Exchange offers priced on instinct

Exchange closes sales. The allowance is decided quickly, usually generously, because the alternative is losing the sale — and the cost of that generosity is absorbed into the margin of the new handset where it becomes invisible.

Two transactions treated as one

Netting the allowance against the sale makes the arithmetic simple and the analysis impossible. The shop cannot answer whether its trade-in book made or lost money last quarter, because the two halves were never separated.

What separating them shows

Usually that the allowance is broadly right on common models and consistently too high on one or two — typically the ones staff are least familiar with, where the guess defaults to optimism.

That is an actionable finding: it does not require refusing exchange, only adjusting a handful of numbers.

The record required is small

The unit taken in, the allowance given, and what it eventually sold for. Three fields. The reason it is not kept is not effort but framing — the trade-in is thought of as a discount rather than as a purchase, and discounts do not get tracked to an outcome.