Reviewing a Strategy and Running It

What is this?

A strategy is reviewed in two passes: reading it in the Strategy Manager before a run, and reading the results after one. This page covers both, and the run itself.

Walk through it in the app: guide 2009 — When a strategy run surprises you. Margin Master can walk you through these steps live: turn on Training / Guide Mode from the Help menu, then type 2009 into the Lessons & Guides box — or ask Margin Master support to run it with you.

Reading the strategy before a run

In the Strategy Manager, read the list top to bottom the way it will execute:

1. Is the first step broad? A catch-all (ALL → Retail) guarantees every SKU a price.
2. Do specific steps sit below the general ones they refine? If a narrow step is above a broad one, the broad one will overwrite it - see the hierarchy.
3. Skus column - a step matching 0 SKUs is selecting on a value that no longer exists, or has not been run yet.
4. Act column - anything unticked will be skipped; is that intended?
5. Select each step and read its detail pane in plain words; the copy button (top right of the pane) copies the rule text for a note or a support issue.

AI Review (when the AI assistant is enabled) scores the active strategy and explains gaps, overlaps and wasted passes. It needs a run first for accurate numbers.

Running the strategy

Strategy > Execute Strategy (Ctrl+X) on the main window. Before running, Margin Master may ask:

The run holds the window with a Please Wait panel; large multi-store databases take minutes.

The Strategy Execution Summary

When the run ends the summary opens (unless switched off on Miscellaneous - runs with errors always show it).

Run summary: the strategy and run time, Processing time, Steps, SKUs affected, Status, Sitting margin (current to future) and Profit impact (last 12-mo volume) - the two numbers that say whether the strategy moved margin the way you wanted. Two lines can appear: No prices changed (a warning) and Items not priced - the items the run left without a new price, broken into how many no step selected and how many have no cost. Items not priced is not an error; it is normal for a strategy to leave items alone.

Per-step grid: Step, Type, SKUs Affected, Rounding, Status and Why - the reason a step priced nothing (a selection value not in the current data, a rounding scheme not found, or the error that failed it).

Finding what was not priced

Strategy > Show Skus NOT included in Strategy loads every row no step of the strategy touched (the drop-down switches to Show ALL Skus so nothing is hidden). Those are the SKUs your first, broad step should be catching; a long list usually means the catch-all step is missing, inactive, or scoped to one store. The Show Skus Not In Strategy button on the execution summary opens the same list, so you can go straight there from the number that prompted the question.

The menu item is greyed out until a strategy has run against the database - before a run nothing has been priced, so every SKU would qualify and the list would tell you nothing.

It stays on, so you can narrow it down

This is a filter, not a one-off list. It stays in force until you clear it, so you can keep working:

• Add any other selection - a department, a vendor, a product group - and press Refresh. You get the unpriced items within that selection, which is usually the question you actually have.
• Everything that acts on the current selection respects it: the Summary section, setting a Future Price, Remove Price Decreases, printing and exporting.

If you have a PS Rule (or PS Rule History) selection box on screen, the filter appears there as a ticked BLANK entry - that is all it is, an ordinary selection. Untick it to turn the filter off, or tick a real rule alongside it to see both sets.

If you do not have one of those boxes, a No Pricing Rule pill appears beside the selection tabs instead. Click it to clear the filter.

Either way, F12 (Clear ALL Selections) clears it along with everything else, and choosing the menu item a second time turns it off.

Exporting the list to Excel

Strategy > Export Skus NOT Priced to Excel... (or Export Not Priced on the execution summary) writes the whole Items not priced population to a spreadsheet under your export folder, in a SkusNotPriced sub-folder. Margin Master offers to open it when it is done.

The file is the right tool when the list is long or you want to work through it away from the app. The grid is limited by Maximum Display Records on Miscellaneous; the export is not, so it never truncates your list.

Each row carries the store, SKU, description, product group, vendor, current price, cost, the rule that claimed it (blank if none did) and a Reason:

In the grid, PSRule names the step that set each row's price and the PSRule selection box lets you look at one step's results at a time.

After the run

Read the Summary section for the increases, decreases and dollar impact per store, then export the changes to your point of sale (Printing and Exporting). Every run is logged locally and, for stores with cloud tracking, in the Strategy Execution Tracking dashboard.

Tips

Run, read Items not priced and Why, fix, run again. A strategy is rarely right on the first pass and the summary is designed for that loop.

A big Decreases count in the Summary section after a run is the moment to check whether a step needed No Decreases.

Common Questions

Q: The summary says Items not priced: 1,240 but every step ran. Did something fail? A: No. It means the strategy's steps did not select those items - a normal result, not an error. Click Show Skus Not In Strategy on the summary to see them. If the list surprises you, add or widen a catch-all step, or check the store scope of the first step.

Q: Why does Items not priced count more SKUs than the list I get from Show Skus Not In Strategy? A: The total also counts items a step did select but could not price because they have no cost in your POS data. The grid shows only the items no step selected, which is the number the summary quotes right before it names the menu item. Export Not Priced gives you the full total, with a Reason column separating the two.

Q: How do I get the not-priced items into Excel so I can work through them? A: Export Not Priced on the summary, or Strategy > Export Skus NOT Priced to Excel.... The export is not limited by Maximum Display Records, so it never truncates the list the way loading them into the grid can.

Q: A step shows 0 SKUs Affected with Why blank. A: Its selection matched nothing - open the step in the manager and check its condition values against the selection boxes.

Q: Can I undo a run? A: Run again after fixing the strategy - each run recomputes every future price. Nothing reaches your point of sale until you export.