Independent distributors, $10M to $100M
Your costs went up. Did your prices?
Caliper reads a year of your own sales lines and today's costs, and lists every item where a vendor raised the cost and your price never caught up — with the dollars, the customers and a suggested new price. The first check is free, at your office, on your data.
Your sales data never leaves your computer. Caliper runs in your web browser and reads your files there.
What it finds
Four lists, from the reports you already run.
Missed cost increases
Items whose cost went up while the price to a customer stayed where it was. For each one: old cost, new cost, old price, new price, what it cost you over the year, and a suggested price that passes the increase through.
Coming cost increases
The new cost is already in your system and the prices have not moved yet. What that will cost over the next year if nothing changes.
Sold below cost
Lines where the price was under the cost, and items given away for nothing. Some are on purpose. The list lets you tell which.
Dead stock
Items with no sales in twelve months, and items with far more on the shelf than you sell. The cash tied up, and what it costs a year to keep it there.
The four are never added into one big number. A year of lost margin and cash sitting on a shelf are different things, and a total that mixes them would be the first number in the report you could not defend.
What a check looks like
Demo Supply Co. is made up, so its report can be shown to anybody. Every figure below was worked out by the same checker you would be running.
$20,927,386 of sales 59,590 invoice lines 2,858 items 300 customers 32.7% margin
Prices missed at least $125,011 a year of cost increases.
Across 453 items and 244 customers, the cost went up and the price did not follow. At the margins those items used to earn, it is nearer $192,019 — the report shows both, and leads with the smaller.
| Item and customer | Cost then | Cost now | Price then | Price now | Suggested | Lost a year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| THHN 12 AWG BLK (WC-0259, per ft) High Point Industrial Services | $2.7652 | $3.0271 | $4.1337 | $4.1337 | $4.3957 | $6,373 |
| UF-B 12/2 (WC-0026, per ft) Stonebridge Electric Contractors | $2.098 | $2.270 | $2.907 | $2.907 | $3.079 | $4,697 |
| THHN 12 AWG BLK (WC-0259, per ft) Northgate Electric | $2.7652 | $3.0271 | $3.8903 | $3.8903 | $4.1523 | $4,514 |
| THHN 12 AWG BLK (WC-0259, per ft) Summit Electric & Sons | $2.7652 | $3.0271 | $4.6339 | $4.6339 | $4.8958 | $3,983 |
| PVC PIPE 2" SCH40 (PF-0431, per ft) Riverbend Mechanical & Sons | $2.2839 | $2.4711 | $3.8916 | $3.8916 | $4.0788 | $3,796 |
The five biggest of 687 rows. A suggested price passes the cost increase through, dollar for dollar; you decide whether to use it.
See the sample report (PDF) Run it yourself
Every figure above was worked out by the checker from the made-up company's data, and the headline was checked a second way before it was put here. Your figures will be your own.
How the free check works
About 90 minutes at your office. If it finds nothing, it cost you nothing.
Pull two reports
Sales by invoice line for the last 12 months, and your items with today's cost and quantity on hand. Excel or CSV, straight out of the system you already run. If it is easier, they can be pulled together at the visit.
Thomas comes to your office
About 90 minutes. Caliper opens in a web browser on your own computer and reads the two files from your disk. The person who runs your system reports should be there for the first part.
You check the numbers yourself
Before anything is worked out it shows your total sales and margin from the files, so you can say whether that looks like your year. Then the check runs, and every row in the report traces back to invoice lines in your own data. Open the spreadsheet and check any of them.
The report stays with you
The PDF and the Excel workbook are saved to your computer. Then Thomas presses Wipe, and the page keeps nothing of yours.
Your data stays in your building
Not a policy you have to take on trust: the way it is built.
Caliper's engine is loaded into the web page and does the work there, on your computer. Your sales, costs, customers and items are read from your disk by the page itself and are never uploaded — not to JTS, not to anybody.
It is locked so it can only talk to this site, and the only things it asks this site for are its own program files and whether you are signed in. There is no address on this site that accepts a file.
Past checks are kept in a folder you choose on your computer — or on a shared drive, so your team sees the same history — and you can open, export or delete them at any time, subscribed or not.
Your numbers are never combined with another company's, and nothing is learned from them. Competitors' prices never meet through JTS.
After the free check
It checks again every month, so an increase that slips through is caught the month it happens.
$997 a month
or $9,970 a year, which saves $1,994
- Month to month, or a year at a time.
- Up to 3 people at your company, each with their own sign-in.
- It re-checks every month from your fresh exports: what got fixed, what is still open, what is new.
- Stop any time; it runs to the end of what you have paid for. Your history of checks stays on your computer and keeps opening.
Caliper is only offered after the free check, and only when the check found at least 3 times what it costs — about $35,900 a year in missed increases. If it did not, you are thanked for your time and that is the end of it.
There is no free trial and there are no refunds: the free check is how you see what it finds before you pay anything.
What it is not
- It does not change a single price. It hands you a list; you decide what to raise, for which customers, and when.
- It does not connect to your business system. It reads the exports you pull, so there is nothing to install on your server and nobody from JTS ever has a login to it.
- It is not pricing software that sets prices across your customers. It finds cost increases that slipped through, and stays there.
- The figures are estimates from your own data, the smallest defensible ones. Check before you change prices.
Book a free check
Tell us who you are and Thomas will call or email to find a time. Nothing is asked of your data until you are sitting with him.
Or call Thomas on (205) 860-0113, or email caliper@jtsapps.com.
The rest of the JTS tools
Each one does one job for one kind of business, worked out from numbers you already have.