Why branch networks lie to their own P&L

Placeholder draft — replace with the full article before publishing.

A branch network's P&L is built for regional accountability, not for cost-to-serve. That's a reasonable design choice, and it's also exactly why the number that should trigger a redesign — the true cost of the smallest, most complex orders — never shows up on anyone's dashboard.

The fix isn't a bigger spreadsheet. It's re-tracing the physical journey of the transactions that are actually losing money, and measuring what the org chart's version of the P&L was never built to see.