The Smart Baseline feature allows procurement teams to set a Lots and Line Items baseline price to 0 and, if Arkestro has historical pricing data for the line item, Arkestro will automatically update the price with either the last price paid or the average recent price.
Pricing Data Sources
Smart Baseline will look for price information by matching the line item Name column in Lots and Line Items to:
Line item Name in awarded events in Arkestro
Line item Name in closed events in Arkestro
Line item Name in onboarded PO data
To accurately compare the new event line item with historical line items, the Smart Baseline matching algorithm:
Removes white spaces
Removes hyphens
Converts all letters to lowercase
Looks at stem words to standardize for -s, -ing, -ed, -er, etc suffixes
Performs spellcheck and corrects spelling errors
Looks for matching units_of_measure
Once matching line item names have been identified, any extreme pricing outliers (> 3 standard deviations from the price mean) are removed, and Arkestro runs one of two models to determine what baseline price to use.
NOTE: Line item data is not available for Smart Baseline calculations the same day it is added to Arkestro as part of an awarded or closed event, or in onboarded customer data. Line item data is processed every 24 hours for use by Smart Baseline. Processing runs at 5am EST, and can take up to 2 hours to complete.
Price Models
Your organization can choose one of two price models to use to determine a Smart Baseline. Once this model is selected, you would need to contact Arkestro to switch models.
Last Price Paid Model
The last price paid model uses the most recent historical price available as the Smart Baseline. If there are more than one price available on the most recent date, the model will look at data in the following order to find the last price:
Onboarded data
Price last awarded in the Arkestro platform
Price in the last closed event in the Arkestro platform
Average Recent Price Model
The average recent price model uses the average of up to the 10 most recent prices of the matched line items that are within the last 180 days of the most recent price found.
Using Smart Baseline
When replacing existing lots in an event using the Upload XLSX utility in Lots and Line Items, Smart Baseline will automatically run on any line items with a 0 baseline. Baseline is calculated for ALL 0 baseline line items uploaded this way.
Failure to match with historical data may be due to line item Name error or a Unit of Measure error. You can correct item name or unit of measure errors in your spreadsheet, and upload/replace all again.
You can start an event with some baseline still be left at 0.
Using Save Changes will save any updated baseline prices.
Smart Baseline in the Line Items Upload CSV Utility
From the event Line Items tab, click the click the extended menu icon and select Upload XLSX.
Follow the upload prompts and select your spreadsheet to upload. When ready, select the Replace Current Line Items option. Selecting Add to Current Line Items will not trigger Smart Baseline.
Lots and Line Items CSV Upload utility will automatically attempt to calculate Smart Baselines for any line item with a 0 baseline when Replace Lots is used.
Arkestro will show you how many of the 0 baseline prices we were able to replace with a historical data baseline.
To save all calculated Smart Baseline values, click Save Changes. Saved changes cannot be reverted.
To revert all Smart Baseline values back to 0, once the lots have successfully replaced any existing lots in the event, click Discard Changes.
Last Updated Feb 2026