Sample output from the Buy-Side Margin Leakage Audit prompt in the Sonar AI Prompt Library, run against a NetSuite test account. Every name and number here is test data. Back to the post · The library
Read-Only Audit · NetSuite GL Evidence

Buy-Side Margin Leakage Audit

Window: Feb 7 – Aug 7, 2026 (6 months)  ·  1,462 POs · 1,387 item receipts · 1,270 vendor bills  ·  Single currency · OneWorld enabled
Receipts missing landed cost
99.8%
Only 2 of 1,072 inventory receipts carried a landed cost allocation
PPV run rate (Jul–Aug)
$3.9K/mo
Acct 5071 · 12× the Feb–Jun baseline · ~$47K annualized
Open GRNI at Aug 7
$138.9K
Acct 2220 · was ~$0 in April · $31.3K aged >60 days
Bills with no receipt
16 POs
$12.5K billed against POs never received — broken 3-way match

1 / Landed Cost Capture

The Landed Cost feature is configured — three categories exist (Duty id 7, Freight id 8, Import Fees id 10, mapped to accounts 8200/8300/8400) — but it is almost never used. $1.69M of inventory was received at bare purchase price.

Inventory received WITHOUT landed cost allocation, by month ($)

Feb 2026
$6,672
Mar 2026
$16,455
Apr 2026
$17,898
May 2026
$222,146
Jun 2026
$652,652
Jul 2026
$662,592
Aug 1–7
$110,670

Aug shows the first (and only) 2 receipts with landed cost applied — $5,563 of received value. Everything else: zero allocation.

MonthInventory receiptsWith landed costReceived valueValue w/o landed cost
Feb 2026920$6,672$6,672
Mar 20261130$16,455$16,455
Apr 20261230$17,898$17,898
May 20261570$222,146$222,146
Jun 20262430$652,652$652,652
Jul 20262500$662,592$662,592
Aug 1–7942$116,232$110,670
Total1,0722$1,694,646$1,689,084
The deeper problem: freight isn't being expensed either — it's missing entirely. A full GL sweep of freight / duty / customs / handling / import accounts found only $500 of freight on one August vendor bill (acct 8300). Freight-in 6314: $0 all period. With ~$1.7M of goods received, real inbound freight and duty costs are almost certainly being absorbed somewhere invisible — bundled into supplier unit prices, billed to unrelated expense accounts, or not yet billed at all. Item margins are computed on purchase price, not landed cost, and there is no offsetting overhead line to even estimate the gap. Every product margin reported since February is overstated by the full (uncaptured) freight + duty burden.

2 / Supplier Price Drift on Repeat SKUs

128 vendor + SKU combinations had 3+ purchases in the window. Contract pricing is remarkably stable — first-vs-last bill rate drift is ~0% on 127 of 128 combos. But price integrity is leaking through a different door: Purchase Price Variance (bills posting at different costs than receipts), which jumped 12× in July.

Purchase Price Variance postings — acct 5071, by month ($)

Feb 2026
$203
Mar 2026
$265
Apr 2026
$302
May 2026
$312
Jun 2026
$337
Jul 2026
$3,726
Aug 1–7
$4,044

Baseline ~$280/mo through June → $3,900/mo in Jul–Aug. Annualized at the new run rate: ~$47K of unmanaged cost variance.

VendorPPV transactionsPPV posted (6 mo)Share
Lavira Imports190$7,485.9690.5%
Core4Solutions2$300.003.6%
FrisCo1$197.502.4%
Crown Foods1$150.001.8%
Grocer's Warehouse Inc.1$132.501.6%

Lavira Imports: 190 separate transactions each posting small variances — the classic "no single invoice causes concern" pattern. Their headline SKU AM 95482 bills at a flat $0.48, so the variance is arising between receipt cost and bill cost, not on the contract rate.

Anomaly flagged: FrisCo — SKU SAL104 unit cost +2,286%. First bill Mar 2 at $0.001/unit → last bill Jul 2 at $0.025/unit across 5 purchases (2,976 units, $54 total). Dollar impact is trivial, but a 25× unit-cost jump on a repeat SKU means either the item's standard cost is wrong or a unit-of-measure mismatch exists — both of which distort margin on every sale of this item.
No vendor exceeded the 2% average drift threshold on contract rates. Excluding the SAL104 anomaly, the worst genuine first-to-last drift was 0.14% (Aquavit Beverage Co., SKU 431238). Buy-side price discipline at the PO level is good — the leak is downstream, at receipt-to-bill matching.

3 / GRNI — Goods Received Not Invoiced

Account 2220 Inventory Received Not Billed sat near zero for two years, then inflated to ~$138.9K by Aug 7 as purchase volume ramped. Receipt→bill matching is fast when it happens (median lag: 1 day across 1,032 billed POs) — the balance is built from ~56 POs that were received and never billed at all, plus 16 POs billed with no receipt.

