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Why a second margin floor? Because the first one only checks itself.
A margin floor inside the repricer only checks the repricer. It cannot see a marketplace fee it estimated wrong, it does not govern the ERP job, the support tool or the AI agent that also change prices, stock and refunds, and its history is not evidence finance can verify months later. Commerce Gate sits between all of those tools and the marketplace with one policy and one signed record, and it never replaces them.
Three category comparisons, no vendor names. Every Commerce Gate line below repeats what its platform pages say; the capabilities page states, per platform, what is enforced and what is only evaluated.
Commerce Gate vs the margin floor inside your repricer
A repricer wins price wars: it watches competitors and moves your prices up and down all day, and every serious repricer carries a floor so it does not price below your minimum margin on its own.
| Criterion | The margin floor inside your repricer | Commerce Gate |
|---|---|---|
| Who checks | The same tool that pushes the price. A fee it estimated wrong, or a rule someone edited, passes its own check. | An independent check between the tool and the marketplace. Your repricer or agent sends the proposed price and landed cost; Commerce Gate returns the verdict, and the tool that asked must honor it. |
| Which actions | The price changes it makes. | Price changes, stock changes, order acceptance, fulfillment steps, promotion changes, refunds and returns; what each platform enforces, and what it only evaluates, is stated on the capabilities page. |
| Which actors | Itself. The ERP inventory job, the support tool issuing refunds and the AI agent editing listings are outside its floor. | ERP, repricer, workflow, AI agent, support tool or person: the same published policy for all of them, with the actor recorded on every decision. |
| Marketplace fees | Its own fee assumption, often one rate for the whole catalog. | Your Walmart referral-fee schedule per SKU or product type, counted in landed cost before the margin floor is applied. |
| Evidence | A repricing history. | A signed Decision Dossier for every policy decision, with the inputs, policy version and reasons, verifiable months later from the Decision Ledger. |
| Watch before you enforce | Depends on the tool. | Free watch-only Shadow Mode with no time limit; Walmart and Adobe Commerce start with a 90-day order evaluation, Shopify with a 14-day look-back, and nothing changes until you turn enforcement on. |
| If the check is unreachable | The repricer keeps pushing on its own assumptions. | Stated per platform: Walmart order acknowledgment fails open, Shopify checkout fails closed by default rule by rule, Business Central has one company-wide setting, and an agent that gets an error instead of an answer treats it as hold. |
Choose the margin floor inside your repricer on its own if: One repricer is the only thing that ever touches your prices, nobody else can override it, and you trust its fee table.
Commerce Gate vs a checkout margin app for your own store
A checkout app lives inside your storefront and sees the exact basket: it can catch a coupon that stacks below cost or a shipping quote that erases the margin at the moment a shopper pays, and some correct the cart rather than stop it.
| Criterion | A checkout margin app for your own store | Commerce Gate |
|---|---|---|
| Who checks | The storefront, at checkout. | The storefront too on Shopify, inside three Shopify Functions (checkout validation, discount code, payment method), and everything beyond it: marketplaces, the ERP, the support tool, AI agents. |
| Which actions | The checkout: discounts, shipping, payment. | Price changes, stock changes, order acceptance, fulfillment steps, promotion changes, refunds and returns; what each platform enforces, and what it only evaluates, is stated on the capabilities page. |
| Which actors | Shoppers and promo codes. | Everything that acts on your catalog and orders, not only the cart. |
| Marketplace fees | Store costs, shipping and duties for direct sales. | The marketplace referral fee where the sale happens on a marketplace, from your own fee schedule. |
| Evidence | Checkout logs. | A signed Decision Dossier for every policy decision, with the inputs, policy version and reasons, verifiable months later from the Decision Ledger. |
| Watch before you enforce | Usually a trial or an audit of past orders. | Free watch-only Shadow Mode with no time limit; Walmart and Adobe Commerce start with a 90-day order evaluation, Shopify with a 14-day look-back, and nothing changes until you turn enforcement on. |
| If the check is unreachable | Depends on the app. | Stated per platform: Walmart order acknowledgment fails open, Shopify checkout fails closed by default rule by rule, Business Central has one company-wide setting, and an agent that gets an error instead of an answer treats it as hold. |
Choose a checkout margin app for your own store on its own if: All of your margin leakage is at your own checkout, you do not sell on a marketplace, and a cart correction is what you want rather than a hold.
Commerce Gate vs margin checks inside your erp
The ERP holds the truth about cost, so a margin check at sales-order release or posting is exact for the documents it sees, and it stops a bad document before it is booked.
| Criterion | Margin checks inside your ERP | Commerce Gate |
|---|---|---|
| Who checks | The ERP, at release or posting, after the marketplace has already accepted the order. | Before the marketplace acknowledgment, before the price reaches the marketplace and before the refund is sent; and inside Dynamics 365 Business Central at release and posting too, with an ALLOW or BLOCK on line margin and the agent's spend budget. |
| Which actions | Sales documents. | Price changes, stock changes, order acceptance, fulfillment steps, promotion changes, refunds and returns; what each platform enforces, and what it only evaluates, is stated on the capabilities page. |
| Which actors | Whatever writes to the ERP. | Including the repricer, the support tool and the AI agent that never touch the ERP. |
| Marketplace fees | Whatever cost the ERP holds; marketplace fees are usually booked later. | The ERP cost basis plus your marketplace fee schedule, so the floor is judged on landed cost at the moment of the action. |
| Evidence | The ERP change history. | A signed Decision Dossier for every policy decision, with the inputs, policy version and reasons, verifiable months later from the Decision Ledger. |
| Watch before you enforce | Rarely a dry run; the check is on or off. | Free watch-only Shadow Mode with no time limit; Walmart and Adobe Commerce start with a 90-day order evaluation, Shopify with a 14-day look-back, and nothing changes until you turn enforcement on. |
| If the check is unreachable | The ERP keeps its own rules. | Stated per platform: Walmart order acknowledgment fails open, Shopify checkout fails closed by default rule by rule, Business Central has one company-wide setting, and an agent that gets an error instead of an answer treats it as hold. |
Choose margin checks inside your erp on its own if: Every order reaches the ERP before anything is acknowledged or shipped, nothing changes prices or issues refunds outside it, and marketplace fees are not what decides your margin.
Choose Commerce Gate if
- More than one tool or person changes prices, stock, orders or refunds on your channels: an ERP, a repricer, a workflow, a support tool, an AI agent.
- You sell on a marketplace where the fee, not the list price, decides whether the sale clears the floor.
- Finance asks why an action was allowed and needs a record it can verify, not a story.
- You want to watch first: Shadow Mode is free with no time limit, and the platform pages say what each one enforces.
You do not need it yet if
- One repricer is the only thing that touches your prices and nobody else can override it.
- All of your leakage is at your own checkout and you want the cart corrected rather than held.
- You have no cost basis anywhere yet: without a landed cost, a margin rule cannot fire, and Commerce Gate fails open rather than guess.
See what it would have held before you decide.
Connect in Shadow Mode and read the evaluation; nothing on your platforms changes.