{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp09_archetype_breadth150_20260804","cell_id":"versioning_and_quality_discrimination__accounting_auditing","arm":"BREADTH_PROBE_ONE_SHOT","candidate_id":"versioning_and_quality_discrimination__accounting_auditing__P1","proposal_index":1,"version":0,"title":"Self-Selecting Tiers for Pre-Audit Close Readiness","problem":"An independent accounting-advisory provider sells one fixed-fee pre-audit close-readiness package to organizations that differ in urgency, entity count, desired human support, and tolerance for standardized workflows. The provider does not know those valuations reliably before quoting. A fee low enough for a small organization with a flexible timetable underprices reserved capacity and intensive support for urgent clients, while a fee covering intensive engagements can exclude organizations willing to accept slower, self-service delivery.","actors":["Independent accounting-advisory provider that does not perform the client's external audit","Client controller or finance manager choosing the service","Client staff preparing reconciliations and auditor-requested schedules","External auditor receiving the resulting client-prepared schedules","Provider pricing committee and accounting-quality lead"],"observable_state":"The problem is present if quote, decline-reason, time-entry, and support-ticket records for a bounded set of readiness engagements show that the uniform package is declined by some otherwise suitable clients on price while accepted engagements split between low-touch scheduled work and urgent jobs consuming reserved capacity, repeated meetings, or partner escalation. The same records must show that these differences are not adequately predictable from permitted client attributes at quotation time.","consequence":"The uniform package forces a compromise among access, delivery reliability, and contribution margin: price-sensitive clients may forgo readiness support, while intensive clients can receive unpriced speed and human attention that disrupt staffing and indirectly subsidizes them.","affected_objective":"Provide financially sustainable access to accurate, clearly scoped pre-audit readiness support while protecting accounting quality, client data, delivery commitments, and the independence of the subsequent external audit.","intervention":"Replace the uniform package with a transparent, fixed-price Good-Better-Best menu for one close cycle. The initial test menu uses price indices rather than asserted market prices: Scheduled Readiness at 1.0 includes one legal entity, a standard reconciliation and prepared-by-client completeness checklist, portal delivery, a scheduled ten-business-day queue, and a written exception list; Guided Readiness at 1.7 includes up to three entities, a five-business-day start, a customized auditor-request crosswalk, and two analyst working sessions; Priority Readiness at 3.0 includes up to five entities, a two-business-day start, reserved capacity, daily status reporting, and partner escalation. Technical checking rules and the accuracy standard remain constant across tiers. Entity, cycle, response-time, and meeting limits are stated before purchase; additional scope requires a disclosed upgrade or a separate engagement. Clients choose a tier without identity-based eligibility assignment, and may downgrade before work begins or upgrade by paying the published difference.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"Segment Value Hypothesis","domain_realization":"Controllers differ in how much they value rapid initiation, reserved capacity, customized crosswalks, and live accounting support relative to a lower fixed fee and a scheduled standardized workflow."},{"archetype_element":"Version Dimension Selection","domain_realization":"Tiers vary only entity capacity, start time, customization, meeting access, reporting cadence, and escalation; they do not vary accounting accuracy, confidentiality, or required professional care."},{"archetype_element":"Quality Ladder Boundary","domain_realization":"Scheduled, Guided, and Priority tiers have plainly enumerated limits and progressively greater convenience and service intensity."},{"archetype_element":"Price-Tier Mapping","domain_realization":"A preannounced 1.0:1.7:3.0 price index is paired with progressively faster access, larger scope, and greater human support, subject to later calibration rather than an effect claim."},{"archetype_element":"Self-Selection Menu","domain_realization":"The client selects among identical comparison-table dimensions instead of being assigned a price from identity, sector, or presumed ability to pay."},{"archetype_element":"Arbitrage Guardrail","domain_realization":"Portal workspaces are limited to the purchased legal entities and close cycle; booked response windows and meeting allowances are tracked, and extra scope triggers a transparent upgrade rather than informal premium service through the base tier."