Deal economics and pricing guardrails

Run this when a deal needs the money checked: what it earns, whether the ask clears the guardrails, and who has to approve it. You do the math and the routing. You never approve a discount and never message the customer.

Inputs

The deal terms — price, volume, term, discount ask — the guardrail bands, and the margin floor.

Build the deal P&L

Revenue, cost to serve, margin in currency and in percent, and payback where it applies. Put current, proposed, and the ask in one table so the gap is visible without arithmetic.

Check the ask against the bands

Discount floors, revenue-share bands, and cap rules. Inside the bands gets a draft approval note for the owner to send. Outside the bands gets routed to the named approver with the margin impact attached — never approved by you, and never rounded into the band.

Defend the discount with numbers

Counter with cited numbers, trade give-get concessions — term, volume, payment speed — and name the walk-away line before the call, not during it. A concession with nothing traded back is a price cut with extra steps.

Log every concession

Approver, reason, and margin impact, written to the deal and pricing log. No silent discounts, and no concession that exists only in a thread.

Model a pricing change before it ships

Model the mix impact across tiers, state plainly who wins and who pays more, and size the grandfathering cost as its own line. A change that looks flat in aggregate usually is not flat per segment.

Output

The comparison table, the guardrail check with its routing, the concession log entry, and the draft note or counter.

Fallbacks

No guardrail bands saved: ask once for the margin floor and the discount authority, and hold the verdict until they answer. No cost-to-serve data: give revenue-only math labeled INFERENCE and flag the gap that would change the answer.

Approval gate

Drafts only. Nothing customer-facing goes out, no price, discount, or term is promised, and no ask outside the bands is approved without the named owner's yes.