MAP monitoring that keeps the evidence

01Setting your MAP

A MAP policy sets the lowest price at which one product may be advertised, in one currency. Each policy has:

• A MAP price and currency.
• A tolerance of 0% to 50%. With 2%, a seller is in breach only below 98% of MAP.
• Start and end dates, for a policy that takes effect later or a promotion window.
• Regions: all by default. A country covers its states and provinces, so one US policy applies in California and in Texas.
• A basis: the advertised price, or the total with shipping.

Only one active policy can cover a product, currency and region at a time. For a whole price list, import a CSV. Identify each product by its Pricebeeper ID, its GTIN (EAN, UPC or barcode columns work too) or a SKU, which is matched against the MPN and then the store or feed ID. Add the MAP price and currency, and optionally dates, tolerance, basis and regions.

A file can hold up to 5,000 rows. "Check only" shows what would change without saving; otherwise valid rows are saved even when others fail, and each failure is reported with its spreadsheet line. Uploading the list again updates prices in place.

02How a violation opens and closes

Every time prices are recorded for a product, at the monthly search and at the daily re-checks on Growth and up, each seller's cheapest eligible offer is compared with the policy. Below the threshold, a violation opens for that seller in that region, or the running one is updated with the latest and the lowest price seen. A violation closes when:

• the seller is back at or above MAP;
• the seller is missing from 2 regular checks of the product in a row;
• you resolve it by hand;
• the policy ends, or the product is no longer monitored in that region.

Dismissing a violation silences that episode. If the seller undercuts again after it ends, a new violation opens. Severity follows the deepest undercut: 20% or more below MAP is high, 10% to 20% is medium, anything less is low.

03Which offers count

MAP is about prices that identified sellers advertise, so two kinds of row count:

• Sellers' offers, from Google Shopping and Amazon seller data, daily re-checks of sellers' own pages, and pinned competitor pages. A pinned page's violations alert once its shop is on your seller list.
• Google Shopping ads that name their seller, because an ad's price is an advertised price.

Search results that name no seller never count. Every Amazon keyword result is recorded under "amazon", and another product's price would read as Amazon breaking MAP. Amazon Sponsored Products and its own-brand section don't count either, nor do used or refurbished offers or your own store.

04Verified violations and your seller list

A violation is verified when the offer is an exact match, meaning a seller of the same Google Shopping product or Amazon ASIN (or a daily re-check of one), or when the seller is on your seller list. Only verified violations raise alerts. Offers found by keyword search from sellers you haven't listed are recorded as unverified: you can see them, but they stay quiet, because a keyword search can return a similar product your policy doesn't cover. Exact product matching is what makes most violations verified.

The seller list holds your authorized resellers and the sellers you know are unauthorized, by name or by domain (a subdomain matches too). From an unverified violation, one click adds its seller to the list as authorized or unauthorized; its running violations become verified and open ones alert. Violations then show whether each seller is authorized, unauthorized or unlisted, and the list filters by it.

05Evidence you can show a reseller

Each violation keeps a JSON snapshot of the observation that opened it, and of the newest one. It holds the source, the seller and shop domain, the product, the price, shipping and total, the price on the policy's basis, the currency, condition and stock, the offer URL, when it was recorded, the source's offer identifiers (such as the Google product ID and position, or the Amazon ASIN) and the policy it was checked against.

The snapshot's SHA-256 hash, taken over a fixed JSON form, is stored with it and printed in the notice pack, so a snapshot you show a reseller can be checked against what was recorded. The evidence is the recorded data and its hash, not a picture of the page.

06Reports by seller and by region

• By seller: violations and how many are open, products and regions affected, the worst and average undercut, first and last seen, list status, and a repeat-offender flag for sellers with 3 or more violations first seen in the last 90 days.
• By region: violations per state, province or country, grouped under their country, with open and verified counts, sellers, products and the worst undercut.
• Notice pack: a CSV of one seller's violations, or all of them, with product, GTIN and MPN, region, MAP, observed and lowest price, undercut, dates, offer URL, source, exact-match flag and the evidence hash.

The region report matters when a reseller breaks MAP in some states and not others. Pricebeeper tracks prices in countries and in states and provinces; regional price tracking explains how regions use slots.

07Alerts and the daily summary

A verified violation raises one alert. It appears on the Alerts page and in the app's notifications, and goes to your Slack and webhook destinations as a map.violation event marked opened, then again marked resolved when it ends. Price alerts describes how those destinations are set up and filtered.

MAP alerts aren't part of the batched price alert email. Instead, a daily MAP summary at 07:30 UTC lists your open verified violations, deepest undercuts first, with how many are new in the last 24 hours, the sellers with the most, and how many unverified ones are waiting. The owner and teammates who receive alert emails get it, under a MAP alerts preference with its own unsubscribe link.

08MAP and repricing together

On the same plans, repricing treats an active MAP policy as a floor. A rule never suggests a price below it, the check is repeated just before a price is written to your store, and a revert that would go below MAP is refused. So a brand that also sells direct can follow the market without undercutting its own policy.

09Limits worth knowing

• A breach is seen at the next read of that seller: within 6 hours for the 5 cheapest offers, within a day for other sellers whose pages can be read directly, and at the monthly search for Amazon sellers, newly found sellers and sellers whose pages can't be read. Plans below Growth don't include MAP.
• Offers that name no seller, such as Amazon keyword results, never count, so a reseller that only appears that way stays invisible until its product is matched.
• Prices are tracked by country or by state and province, not by store or zip code.
• Pricebeeper records and reports. Contacting resellers is up to you, and nothing here is legal advice on MAP policies.
• API keys can read MAP data but can't change policies or violations.

Prisync's pricing page puts MAP monitoring on its $399 Platinum plan and Pricefy's on its $189 Business plan. The Prisync comparison covers the rest of the difference.

Questions people ask