Store Assessment

The Store Assessment is the first thing to run for a new store. It shows where the store's prices stand against its vendor's price levels, compares sample pricing models built from the store's own data and goals, and can turn any of them into a starting strategy for the store to review and change.

The store sets its own prices. The potential plans are sample models, not advice. They show what each approach would do to the number of price changes and the current and future sitting margin. Which plan to use, and every price in it, is the store's decision.

Open it from Strategy › Strategy Utilities. The button and the screen are named for the store's vendor:

A True Value store has its own page as well: True Value Store Assessment covers how a True Value store is read before and after its transition.

Before you open it, import the store's POS data, sync vendor data and build the main table. The assessment reads the store's items as soon as the screen opens; there is nothing to start. Each blue ? on the screen opens the part of this page that explains it.

Reading this screen in two minutes

Walk through it in the app: lesson 3008 — The True Value Store Assessment: Simple and Advanced views shows the screen on a True Value store; it works the same way for Do it Best and Ace. Turn on Training / Guide Mode from the Help menu, then type 3008 into the Lessons & Guides box.

The screen opens in the Simple view:

1. Check the goals at the top. They are already set to sensible defaults; change the order or a rule if the store sees it differently. The plans update straight away.
2. Read the blue box. It shows the potential plan closest to the goals you set: its number of price changes, its current and future sitting margin, and what it does.
3. Compare the other plans in the list underneath. Each row is a different way to price the store, with the same measures. Click a row to see that plan in the blue box.
4. Answer any questions shown under the blue box.
5. Create a strategy from the plan in the blue box with Create a Strategy from This Plan.... The line under the button says what it will create. Want only the price level, with no adjustments? Pick Program as it stands in the list first. A screen shows exactly what will be created before anything is saved.
6. Review the strategy in your strategy list, add or remove steps, and make it active only when you are satisfied with the prices. Its steps already round with the scheme you chose.

Simple and Advanced views

Switch between them with View: Simple / Advanced at the top right.

• Simple shows one plan at a time, the other potential plans one line each, any questions, and the create buttons. It is all most stores need.
• Advanced shows every tab described below: the overview, each level on its own, the potential plans with their steps, how the store's prices fit each level, departments, awareness codes, questions and possible selling-unit issues. Use it when you want to see why the numbers are what they are.

Both views show the same plans and create the same strategies.

The store's goals

What it shows. What matters most to the store, in order, and the rules it never breaks.

How to read it. Rank the goals with the arrows; the one at the top counts most:

Hard rules are never broken, whatever the goals say:

• No price decreases: no item's price goes down.
• Margin must not drop: plans whose future sitting margin is below the current sitting margin are not shown.
• Leave price-sensitive items at their current price (A, or S for Ace): no plan changes them.

Price level (True Value program for a True Value store): leave it on Fewest price changes (default) and the assessment works out which level the store's prices follow, or pick the level the store says it prices to.

Rounding: the rounding scheme every step that sets a price will use. It starts on the store's own scheme (TV-1 for True Value, DIB-1 for Do it Best, Ace-1 for Ace); pick another of the store's schemes, or No rounding.

What to do with it. Set the goals the way the store sees them. Every change recalculates the plans at once.

Rounding

Rounding is on from the start, because a store almost always rounds its prices, and the scheme makes a big difference to the result. Every number on the screen is the price a step will actually write with the scheme chosen in Rounding, and every step the strategy gets rounds with that scheme.

What it shows. In the Simple view, under the plan, The plan closest to your goals, with each rounding prices the same plan with each of the store's schemes.

How to read it. A scheme with more price points to round up to (AF-1, AF-2) lifts more prices, so it raises the margin and also changes more price tags.

What to do with it. Pick the scheme in Rounding; the plans and the strategy follow it. You can still change the rounding on any step later in the strategy.

Overview

What it shows. Where the store stands today: items, sales, gross profit and the current sitting margin over the last 12 months, and the share of items that are vendor items. A True Value store also sees how its item numbers were read (see the True Value page).

How to read it. Margins use the same rules as the Profit Analyzer, so the numbers match. Items with no cost, or a margin outside the valid range, are counted but left out of the margins.

What to do with it. Check it looks like the store you know. If the item count or sales look wrong, fix the data (POS import, costs) before relying on the plans.

Options

What it shows. Each price level on its own, as a one-step strategy, with and without price decreases.

How to read it. Each row shows how many price tags would change (increases and decreases), the share of items that change, the current and future sitting margin, and the yearly gross profit change.

What to do with it. Use it to get a feel for each level. To start from one, select it and click Create Strategy from Selected Option....

Potential Plans

What it shows. Six to eight sample ways to price the store, each built from its own items. Every plan prices groups of items (a department and the groups below it, for price-sensitive, high-awareness, moderate or blind items, under or over $10) at one of the vendor's levels, and goes further only on low-awareness items. A group sets its own price only when it has enough items selling to judge it; smaller groups follow the group above them.

Plans that would end up the same as one above them are not repeated, so a store may see fewer than eight.

How to read it. The first plan is the one closest to the goals you set, and What it does (or Why) explains it. That order follows the goals; it is not a judgement that one plan is right for the store. Selecting a plan lists its steps underneath, in the order they run: the broad ones first, then the more specific ones.

What to do with it. Pick the plan you want to start from and click Create Strategy from Selected Plan... at the bottom of the screen (in the Simple view, Create a Strategy from This Plan...).

