Compare scenarios & version history.

Pricing decisions rarely arrive one at a time. A distributor asks what happens if freight climbs, a buyer pushes for a fatter retail margin, and meanwhile you need last spring's numbers because someone is still quoting them. The brand editor answers both problems with two toolbar buttons: Compare models a scenario next to your current pricing without saving anything, and History keeps every published snapshot one click from restoration.

Two tools, one toolbar

Both live in the actions bar of the brand editor, next to the rounding toggle and Export menu. They solve different halves of the same problem:

• Compare looks forward: "what would my numbers become if…" It's a sandbox — a read-only projection over a copy of your draft. Compare is included on Starter and up.
• History looks backward: "what were my numbers when…" Versions are created by publishing, and every plan keeps a version history.

The two are deliberately exclusive: while you're viewing an old version the Compare button is disabled, and while comparing, History is — you're always anchored to exactly one view of the brand.

Running a Compare scenario

With at least one SKU in the table, click Compare. The editor slides away and a scenario view takes its place, with a control strip of four adjustments:

• FOB Offset ($) — add or subtract a per-case amount from every SKU's FOB
• Freight Offset ($) — the same, applied to freight
• Dist. Margin (%) and Retail Margin (%) — replace your current margins with proposed ones

Results recompute the instant you change a control, exactly like the editor itself. One subtlety: SKUs in REV mode don't take the FOB offset, because their FOB is an output of the math rather than an input — freight and margin changes still flow through them normally.

Nothing you do here touches your brand. The scenario runs on a copy taken the moment you entered, your draft's autosave is paused behind the scenes, and Back to Editor drops the whole thing and returns you to your numbers untouched.

Reading the compare view

The top of the view is a summary strip of portfolio averages — FOB per case, landed cost, distributor sell-in, distributor GP per case, retail per pack, and retail per single — each shown as a muted CURRENT figure over a PROPOSED one with the dollar delta between them. Below it, a table repeats the same pairing for every SKU.

Delta colors are directional, not decorative: a cost that rises shows red and one that falls shows green, while distributor GP is scored the opposite way — more GP is green. Sell-in is neutral, since whether it should move is exactly what you're negotiating. A worked example at a 32.5% distributor margin and 28.0% retail margin, with a +$2.00 FOB offset on a 6×4 case:

Metric	Current	Proposed	Delta
FOB / case	$28.00	$30.00	+$2.00
Dist. sell-in	$41.48	$44.44	+$2.96
Dist. GP / case	$13.48	$14.44	+$0.96
Shelf / pack	$9.60	$10.29	+$0.69

That's the whole pitch in one row: a $2.00 price increase reaches the shelf as 69 cents, and the distributor's case profit goes up. How the margins compound like that is covered in Setting Distributor & Retailer Margins.

Publishing a named snapshot

Versions come from the Publish button. Publishing freezes your current draft — brand name, every market with its margins and distributor, and every SKU including freight, excise, depletion, per-SKU margin overrides, and REV-mode targets — into a numbered snapshot. The confirmation dialog offers an optional version label ("Spring 2026 pricing"); labeled versions are far easier to find in the panel later, so it's worth the three seconds.

Publish is careful on your behalf: it flushes any pending autosaves first and aborts rather than snapshot a half-saved draft, and it refuses to publish when nothing has changed since the last version. The badge in the toolbar tracks where you stand — Never published, Draft changes, or Published.

Viewing and restoring versions

Click History to slide out the Version History panel. The top entry is always your Current draft, marked "auto-saving in real time"; beneath it, versions run newest-first with their number, label, and publish timestamp. Every plan keeps history — the panel shows your most recent versions on Free and Starter, with the full archive on Pro and up (see Every Plan Limit in One Place for specifics).

Clicking a version opens it read-only: an amber banner names what you're viewing, every field locks, and two buttons wait at the right — Back to draft and Restore this version. Restoring, after a confirmation that your current draft will be overwritten, replaces the draft with the snapshot in a single all-or-nothing transaction: it either completes fully or leaves your draft exactly as it was, never half-swapped. Every field in the snapshot — including the freight, excise, and depletion cost fields — survives the round trip intact.

Restoring never deletes anything from history. If you restore v3, decide you were wrong, and want v5 back, v5 is still sitting in the panel.

When to snapshot

Publishing is cheap and history only helps you if it exists, so snapshot on rhythm rather than on regret:

• Before a distributor meeting — freeze "what we walked in with," then negotiate freely in the draft knowing the baseline is one click away
• At seasonal resets — a labeled "Spring 2026 pricing" version turns next year's planning into a lookup instead of an archaeology dig
• Before a restore or a big experiment — publish first, and even the rollback becomes reversible

Pair the habit with Compare and the loop closes: snapshot what is, model what might be, commit what works. For where drafts themselves live and how autosave behaves, see Saving Brands.