GRNI balance build-up — net monthly additions to acct 2220 ($)

Feb 2026
−$36
Mar 2026
−$1,975
Apr 2026
−$374
May 2026
+$10,095
Jun 2026
+$69,257
Jul 2026
+$37,353
Aug 1–7
+$24,149

June alone added $69K — 12% of that month's $583K inventory spend arrived and was never matched to a bill.

Aged 0–30 days
$74,923
41 POs — normal working window
Aged 31–60 days
$45,178
10 POs — should already be resolved
Aged 61–90 days
$31,311
5 POs — margin & inventory confidence at risk
Billed, never received
−$12,506
16 POs — reverse mismatch, incl. 6 identical FrisCo bills of $1,047.70
PO #VendorOpen GRNIFirst receiptAge (days)Status
PO395Food Distributor$18,300Jul 23631–60d
PO398Food Distributor$15,600Jul 14240–30d
PO396FrisCo$12,600Jul 33531–60d
PO3809Brocade Communications$11,017May 257461–90d
PO435Crown Foods$10,775Jun 16761–90d
PO399FrisCo$10,000Jul 22160–30d
PO391Food Distributor$8,150Jun 303831–60d
PO471Food Distributor$4,865Jul 22160–30d
PO3763Corrugated Solutions$3,750Jun 16761–90d
PO425Core4Solutions$3,551Jun 16761–90d
PO426Core4Solutions$3,551Jul 33531–60d
PO423Corrugated Solutions$2,218Jun 16761–90d

Top open receipts >$2K past 14 days shown; 73 open POs in total. Food Distributor alone accounts for $47.3K of open GRNI across 6 POs.

Data hygiene flag: future-dated transactions. Several receipts are dated after today (Aug 7) — e.g., an unbilled $404K receipt on PO3796 (Core4Solutions) dated Aug 11, and PO436 dated Oct 3. These sit outside the as-of aging above but will hit GRNI (and inventory) the moment their dates arrive. The account's live balance already shows −$631K including this future-dated activity. Worth confirming whether these dates are intentional.

Executive Summary — Estimated Monthly Margin Leakage

WorkstreamEstimated monthly impactConfidenceNature of leak
1. Landed cost not capitalizedUnquantifiable — structurally hiddenStructural~$282K/mo received (Jun–Jul avg) with 0% landed cost capture and no visible freight expense anywhere. Margins overstated by the entire freight+duty burden.
2. Price variance (PPV)~$3,900 / moHigh — GL-postedBills posting above receipt cost, 90% one vendor (Lavira Imports), spread over ~190 small transactions.
3. GRNI build-up~$43,600 / mo added (May–Aug avg)High — GL-postedBalance-sheet risk, not P&L yet: $76.5K aged >30 days is unverified cost sitting under inventory margin assumptions.

Five worst offenders

#OffenderIssueExposure
1Lavira Imports$7,486 PPV across 190 transactions in 6 months — silent per-line cost creep~$15K/yr at current rate
2Food Distributor6 POs received, never billed — largest single GRNI contributor$47.3K open
3FrisCo$26.3K unbilled receipts + 6 identical $1,047.70 bills with no receipts + the SAL104 25× cost anomaly$32.6K open + cost integrity
4Crown Foods$10.8K receipt unbilled 67 days, plus a dozen smaller open receipts$16.5K open
5Brocade CommunicationsSingle $11K receipt unbilled for 74 days — oldest material item$11.0K open

Top 3 process fixes (not dashboard fixes)

01

Capture landed cost at receipt, every receipt

The categories already exist (Duty / Freight / Import Fees). Make landed cost entry a mandatory step of the receiving procedure — estimated at receipt via cost-per-weight or %-of-value, trued up when the carrier bill lands. Until then, stop treating item margin reports as landed margin: they are purchase-price margins.

02

Weekly receipt↔bill exception review, owned by AP

Median match lag is 1 day — the process works when it runs. Institute a weekly worklist: every receipt unbilled >14 days and every bill with no receipt gets an owner and a reason code. Chase the $76.5K aged >30 days now, starting with Food Distributor, Brocade and Crown Foods. Investigate the 6 identical FrisCo no-receipt bills for duplicate payment risk.

03

PPV threshold alert + vendor scorecard

Route any bill posting >1% above receipt cost to a purchasing approval before it saves, and review PPV by vendor monthly. One vendor (Lavira Imports) generated 90% of variance in 190 invisible increments — exactly the drift pattern that never trips invoice-level review. Fix the SAL104 standard cost / UoM mismatch at the same time.