Map policy
How Promotions and Exceptions Affect MAP Monitoring
A sale the brand approved should never reach its own review queue as a violation, and a distributor under negotiation should be measured but not enforced. Promotions and exceptions are how a monitoring program says so — and they are two different tools.
Every MAP program has moments when the floor should not apply as written. The brand runs a seasonal sale. A distributor's contract is being renegotiated and nobody wants a notice going out mid-conversation. A product is under legal review. A storefront is the brand's own. In each case the monitoring should keep measuring — you still want to know what prices were shown — but the ordinary consequence should not follow.
Programs that handle this by hand end up dismissing the same "violations" every morning. Programs that handle it with a single "ignore this seller" switch lose the measurement along with the consequence. The right shape is two distinct tools, because the situations compose differently.
Promotions: a different floor, for a window
A promotion lowers the effective MAP for a scope of products between two instants. During the window, an observed price is measured against the promotional floor; when the window ends, the policy's own floor applies again with nothing to switch off.
Three properties make a promotion safe to run monitoring against.
It has an end. A promotion with no end date is a policy change wearing a promotion's costume. If the floor is changing permanently, append a policy version; a promotion is for a window.
It is approved before it applies. A promotion is drafted by whoever plans the sale and approved by the person who owns the price floor — in MapProtector, a Brand Admin. Until it is approved it changes nothing. The approval is the same class of act as activating a policy, because it changes what every seller in scope is measured against.
It reverts by itself. Nothing has to run at the end of the window. An observation after the end instant simply no longer matches the promotion, so a scheduling outage cannot leave a promotional floor in force by accident.
When two promotions could cover the same observation, the narrower scope wins — a product promotion over a product-group promotion over a brand promotion. Two promotions at the same level with overlapping windows are refused when the second is saved: two floors cannot both be the MAP, and a system that picked one would hide a real configuration mistake behind a confident answer.
What a promotion does not do
It does not dismiss candidates that already exist. If a sale started before the promotion was approved, the observations from those hours are still measured against the full floor and may already be in the review queue. A reviewer dismisses them with the reason authorized promotion — and the lesson is to approve the promotion before the sale. The Promotions page covers the mechanics.
Exceptions: not judged, or never enforced
An exception is an effective-dated instruction about what happens next for a scope. It has two possible effects, and the difference between them is the whole point.
Exempt from policy. Observations in scope are not judged against the policy at all. The evaluation returns not applicable, with the exception named as the reason. This is deliberately not compliant: a seller who was excluded from judgment was not assessed, and counting them as compliant would inflate the compliance rate with offers nobody looked at.
Monitor only — never enforce. Observations in scope are judged and recorded normally, including as below policy. What changes is downstream: the observation never becomes a violation candidate, and it can never be cited by a notice. The brand keeps the measurement — it can see exactly what the distributor under negotiation is doing — and gives up only the consequence.
Exceptions can be scoped to a seller across the brand's catalog, a seller on one product, a product for every seller, a product group, or the whole brand. Several may apply at once, and they combine in the safe direction: if any live exception exempts the observation, it is exempt. There is no precedence to configure and no tie to resolve. See Exceptions.
What an exception does not do
It does not erase anything. An observation recorded while an exception was active stays recorded; an evidence package sealed before the exception stays sealed. It does not close a breach period — a monitor only exception created while a period is open stops future enforcement, and the period still closes on cure or not at all. And it does not classify the seller: a seller with an exception is still unknown, authorized or whatever your team has recorded.
Why two tools and not one
It is tempting to model an exception as "a promotion with no floor". They look alike — both are effective-dated overrides with a scope — and they compose in opposite ways.
| Promotion | Exception | |
|---|---|---|
| Effect | Changes the floor | Changes whether an observation is judged or enforced |
| How many may apply | At most one; a tie is a configuration error | Any number; they combine safely |
| Overlap at the same scope | Refused | Legal and expected |
| Scope axes | Product, group, brand | Product, group, brand, plus seller and seller-on-product |
| Who approves | A Brand Admin | A Compliance Manager |
Two floors cannot both be the MAP, so promotions need a tie-breaker and a constraint. Two exemptions can both apply, so exceptions need neither. Folding them together would manufacture an ambiguity that does not otherwise exist.
Configuring them so the queue stays honest
Four practices, in the order they pay off.
- Approve promotions before the sale starts. Draft it when the sale is planned; have it approved with a day's margin. Observations inside an approved window never become candidates.
- Use monitor only for relationships in flux. A distributor being renegotiated, a partner disputing a notice, a product under review: keep the measurement, suspend the consequence, and record the reason.
- Use exempt sparingly, and for the brand's own storefront. Exemption removes the measurement from the compliance figures. It is right for a storefront that is yours, and rarely right for anyone else.
- Give exceptions end dates. An exception without an until stays active until someone remembers it. Most situations that justify one — a negotiation, a review — have a horizon; put it on the exception.
Reading the numbers afterwards
When a monitoring dashboard shows a compliance rate, ask what it did with the observations that were not applicable and not evaluated. If they were counted as compliant, the rate is flattered. MapProtector keeps the six evaluation outcomes distinct and reports them separately, so a compliance figure counts only offers that were actually judged. The reasons an offer did not reach the queue — including enforcement suppressed by exception — are recorded against it, so "why is this seller not in my queue" is answered by a fact. The MAP Promotions & Exceptions Guide works through the configuration decisions in more detail.