MAP pricing monitoring: catch every violation, every morning
MAP pricing monitoring without a spreadsheet of retailer links you never get through. Every morning Sai opens each authorized retailer’s listing for your products, reads the advertised price, compares it with your minimum advertised price, and logs every violation with a dated screenshot as evidence. You start the day with a short list of who is below MAP, by how much, and since when.
The routine
# Routine: Daily MAP pricing monitoring
Schedule: Every day at 7:00 AM
Runs on: Scout's computer
Ask me before acting: no
Stop a run after: 1 hour
## Each run
1. Open every listing URL in the Listings tab of the MAP sheet in a fresh browser session.
2. Read the advertised price exactly as a shopper sees it, including any automatic discount shown on the page. Ignore prices that only appear in the cart.
3. Compare it with the MAP for that product in the Products tab.
4. For every listing below MAP: save a full-page screenshot named <retailer>_<sku>_<date>.png to Drive > MAP > <month>, and add a row with retailer, product, advertised price, MAP, gap and screenshot link.
5. Mark violations that are new since the last run and ones that have been resolved.
## Rules
- Never contact retailers or change anything on their sites.
- If a listing is gone, out of stock or needs a login, record that instead of a price.
- Wait a few seconds between pages on the same site.
## Send me
New violations, ongoing ones with their age in days, and resolved ones.What is MAP pricing monitoring?
MAP pricing monitoring is the practice of checking the prices retailers advertise for your products against your minimum advertised price (MAP) policy, and recording any listing that advertises below it. Brands and manufacturers use it to protect price perception across their retail channel and to keep authorized resellers on equal terms. Because a MAP policy covers the advertised price, the evidence is what the listing page shows on a given day.
The work is simple and relentless: the same listings, every day, with proof. That makes it a natural routine rather than a project.
How this routine monitors MAP
Each morning Sai follows the same steps on its own computer, in a real browser:
- Open each listing. Sai works through the retailer URLs in your MAP sheet, one site at a time, at a polite pace.
- Read the advertised price. It reads the price the page shows a shopper, including automatic discounts displayed on the listing, and ignores prices revealed only in the cart.
- Compare with MAP. Each price is checked against the MAP for that product in your sheet.
- Save evidence. For every listing below MAP, Sai saves a dated full-page screenshot to Drive and links it in the log.
- Report what changed. New violations, ongoing ones and resolved ones are listed separately, so you know who to contact today.
What you get every morning
The screenshots are what make the log useful: when you contact a reseller, you can show them exactly what their page said and when.
- A violations log with retailer, product, advertised price, MAP and the gap
- A dated screenshot for every violation, filed by month
- New, ongoing and resolved violations separated
- Listings that disappeared or went out of stock, flagged
Ways to monitor MAP pricing, compared
Most brands start by hand and move to software as the number of listings grows.
| Method | Setup | Sees prices as shoppers do | Evidence | Ongoing effort |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Checking listings by hand | None | Yes | Manual screenshots | High: every listing, every day |
| Retailer feeds or reports | Depends on each retailer | No, reports the catalog price | Rarely | Low, but coverage is partial |
| MAP monitoring software | Medium, per-listing pricing | Usually | Yes | Low for supported marketplaces |
| A Sai routine | Paste the routine, add your MAP sheet | Yes, it uses a real browser | Dated screenshots in Drive | Low: review the morning list |
Dedicated MAP software is the better fit for thousands of marketplace listings with seller identification. For your authorized retailers and the listings you care about most, a routine is quick to set up and works on any retailer site you can open. Watching your own competitors’ prices is a different job: see competitor price monitoring.
How often should you check MAP?
Daily is the norm for MAP, because a violation that runs over a weekend can start a price war. Run it every morning, and add a second run before and during big promotional periods. Use Stop a run after to keep each run inside the time you expect.
Set up the routine in Sai
- Copy the routine above and paste it into Sai, or click Start with Sai.
- Set the schedule. Every day at 7:00 AM means the list is waiting when you start work.
- Leave approvals off for this routine: it only reads pages and writes to your sheet and Drive. Contacting retailers stays with you.
- Add your MAP sheet with a Products tab (SKU, MAP) and a Listings tab (retailer, SKU, URL).
- Run it once and check the screenshots before letting it run every day.
More on schedules and run limits in the Routines guide.
Why use a computer use agent for MAP monitoring?
Retailer sites don’t publish an API for their advertised prices, and many show the final price only after scripts run or a variant is picked. A computer use agent reads the page like a shopper, so what it records matches what a customer saw, and its screenshots are proof you can send.
Sai ranks at the top of OSWorld, the open benchmark for computer use, which is why a daily routine can run unattended. When a page fails or changes, Sai records that instead of guessing a price.
Skills this routine uses
- Website data to Excel or Sheets: Pull prices, listings and tables from websites with no export into a clean Google Sheet or Excel file, on a schedule if you want.
- Excel automation: Clean, merge and update workbooks, refresh a model from new numbers, and build the weekly report in the real Excel app.
- AI brand visibility tracking: Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini your buyers’ questions every week and log which brands each answer mentions and cites.
Related guides
- Routines in Sai: How schedules, approvals and run limits work
- AI e-commerce operations: Pricing, stock and listings for online stores
- Google Workspace × Sai: Sheets and Drive for the log and screenshots