Three prices for one tonne
A tonne of the same goods has three prices in our workbook. They are not labelled optimistic, realistic, and pessimistic, and they are not three moods. Each one has to be something that has already happened, or a clause that already exists on paper. If a column needs a speech to justify it, it does not go on the sheet.
Base is an invoice, not a hope
Base is the last price actually paid, converted on the day of that invoice, with the freight that was on that file. For a client invoicing in euro and paying wages in lei, the conversion is a cell, not a footnote. Change the tonne price and the margin, the cash, and the cover of any loan have to move together. We do not paste a finished total into the bottom of the page and format it to look linked.
Tight is a delay you have already seen
Tight is the same tonne if the purchase currency moves against the leu by the amount agreed in the brief, and if the largest buyer pays later than usual. The number of days comes from their own ledger. Twenty days, eighteen days, eleven days: whatever they have already lived through. A generic “customers pay in 30 days” is how a sheet drifts away from the company that will have to live inside it.
Stretch is a clause
Stretch is the price if a clause already in a contract is switched on. A supplier’s prepayment term. A second retainer already offered to another clinic. A rent-free fit-out month already written into a draft lease. It is not the price the room wishes it could charge. When we lay cards on the table in the hall, the stretch column is the shortest stack, because most briefs arrive with one real upside and a lot of atmosphere.
The three columns share drivers. Wages, rent, and the power bill usually sit in all three, unless the brief gives a reason they would change. A case that only changes the sales line is a decoration. We would rather hand over a workbook with two honest cases than three that cannot be defended on a Thursday morning in March, when someone points at a cell and asks where it came from.
If you already know the last invoice and the clause you are afraid of, that is enough to start. The reply will say whether this is an 11-day model or a 23-day pack.