Contingency recovery · CPG suppliers · Nationwide
Chargeback and deduction recovery for CPG suppliers — and the root-cause fixes that stop them.
Retailers deduct first and explain later. Upstream Chargeback Solutions works the invalid deductions back out of your remittance, then goes upstream of the deduction and fixes the process failure that created it. You get paid first: our fee comes out of what we recover.
What we do
No software licence. No retainer. No platform to implement.
Retail trade deductions only. Walmart OTIF and SQEP-type fines, shortages and concealed shortages, EDI and ASN compliance chargebacks, pricing and cost-difference claims, Target vendor income deductions, Kroger MCBs, Amazon Vendor Central chargebacks, post-audit claims and trade-promotion deductions. Everything we do sits between a supplier and a retailer’s accounts payable function.
The signature idea
Most recovery firms work the end of the lifecycle. The money is made at the start of it.
A deduction is not created on the remittance. It is created weeks earlier — in a cost file that never synced, a PO routed a day late, an ASN with a missing expiry date, an allowance loaded into the wrong segment. Recovering the dollar is worth doing. Removing the cause is worth more, because it pays every month afterwards.
Why suppliers use us
Three differences that show up in the P&L
01
You get paid first
Contingency pricing, agreed in writing before we start. Our fee comes out of recovered dollars after the recovery lands. No licence, no retainer, no implementation fee, no minimum commitment — and no invoice at all if we recover nothing.
02
Root cause, not just recovery
Recovery firms are paid on the claims they win, so the incentive is to leave the cause alone and re-win the same claim next quarter. We report the cause with the recovery and work with your ops, EDI and sales teams to close it — the deduction you never receive costs nothing to dispute.
03
Senior operators, not a claims mill
Upstream is a boutique firm built on decades of combined trade-finance and retailer-side experience. Your file is worked by people who have sat on both sides of a deduction, not routed to a volume queue that files the same template against every claim code.
Services
Five ways we work a deduction file
Deduction & chargeback recovery
Historic and ongoing claims worked to resolution — validated, evidenced, filed, escalated and re-disputed.
Root-cause remediation
The upstream process fix: item and cost setup, routing and appointment discipline, ASN accuracy, allowance terms.
Deduction audit
A structured 30-day read of your deduction file: what is recoverable, what is genuinely owed, and what is about to expire.
Deduction code review
Every code you receive decoded against the retailer's own documentation, with validity and disputability scored by category.
Team training & playbooks
Your AR and sales-ops teams trained on the portals, the evidence standards and the windows, with written playbooks they keep.
Retailers & deduction types
The retailers, distributors and deduction categories we cover — from Walmart and Amazon to KeHE and UNFI.
Proof, honestly framed
What a 30-day deduction audit typically uncovers
We are a 2023-founded firm and we do not publish other people's numbers as if they were ours. So instead of claimed results, here is the methodology: the four buckets every deduction file sorts into once it has been worked properly, and what each one tells you.
Coverage
Where our clients get deducted
Retailer-specific pages for the four programmes suppliers ask about most, plus broad coverage across grocery, club, mass, drug, home improvement and distribution.
Walmart
OTIF fines, shortages, concealed shortages, pricing claims and post-audit claims, disputed through APDP and the AR channels.
Target
AP deduction codes, vendor income and Target Circle claims, freight and compliance charges, filed as Synergy dispute cases.
Kroger
MCBs, promotional and scan-down disputes, ORAD compliance, shortages and cost differences, worked through the PRGX-run portal.
Amazon 1P
Vendor Central chargebacks across PO, ASN, prep, packaging, transport and receive, plus shortage claim recovery.
See the full list of retailers, distributors and deduction categories we cover.
Resources
Written for the person who actually works the deductions
Walmart
Walmart OTIF fines: what they cost and how to dispute them
The 3% charge, the published thresholds, and the evidence that actually reverses a fine.
Target
Target vendor deductions: the codes CPG suppliers actually see
A030 through A176, the vendor income family, and how the Synergy dispute case works.
Definitions
Deduction vs. chargeback vs. dispute management
Three terms used interchangeably across the industry, and why the distinction changes what you do next.
Questions
The questions finance teams ask us first
How does contingency pricing actually work?
We are paid a percentage of what we recover, and only after the recovery lands. There is no licence fee, no retainer, no onboarding charge and no minimum. If a claim is not recovered, there is nothing to invoice against it. The fee percentage is agreed in writing before any work starts, and it is the only way we get paid — which is why we will tell you when a deduction is genuinely owed instead of billing you to chase it.
What data do you need from us to start?
Typically read-only access to your retailer supplier portals, your remittance and deduction detail for the period under review, open invoice and credit data from your ERP, and your vendor agreements and promotional terms. For freight-related claims we will also want BOLs, PODs and carrier appointment records — usually from your 3PL. Most suppliers can assemble this in a few hours. We work from what you already have; you do not build anything new for us.
How long does recovery take?
It depends on the retailer, not on us. Some portals resolve documented disputes in weeks; others sit in research queues for a month or more, and post-audit claims can run longer. What we control is filing complete, evidenced claims early in the window rather than late — because a dispute filed after the window closes recovers nothing regardless of how strong the evidence is.
Do we have to switch software or implement a platform?
No. We are not a software company and we do not sell a platform. There is nothing to implement, integrate or train your team on. You keep your ERP, your EDI provider and your existing tooling exactly as they are. If you already run a deduction platform, we work inside it.
What happens if you recover nothing?
Then you owe nothing. That is the whole point of the model — the risk of a thin or unrecoverable deduction file sits with us, not with you. It also means we are candid at the audit stage: if we do not see enough recoverable value to justify the engagement, we will say so rather than take the work.
Is our retailer and vendor data secure?
We work under a written confidentiality agreement, access is limited to the people staffed on your account, and portal credentials stay under your control — we prefer named read-only users you can revoke at any time rather than shared logins. We are happy to work within your security review, your NDA template and your access-provisioning process.
Does this cover consumer transaction disputes?
No. We work exclusively on retail trade deductions between suppliers and retailers: the money a retailer or distributor subtracts from a supplier invoice for shortages, compliance failures, pricing claims, allowances, post-audit findings and OTIF-type fines. Consumer-facing transaction disputes are an unrelated field and outside our scope entirely.
Deduction audit
See what you're owed.
The deduction audit reviews your recent retailer remittance and deduction data, identifies what is recoverable, and shows you the root causes behind the repeat offenders. Recovery work runs on contingency — you get paid first, and our fee comes out of recovered dollars.