Price-volume-mix

What it is and when to use it

Price-volume-mix answers one question: between two periods, how much of the change in revenue came from price, from volume, from mix, and from products that were added or dropped?

You upload one row per product; ReportForge works out the bridge, you explain the products that moved the most, and it writes the report.

Use it when you have units and revenue by product for two periods and need to explain why revenue changed.

The file

One row per product, as a CSV or Excel file. Amounts are in dollars; units are whole numbers (no decimals, no negatives).

If you give list prices for both periods, the price effect is split into "list price changed" and "discounting changed". Without them, price is shown as one line.

After you finalize a period you can continue to the next one. That upload only needs Product_Code, Product_Name, Current_Units and Current_Revenue_USD: the earlier figures come from the period you finalized.

If something is wrong

If the file has a problem, the page lists the rows involved and what to fix. A missing column is reported once, before any row is checked. Row numbers match your spreadsheet: the header is row 1. These are the messages, as the code writes them.

New, discontinued and continuing products

New: no units in the earlier period, units in the later period, and the product has not appeared earlier in the chain of periods you have continued. Discontinued: marked Inactive, or no units in either period. Continuing: everything else.

New and discontinued products appear as their own lines in the bridge.

Materiality: what needs an explanation

A product is material when its revenue change is at least $50,000, or when it moved at least 10% and by at least $10,000. A product with no earlier revenue is judged on the dollar amount alone. Those are the starting values; you can change them on the page. Only material products need an explanation.

Explain mode

Explain walks you through the material products one at a time, largest change first. For each one, write why it moved, say whether the cause is one-time or recurring, and move on. You can split a change across several reasons, each with its own amount. A product you do not want to explain can be ignored, and you can undo that.

If you type a number in your explanation, ReportForge first checks it against that product's own figures (its change, prior and current revenue, the price, volume and mix effects and so on). If it matches one, the report quotes the real figure and verifies it like any other. If it matches nothing, the report shows it as your number, labelled as coming from your explanation. It never matches against a different product's figures.

Outside reason links

In Explain you can create a reason link for a product and send it to a colleague who knows the answer. Only price-volume-mix has this: the flux and budget-vs-actual pages do not have the control.

• The link is tied to one email address; the person has to enter that address to open it.
• It expires after 5 days, and it stops working once you finalize the analysis.
• It can be answered once.
• Their answer arrives as a draft. The product does not count as explained until you review it and save it. The report says plainly when an explanation came from an outside reply, and from whom.

What is in the report

The example report further down this page is built from the sample file pvm-sample.csv by the real engine, using the Standard method. It shows:

• the bridge in summary figures: the revenue change, the list-price and discount effects, volume, mix, new products and discontinued products;
• a table of every product with its prior and current revenue, total change, and its price, volume, mix and new or discontinued effects, with the material products marked;
• a short written summary that states the figures of the bridge. The example text is fixed and gives no reasons; in your own report, the reasons are the ones you wrote.

Checks and the trust score

Each figure in the prose is checked back to your data in the Fact check panel. The report page also shows a trust score from 0 to 100. A report with unverified figures shows the Draft banner, a signal to review, not a failure of your data.

A price-volume-mix report cannot be published while any of these is true, and the page tells you which:

• the report has no trust score;
• a must-pass check has failed;
• a number in the report is not tied to one of your figures yet. You resolve it in the Fact check.

Numbers you typed in your own explanations do not block Publish; they are treated as yours.

A draft is a real version you can read, but it cannot be published: finalize, then generate again to get a version you can publish.

How the numbers are checked

The AI is not allowed to state any number, name, date, category or ranking that is not in your uploaded data.

Variances and other comparison figures are computed from your data and given to the AI as facts to restate, not to calculate.

After the report is written, a validation pass reads each cited figure back against your data. Figures that match are marked verified; a report with unverified figures is shown as a Draft so you know to review it.

If you type a number in an explanation, it is checked against that line's own figures. If it matches none, it stays as you typed it and is treated as your number, not as a checked figure.

The narrative can still contain errors, so review every report before you rely on it.

Periods

After you finalize a period you can continue to the next one with Continue to next period. That upload only needs Product_Code, Product_Name, Current_Units and Current_Revenue_USD: the earlier figures come from the period you finalized.

If your file also includes Prior_ columns that disagree, the finalized figures win and the page tells you which products differed.

When every material product has a reason and a one-time or recurring answer, the period labels are filled in, and the figures tie out, Finalize & generate locks the analysis and writes the report.

The free trial covers one analysis covering one period. More analyses need a paid plan. On a Single Report plan, price-volume-mix is available only if it is your account's report type.

Versions, exports and read-only share links

Every analysis ends in the same report page.

• Versions. Every generation is saved as a new version of the report. The report page has a version switcher, each version has its own address, and a version can be deleted after a confirmation that names it. The Publish button appears on the current version only, and a published report can be reverted to unpublished.
• Exports. The Exports menu offers Download .docx, Export .md, Download PDF, Export facts .csv and Print. A Draft carries a draft marker in the Word and Markdown exports. The analysis pages have no export; exports are on the report page.
• Read-only share links. From the report page's Actions menu, Share creates a read-only link for someone outside your account. A link always expires (1 to 90 days) and can be password-protected. The share panel shows how many times a link has been viewed.

Working with others

Each analysis, and the reports made from it, has people who can look at it and people who can change it.

• Account owner. Can always do everything on every analysis and report in the account, and can change who has access to anything. Only the owner manages billing, users, downgrading and closing the account.
• Writers. Chosen per analysis. They can edit, upload, explain, finalize, generate reports, publish, delete versions and start the next period. They can also change who the writers and readers are, and they can always read.
• Readers. Chosen per analysis. They can only look: they see finalized analyses and published reports, and nothing in progress. The page says "View only".
• Choosing people. Open Sharing on the analysis page. There are two choices, Who can write and Who can read. Each is the default, All users of the account, or Selected users picked from the people active on your account. An analysis always keeps at least one writer.
• Published reports. Once published, a report has its own setting, Who can read this report: All users of the account (the default), Selected users, or Writers only. The home page has a section, Reports shared with you, for published reports other people made and you may read.
• Notifications. The bell in the top bar tells you when someone makes you a writer or a reader of an analysis, or picks you by name for a published report. There is no email for these.
• Comments. On the report page, Actions then Comments opens a panel where you can add a comment, reply to one, and resolve or reopen a thread.
• Extra users. Each plan is for one user. The account owner can add users at $5 a month each.
• People outside your account. Share creates a read-only link for the report. To ask a colleague outside your account to explain a product, use a reason link (see Explain mode).

The example and the sample files

The figures were built from the sample file pvm-sample.csv by the real engine, and the text is fixed. No AI was used to produce this example.