Deduction management services for CPG manufacturers and suppliers

01

Deduction & chargeback recovery

The core engagement. We take your historic and ongoing deduction file — compliance chargebacks, shortages, concealed shortages, pricing and cost-difference claims, allowance and promotional deductions, freight charges, returns and post-audit claims — and work each recoverable claim to resolution.

• Every deduction decoded against the retailer's own code documentation, not a generic mapping.
• Validity scored before anything is filed, so your team is not defending claims you genuinely owe.
• Evidence packets assembled from invoices, BOLs, PODs, ASNs, appointment records, contracts and promotional authorisations.
• Filed in the correct channel — the AP dispute portal, the AR channel, the third-party audit firm or the retailer contact — because filing in the wrong one wastes the window.
• Tracked, escalated and re-disputed where a second round is permitted.

Prioritisation is by dollars at risk and days remaining, not by whatever is easiest to file.

02

Root-cause remediation

This is the part of the engagement the firm is named after. Recovery treats the symptom. Remediation removes the deduction from next month's remittance entirely.

Every claim we work is coded to a cause, not just a category. Over a quarter that produces a ranked list of the process failures actually costing you money — and most suppliers find the top three causes account for the majority of the volume.

• Item and cost data — cost changes not acknowledged in time, case pack and item master mismatches, allowance terms loaded into the wrong EDI segment.
• Order and transport execution — routing timing, appointment discipline, load configuration, carrier accountability for OTIF-type failures.
• Documents — ASN accuracy and timing, carton labelling, expiry and lot data, invoice-to-EDI alignment.
• Commercial terms — promotional authorisations, deal dates, scan-down reconciliation, contract language that invites post-audit claims years later.

We do the analysis and hand your team a specific, owner-assigned fix. Where the failure sits with a 3PL, carrier or broker, we help you build the accountability case.

03

Deduction audit

The starting point for most relationships. Over roughly 30 days we read your deduction data the way a forensic accountant would and give you a written picture of the file, with the commercial terms of the audit agreed up front before any work begins.

You get the categorisation, the dollars in each bucket, the expiring claims that need action first, and the causes behind the largest categories. If the file does not carry enough recoverable value to justify an engagement, we tell you that instead of selling you one.

04

Deduction code review

Retailers do not use a shared vocabulary. Target maintains hundreds of reason codes across accounts payable, vendor performance, freight, vendor income and third-party audit categories (SupplyPike's Target deductions overview). Kroger routes its codes through a third-party platform run by PRGX (iNymbus on Kroger deduction codes). Amazon splits compliance chargebacks from shortage claims entirely (SPS Commerce).

A code review produces one document: every code you actually receive, what the retailer means by it, which channel resolves it, what evidence wins it, how long you have, and whether it is worth disputing at all. Your team keeps it.

05

Team training & playbooks

Some suppliers want the capability in house. We are happy to build it. Training is delivered to the people who do the work — AR and deduction analysts, sales ops, and the ops staff whose decisions create the compliance charges.

• Portal-by-portal walkthroughs for the retailers you actually sell.
• Evidence standards: what each retailer accepts, and what gets a dispute closed on sight.
• A review cadence that catches claims early in the window instead of at the end of it.
• Written playbooks and a code reference your team keeps after the engagement ends.

Read our framework for the build-versus-buy decision in in-house vs. outsourced deduction management.