Level Fit

What it shows. What moving every vendor item to each of the vendor's levels, or to the suggested retail, would do.

How to read it. Each row shows the number of price changes (increases and decreases), the share of items that change, and the current and future sitting margin. The level needing the fewest price changes is the one the store's prices follow; when two levels are within half a point of each other, the one with the better future sitting margin wins. The last columns show how many prices already sit exactly at the level, above it or below it.

What to do with it. If the store knows which level it prices to and this tab disagrees, set it at the top.

Departments

What it shows. For each vendor department (the Do it Best taxonomy department, or Ace's Vendor Department), how many price changes each level would need, and whether the department gets a step of its own.

How to read it. A department gets its own step only when both are true:

• it has at least 25 items to compare, with real volume;
• its own level needs at least 3 points fewer price changes than the store's level and at least 10% fewer.

What to do with it. Nothing, usually. If a department's step surprises you, the Questions tab lets you keep it on the store's level.

Awareness

What it shows. Departments ranked from the most blind to the most price-sensitive, using the vendor's awareness codes (see Price Sensitivity & Awareness Codes):

How to read it. Shoppers notice the price of sensitive items, so those have less room to move. Lower-priced blind items can take a bigger increase. A department that is at least 40% blind, with real volume, qualifies for the blind-item uplift: its blind items under $10 go to the vendor's highest level. Sensitive and high-awareness items never get the uplift.

What to do with it. Use it to see where the store has room on price and where it does not.

Questions

What it shows. Where the data is uncertain, the assessment asks.

How to read it.

• Program level: the store's prices fit two levels almost equally. Which does it price to?
• Margin: the plan closest to your goals has a future sitting margin below the current sitting margin. Allow it, or make "margin must not drop" a rule?
• Department: confirm or decline a department's own level.
• Price-sensitive items: many sensitive items would come down. Lower them, or keep their current prices?
• Possible selling-unit issues: items whose price is far from the suggested retail (see below).
• SKU keying (True Value only): the POS item numbers do not match how the store is set up. This one blocks creating a strategy; see the True Value page.

What to do with it. Pick an answer. The plans update straight away.

Possible Selling-Unit Issues

What it shows. Items priced at less than half or more than double their suggested retail, with each item's description. That often means the store and the catalog price a different selling unit: for example, a key blank sold each for $3.99 while the catalog's suggested retail of $87.99 is for a box of them.

How to read it. The Likely Reason column sorts them into three kinds:

• Suggested retail far above: the store may sell it each while the catalog lists a box or a pack.
• Suggested retail far below: the store may sell its own pack, or simply price it high.
• No real suggested retail in the catalog: the catalog lists a placeholder (such as $0.01), not a price.

Not every item on the list is a true selling-unit problem; some are just priced well away from the suggested retail. Moving any of them to a level without a look could be badly wrong, so:

• they are left out of the level fit;
• they stay at their current prices in every plan;
• the strategy puts them in a custom group named Possible Selling-Unit Issues that keeps them at their current prices. A store with more than one location gets one group per store ("Possible Selling-Unit Issues - Store 12"). Open Manage Custom Groups on the strategy to review the list, remove items you have fixed, or delete the group.

What to do with it. Review the list and price these items yourself.

The strategy it creates

Creating a strategy always shows a screen first that says exactly what will be created: the strategy's name, what it will do, its steps in order, and the number of price changes and the current and future sitting margin to expect. Nothing is saved until you click Create Strategy on that screen.

• Create a Strategy from This Plan... (Simple view) or Create Strategy from Selected Plan... (Advanced view) creates every step of the plan: the first step prices every vendor item at the store's level; the steps after it adjust smaller groups of items, broad ones first.
• To get only the level, with no adjustments, pick Program as it stands and create from it. In the Advanced view, Create Program-Level Strategy... does the same for any selected plan: it keeps only its first step.

Both add the Possible Selling-Unit Issues custom group (one per store). The strategy is named for what it is: the vendor and level, the plan and the date, for example DIB L1 Fewest Changes 2026-10-10, Ace L1 Margin +1 Pt 2026-10-10 or TV 1.5 Program Level No Decreases 2026-10-09 (a number is added if that name is already used). Steps run in order, and when more than one step prices an item, the last one wins. The assessment is saved with the strategy, so the reasons it was built that way stay with it.

A starting point, not a finished pricing plan. The strategy is not made active, so none of your prices change. Its steps round with the scheme you chose. Review every step, add or remove steps as you see fit, and make it active only when you are satisfied with the prices it sets. You are responsible for your store's prices.

What the steps select by. Each step selects items by group, awareness code (PricingStrategy) and Current Price.

• Do it Best and True Value: the Do it Best taxonomy descriptions (the Taxonomy Selections boxes). Where two groups share a description, the step also names the group above it.
• Ace: the vendor codes Vendor Department, Vendor Class and Vendor Product Group (Margin Master has no Ace taxonomy descriptions), each with the groups above it. If those selection boxes are missing, creating the strategy adds them in a tab named Vendor Taxonomy; a built-in selection view is copied first as "... (Store Assessment)" and the copy becomes your current view. The confirmation screen says so before anything is saved.

If any other box a step needs has been removed, you are offered the level-only strategy instead; add the box back in View Manager to create the full plan.

Excel export

Export to Excel writes every tab to a workbook (Overview, Level fit, Level options, Plans, Selected plan steps, Departments, Awareness, Questions, Selling-unit issues) to share with the store.

Troubleshooting