> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.merchantops.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Comparison & proposals

> Compare a MAP policy against your catalog prices and review the resulting price-change proposals.

A comparison run measures a brand's MAP policy against the prices in your catalog
and produces a set of **price-change proposals** — one per product/colorway where
your price differs from the policy. You review each proposal, approve or reject it,
and roll the approved ones into a price batch. This page is for merchandisers
keeping catalog prices aligned with brand policy. See also
[MAP policies](/pricing/map-policies) and [Price batches](/pricing/price-batches).

## The flow

<Steps>
  <Step title="Run a comparison">
    Trigger a comparison for a brand against its active MAP policy. It runs in
    the background and produces proposals for the differences it finds.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Review the proposals">
    Work through the proposals — each shows the current price, the proposed
    price, and the change. Approve, reject, or modify the amount.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Group approved proposals into batches">
    Preview how approved proposals group into batches (by effective date, or by
    brand and date), then create the batches.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Approve and publish the batches">
    From here the normal [batch lifecycle](/pricing/price-batches) applies:
    submit for review, approve, and publish on the effective date.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Comparison runs

A run is scoped to a brand and compares against that brand's active MAP policy. Each
run is tracked with a status and summary counts, and you can list, search, archive,
or delete runs. Deleting a run also removes its proposals — but a run whose proposals
have already been assigned to a price batch cannot be deleted until those batches are
removed first, so batched work is never orphaned.

## Reviewing proposals

Each proposal represents a proposed price change for a product colorway. When you
review it you can:

<ResponseField name="Approve" type="accept the change">
  Accept the proposed price as-is.
</ResponseField>

<ResponseField name="Reject" type="decline the change">
  Decline the change; the current price stays.
</ResponseField>

<ResponseField name="Modify" type="accept a different amount">
  Approve the change but override the proposed amount with your own.
</ResponseField>

You can review proposals one at a time or batch-review many at once with the same
decision. Proposals can be filtered by brand, status, comparison run, or an
exception flag, and searched by product name, key, or style ID.

### Matching and coverage

A proposal is expressed at the style-color level and fans out to the underlying
variants. Because merchant catalog identifiers vary, MerchantOps flags how
confident the match is (`matched`, `not_carried`, or `unsure`), and you can:

* **Override the match status** when the automatic classification is wrong.
* **Manually link variants** to a proposal when the automatic fan-out missed them.
* **Check unpriced colorways** — catalog colorways in the run with no matching
  proposal — so nothing slips through unpriced.

You can also create a **manual proposal** for a colorway directly, without a
comparison producing it.

## From proposals to batches

Once you have approved the proposals you want, preview the batches they form and
create them. Grouping is configurable:

| Grouping mode    | Batches are formed by               |
| ---------------- | ----------------------------------- |
| `effective_date` | Effective date only.                |
| `brand_and_date` | Brand together with effective date. |

The created batches then follow the standard review and scheduled-publishing
workflow described in [Price batches](/pricing/price-batches).

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="MAP policies" icon="scale-balanced" href="/pricing/map-policies">
    The policies comparisons run against.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Price batches" icon="layer-group" href="/pricing/price-batches">
    Review, approve, and schedule the resulting changes.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>