Every device is valued independently — from its real specs and grade, not a flat rate card. Every settlement is itemized, per unit, with the fee schedule applied line by line.
Here's a question worth putting to any provider: what will this device be worth, and can you tell me now?
Most programs answer after the fact. The device leaves, the settlement arrives weeks later, and the number is whatever the number is. There's no way to check it, because the only party who could check it is the one who produced it.
We answer before. Every device is valued when it's entered — from its real specs and grade, by an engine operated independently of the processor, the packaging provider, and the reseller, and one that takes no share of the settlement. The valuation shows its basis: aggregated market comparables, sample size, and a confidence score. After processing, the settlement is itemized per unit, with the fee schedule applied line by line.
A figure you're handed afterwards isn't a valuation. It's a statement.
Nothing about the valuation is a black box. What went into it travels with it, so the number can be argued with — which is the point.
Make, model, configuration and grade — the real machine, not a category. Two laptops with the same badge and different memory, storage and condition do not settle at the same number, and shouldn't.
The device is priced against a secondary-market aggregate — what equivalent hardware has actually been clearing for, in a defined window. The engine behind it carries over a million priced observations.
Circular Momentum FMV Engine · 2023–2026Every valuation shows how much evidence stands behind it: how many comparable sales, over what period, and how tightly they agree. A thin sample is reported as a thin sample rather than dressed up as certainty.
We're precise about which number is which. The up-front figure is an estimate on a Grade A basis — the planning number. The final settlement is computed from the device that actually arrived, and it is the one that moves money.
An asking price is an opinion. A cleared price is a fact. The comparables behind a valuation are cleared (realised sold price, not asking price) — which is a different number, and usually a lower one.
What a returned device is worth doesn't have one answer. A three-year-old machine and a five-year-old one of the same model can land in completely different places, and once processing is paid for, plenty of older units clear very little. A single figure across a fleet has to average that spread away, and it gets it wrong in both directions — high on the tired machines, low on the good ones.
That is the whole reason this page exists. Publishing an average and settling against it later is the thing we're arguing against; valuing each device on its own specifications and grade, showing the basis, and itemizing the settlement at close is the thing we're arguing for. The spread isn't an inconvenience to the method — it's what makes the method necessary.
Circular Momentum FMV Engine · 2023–2026 · cleared (realised sold price, not asking price). Aggregated market comparables; sample size and confidence shown per valuation.The person returning the device sees a value on it from the moment it's entered, then watches the same unit move: kit shipped, device collected, received, data destroyed and graded, settled. No status is typed by a human — carrier scans drive the timeline. The settlement lands on the same record, not in a separate email weeks later.
Market value computed from the device's real specs and grade, then the fee schedule applied line by line — intake, data destruction, diagnostic, refurb — down to a net recovery figure. Nothing is bundled into a single opaque deduction. If you disagree with a line, there is a line to disagree with.
Settlements roll up by period into a reconciliation run with the financial and inventory exports attached — the per-unit detail underneath, the totals on top, in a format built to be imported rather than retyped. The unit-level math is still there when somebody asks where a number came from.
| Period | Orders | Net | Files |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 1 – Jul 14 | 5 | $1,208.00 | financials.csv inventory.csv |
| Jun 17 – Jun 30 | 8 | $1,946.00 | financials.csv inventory.csv |
| Jun 3 – Jun 16 | 6 | $1,412.00 | financials.csv inventory.csv |
Each returned asset can carry a report of its avoided Scope 3 emissions, calculated per device class and split by what actually happened to it. A laptop that is resold avoids roughly 224 kg CO₂e, against about 5.0 kg if the same machine is recycled instead. It comes off the same chain of custody that produced the settlement, so the sustainability number and the money number describe the same device. Available as an option, not standard scope.
Avoided Scope 3 emissions per laptop, from the Circular Momentum FMV Engine — the same engine that values the device. Figures are per device class, not a fleet average, and the reuse figure applies only where the unit is actually resold.Powered by Circular Momentum. The FMV Engine is operated by an independent party — not the processor, not the packaging provider, not the reseller — and takes no share of the settlement.
When the valuation decides how the money splits, independence isn't a detail. It is the difference between a number you can rely on and a number you have to take on trust. The engine values the device; the program settles it; the two are not the same party, and the valuation shows its basis either way.
That basis is the same one this page is built on: aggregated market comparables from an engine carrying over a million priced observations, with sample size and confidence attached to every figure. Circular Momentum FMV Engine · 2023–2026
We built the platform so the answer to all four is yes. Ask anyone else the same four.
An estimator you can run yourself: enter a make, model and grade, and see the same thing a device in the program sees — a value, the comparables behind it, the sample size, and a confidence score.
In build. Until it's live, we'll run the numbers for your fleet directly — tell us the shape of it and we'll come back with the volume moving through it. Forward valuation — what a device will be worth at a future refresh date — is a separate build and is not claimed today.
Tell us about your fleet →Chasing one device back runs about $210 — $120 of kit and freight, plus $90 of your own people's time. Any managed program under $210 per device costs less than doing it yourself, before you count a single unit that never comes back.
Tell us what your fleet looks like. We'll come back with volume, recovery, and the math behind both.