},{"archetype_element":"Minimum Viable Base Quality","domain_realization":"The base tier still performs the complete advertised standard checklist, applies the same technical review rules, protects client data, and produces a usable exception list."},{"archetype_element":"Fairness and Access Review","domain_realization":"The quality lead reviews whether lower-priced clients lose essential accessibility, confidentiality, or technically necessary work and whether delay creates unacceptable filing or financing harm."},{"archetype_element":"Upgrade/Downgrade Path","domain_realization":"Clients may upgrade at the published price difference, while pre-start downgrades receive a scope and price adjustment without punitive lock-in."},{"archetype_element":"Tier Performance Dashboard","domain_realization":"The provider tracks chosen tier, stated choice reason, actual entity count, response time, staff hours, exception requests, upgrades, downgrades, complaints, and base-tier completion quality."}],"mechanism_mapping":[{"mechanism_slug":"good_better_best_tier_menu","role":"Makes the service ladder and fixed price-quality tradeoffs legible enough for clients to reveal their preference through choice.","counterfactual_removal":"Without the ordered menu, the provider returns to one compromise package or opaque negotiation, so client choice cannot perform the screening function."},{"mechanism_slug":"service_level_tier_schedule","role":"Uses start time, reserved capacity, meeting access, reporting cadence, and escalation as enforceable service-quality dimensions valued differently by clients.","counterfactual_removal":"If response and support commitments are identical across tiers, urgent high-support clients have little reason to choose a premium tier."},{"mechanism_slug":"feature_gating_and_usage_limits","role":"Limits entities, close cycles, customized mappings, and working sessions while preserving the technical quality floor.","counterfactual_removal":"Without measured scope boundaries, clients can obtain premium service through the base tier, collapsing incentive compatibility and recreating overruns."}],"causal_chain":["The provider cannot reliably observe each prospective client's valuation of speed, customization, capacity, and human support before quoting.","A uniform package combines those attributes and therefore cannot separately accommodate price-sensitive, flexible clients and urgent, support-intensive clients.","The provider publishes three versions that hold technical quality constant while differentiating convenience, scope, and service intensity at different fixed prices.","Clients compare the disclosed tradeoffs and select the version producing the greatest perceived surplus for their circumstances.","Entity, cycle, meeting, and response-time controls prevent a lower tier from routinely delivering higher-tier value.","Choice, upgrade, downgrade, workload, and complaint data reveal whether the proposed version dimensions actually separate valuations.","The provider can then retain, recalibrate, or withdraw the menu while enforcing the base-quality and fairness constraints."],"baseline":"One fixed-fee pre-audit close-readiness package with a common stated scope and delivery promise, followed by informal accommodation, hourly overruns, or case-by-case escalation when clients require more entities, faster starts, or additional support.","nearest_rivals":["Hourly time-and-materials billing: charges for realized effort but gives clients less ex ante price certainty and does not use a bounded quality-price menu to elicit preferences.","Negotiated client-specific quotes: may reflect scope and bargaining but relies on provider classification and negotiation rather than transparent self-selection.","À-la-carte unbundling: prices each meeting or task independently but may create a complex basket rather than coherent, incentive-compatible service versions.","Risk- or complexity-stratified engagement assignment: routes clients according to professional need and engagement risk, not willingness to pay, and remains mandatory where quality requires it.","Uniform package with subsidized discounts: broadens access for selected clients but requires eligibility rules rather than differentiation by voluntary service tradeoffs."],"remaining_contrastive_claim":"The candidate's distinguishing causal claim is that a transparent, prepriced ladder of nonessential service attributes can make voluntary client choice reveal valuation of speed, capacity, customization, and support. This differs from charging after effort is observed, negotiating individualized prices, or assigning service according to accounting risk. It does not claim novelty, prevalence, demand, or effectiveness.","authority_safety":{"decision_authority":"The provider's service-line pricing committee may approve commercial design, but the accounting-quality