STR.9:5.3 - SensorCo: two improvements can share one receipt
Consider a constructed later costing comparison, separate from the current four-day preparation and its authority. It concerns a device-health report offer, an alert offer and their combination for one prospective customer over the same twelve months.
Assume that either offer, or both together, would produce one incremental payment of 10,000 currency units at month 12 under the stated acceptance and payment conditions. The customer pays for one service, not for the number of independently developed features. The complete future additional payments within the horizon are 6,000 for reports, 5,000 for alerts and 11,000 for both. Existing receipts and payments remain unchanged, and the supplied account establishes no other material displaced contribution. Funding when payments fall due, resources and permitted service conditions are assumed available for this calculation; the arithmetic does not establish them.
| Compared future arrangement | Incremental receipt | Future additional payments | Incremental net cash over twelve months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Continue without either new offer | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Reports only | 10,000 | 6,000 | 4,000 |
| Alerts only | 10,000 | 5,000 | 5,000 |
| Reports and alerts | 10,000 | 11,000 | −1,000 |
Adding the two standalone net returns would give 9,000 by counting the same possible receipt twice. Under these assumptions, alerts have the strongest net-cash result. That is a conditional financial comparison, not the full strategic preference, an authorized service commitment or realized revenue.
Now change one premise: a qualified customer basis supports a further 8,000 payable only for the combined offer, with the other cash consequences unchanged. Its receipt becomes 18,000 and its net cash 7,000, reversing the financial ranking. If that extra payment is unsupported, keep it as an unresolved premise rather than adding it or silently setting it to zero. Combining improvements is not intrinsically bad; their actual joint contribution decides this comparison.
A supporting rate needs the same care. In a separate constructed account, two distinct results each pay 100 units on completion and take two and four hours sequentially on the same resource, with no other delay. Together they yield 200 over six hours, or 33⅓ units per hour, not the sum of their standalone rates, 75. By contrast, independent streams paying 100 and 50 in the same one-hour interval can jointly yield 150 in that interval. Recover the quantities, conditions and interval before aggregating.
These are undiscounted cash comparisons under supplied conditions. Earlier funding requirements and any material financing, timing or later effects still need the qualified account appropriate to the actual choice. The current preparation can obtain missing costing or customer answers without claiming that this later comparison has already occurred.