working whichever display you prefer. The tooltip on a store row reads Vendor store 00042 / POS store 1715.

Stores beyond your license are listed greyed with the tooltip Current License includes N store(s).

Clearing and reloading

• Clear ALL Selections - F12, Tools menu, or the rollback arrow at the top-right of the tab strip (tooltip Clear ALL Selections [F12]). It clears every box, the Future Price panel, the Quick Find and any loaded saved selection.
• When a saved selection is loaded its #number and name appear as a pill on the tab strip (tooltip Loaded Saved Selection); click it to open the Strategy Manager.
• Refresh Data on the button row reloads the grid without changing selections.

Saving and reloading selections - the camera - is the next page: Save and Load Saved Selections.

Tips

Build a selection from the broadest box to the narrowest - Department, then Class, then a price or margin condition - and watch the Records Found count after each.

Prefer include. An exclude box is easy to misread later, especially in a saved strategy step.

Which boxes and tabs exist is yours to decide: Edit Selection Boxes.

Common Questions

Q: I ticked two values but only one seems to apply. A: Check for a struck-through value in the box. One excluded value turns the whole box into an exclude box and ticked values are ignored.

Q: Can I select all departments except one without right-clicking? A: No - right-click is exclude. Alternatively tick every department but the one, which reads as an include list.

Q: Why does a box show No Items Found? A: The field has no values in the loaded data - usually because point-of-sale or vendor data has not been imported yet (Verify data has been imported).