lead and privacy or ethics officer hold veto authority over technical-quality, independence, confidentiality, accessibility, and misleading-scope concerns.","authorized_first_step":"Authorize only a nonbinding shadow evaluation using de-identified historical workload records and mock menus; no client receives a changed price, service level, or accounting procedure during this step.","excluded_actions":["Reducing accounting accuracy, confidentiality, accessibility, or professional-care standards in a lower tier","Omitting work that is technically necessary to support an advertised deliverable","Changing the scope or procedures of a statutory or external audit","Allowing the readiness provider to opine on financial statements or represent the external auditor","Assigning prices from protected identity, presumed wealth, or undisclosed behavioral profiling","Using live client data outside existing permissions","Imposing an upgrade after work begins without documented client approval"],"halt_rollback":"Halt the test if the base package cannot produce its advertised output safely, mock participants systematically mistake readiness support for audit assurance, tier limits correlate with omitted technically necessary work, or privacy and independence review fails. Discard the proposed menu and retain the uniform baseline; because the first step is nonbinding, no client contract or production workflow requires reversal."},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"If historical effort is explained almost entirely by objectively observable entity count and accounting complexity, and clients place little independent value on timing or support, the situation is ordinary scope-based costing rather than hidden-valuation self-selection.","problem_falsifier":"The problem is falsified if the uniform package is neither price-prohibitive for otherwise suitable clients nor associated with materially different unpriced service intensity, or if permitted information already predicts required service reliably enough for standard scope quoting.","intervention_falsifier":"The intervention is falsified if mock choices do not sort with stated valuation of speed, support, customization, or capacity; if most base-tier choosers immediately require exceptions that reproduce premium service; if the premium tiers attract choices only because the base is confusing or unusable; or if no enforceable tier boundary preserves a complete and honest base deliverable.","risks":["Lower-resource organizations may accept delay that jeopardizes financing or filing timelines.","Tier labels may obscure the boundary between non-assurance readiness work and an external audit.","Entity and meeting limits may become punitive when unexpected accounting issues arise.","Urgent clients may still choose the base tier and pressure staff for undocumented exceptions.","Priority commitments may create workload peaks or degrade delivery to base-tier clients.","The menu may indirectly sort organizations along sensitive socioeconomic lines.","Price ratios may be miscalibrated and cause tier collapse, confusion, or avoidable exclusion.","If the provider later becomes the external auditor, readiness work may create independence or self-review concerns."]},"next_evidence_step":"Using at most 24 de-identified completed engagements from one service line, code actual entities, start-time urgency, meetings, partner escalations, hours, and exceptions; then present the three mock tiers in randomized order to 8-12 former engagement decision-makers who consent to a non-sales interview. Record their nonbinding choice and reason, test whether the base deliverable remains complete on three representative low-intensity files, and simulate whether stated limits would have contained premium workload. Predefine failure as widespread misunderstanding of assurance status, any technically necessary omission from the base tier, or choices unrelated to the hypothesized service attributes. The exercise ends after this single review and authorizes no launch.","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","diversity_from_prior_proposals":"No other proposals or experiment cells were inspected under runtime isolation, so diversity relative to them is not asserted; this candidate is independently specified around a voluntary pre-audit close-readiness service.","revision_record":{"parent_version":null,"progress_targets_addressed":["Initial one-shot construction of a complete accounting-and-auditing domain candidate","Causal preservation of priced versioning, self-selection, quality floor, and guardrails"],"conceptual_changes":["None; version 0 has no parent."],"operational_changes":["None; version 0 has no parent."],"evidence_changes":["None; prior art remains unsearched and the proposed evidence step is prospective."],"claim_changes":["None; the candidate makes no novelty, prevalence, demand, or effect-size claim."]}}