Signal Lab

Pocket Margin Waterfall

A commercial waterfall from list price to pocket price to pocket margin.
It measures where margin leaks — discount, rebate, freight, terms, returns, cost-to-serve.
Use it to stop the highest-leak giveaways before you cut list price again.

Profitability What-ifs Cash

Your numbers stay in this browser. Export only — nothing is uploaded. Illustrative, not financial advice.

List price is the starting sticker / catalogue price. A leak is any commercial giveaway that reduces what you keep (discount, rebate, freight, terms, returns). Pocket price is net after those leaks. Pocket margin is pocket price after COGS (cost of goods sold) and cost-to-serve.

Sample figures: AU product / services segment.

List price and commercial leaks

Edit leak $ amounts (commercial giveaways) — % of list updates live. Persist locally · Jump to waterfall

(starting sticker / catalogue)

Leak step (commercial giveaway) Amount % of list
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Pocket price → pocket margin

List → leaks → pocket price → COGS → cost-to-serve → pocket margin. Warn if pocket margin % of list < 15%.

Equations

  • PocketPrice = List − Σ leaks (discounts + rebates + freight + terms + returns)
  • PocketMargin = PocketPrice − COGS − CostToServe
  • % of list each step = Amount ÷ List · PM % of list = PocketMargin ÷ List · PM % of PP = PocketMargin ÷ PocketPrice

How this is calculated
  • Pocket price — net price after commercial leaks (on-invoice discounts, off-invoice rebates, freight giveaways, terms / financing, returns / credits)
  • Pocket margin — pocket price minus COGS (cost of goods sold) and cost-to-serve
  • Each leak shows as $ and % of list. Ranked list sorts leaks by dollar size.
  • What-if scales all leaks by a % shock, or dials the top leak alone.

Illustrative waterfall — not financial advice.

What-if leaks

Scale all leaks ±% or dial the current top leak.

Leak dials

Leak scale stacks on your entered leak $. Top-leak dial overrides the scaled top leak only.

Multiplies every commercial leak. COGS and CTS stay fixed.

Sets the current biggest leak to this $ (after scale). Leave synced to idle.

Take it with you

Get the worked example workbook in Excel — type your own numbers into it.

The Excel is the worked example workbook — type your own numbers into it. Stays on your device.