# Pricing logic audit: where your quotes and your records part company

Eight questions about how your team prices and records deals. Open one deal that closed last month, answer each question with what is true today rather than what the process says, and tick it where the uncomfortable answer is the honest one. The count of ticks and its reading update as you go.

## Before you start

Pick one real deal, not a typical one. Have the pricing sheet the rep used, the quote document the customer received, and the deal record open side by side. Each question carries a line on why it matters and a line describing the uncomfortable answer.

## How the count works

Every question counts one tick and the reading is by the number of ticks, from 0 to 8. There is no weighting: the ticks locate where the quoted number and the recorded number part company, and the reading tells you what to do about that many points of divergence.

### The eight questions

Tick the question if the uncomfortable answer is the honest one.

- [ ] 1. Who last edited the pricing sheet, and when? (1 point)
  Why it matters: whoever edited the file last is, in practice, the owner of your pricing. Uncomfortable answer: you do not know, or it was a rep rather than finance.
- [ ] 2. How many copies of the pricing sheet exist right now? (1 point)
  Why it matters: every copy is a separate price list, and copies are never updated together. Uncomfortable answer: more than one, or nobody can say.
- [ ] 3. Where is a discount above the normal level agreed? (1 point)
  Why it matters: an approval given in chat, email or a corridor cannot be found later. Uncomfortable answer: anywhere other than in the deal record itself.
- [ ] 4. Can you show who approved the largest discount of last quarter, and on what date? (1 point)
  Why it matters: this is the question finance will ask at audit time, and the question a new head of sales asks in week one. Uncomfortable answer: only by asking the people involved.
- [ ] 5. Do the quote document and the deal record share one source for the number? (1 point)
  Why it matters: if the number is typed into the record by hand, the forecast is a collection of recollections. Uncomfortable answer: the rep enters the value manually after sending the quote.
- [ ] 6. When a price or rate changes, how does the change reach every rep? (1 point)
  Why it matters: if the answer is a new file sent around, the old file is still in use somewhere. Uncomfortable answer: someone circulates a new version and hopes.
- [ ] 7. Who owns the pricing logic, by name and by role? (1 point)
  Why it matters: logic without an owner is changed by whoever is under the most pressure that day. Uncomfortable answer: the last editor, or sales operations by default because nobody else claimed it.
- [ ] 8. Of the last 10 closed deals, how many have a quoted total that matches the recorded total exactly? (1 point)
  Why it matters: this is the direct measure of the drift the rest of the audit is circling. Uncomfortable answer: you would have to check, and you expect fewer than half.

### Your result

**0 to 2 ticks.** Your pricing is under control and the gap, if there is one, is in a single place. Fix that one point and re-run the audit in a quarter.

**3 to 5 ticks.** The number diverges at more than one point in the deal, and the forecast is already carrying the cost. Start with questions 5 and 7: one source for the number and one named owner for the logic remove most of the rest.

**6 to 8 ticks.** The spreadsheet is your pricing system and nobody is running it. Before any tooling decision, write down the pricing logic in one document, assign it to finance, and agree the approval thresholds in writing. Only then is it worth deciding where that logic should live.

Take the ticked questions to your head of sales and to finance in the same meeting. They will disagree about which answers are the problem. That disagreement is the real finding, and it is what any fix has to resolve first.