1.14.25 How to Dispute Home Depot Deductions 

[00:00:00] Peter: Today, we're going to be covering, how to dispute Home Depot deductions. So, some pretty high level stuff about, what deductions or chargebacks as we often refer to them, at Home Depot, what they are, how to conceive of them and then how to parse through the, the Supplier Hub to figure out, where they are and how to go through the official dispute process. So I think we can go to the next slide here. Some more people hop on here. So, I am Peter. This is Annalee. Annalee is the one who heads up our, our Home Depot and our Lowe's product, which we just launched, recently. So the, the not home goods, the home improvement, retailers that we have products for. 
 

so she's got a lot of experience now, with all that dealing with deductions, both at Lowe's and at Home Depot. and, so, your more technical questions, especially related to revenue loss, at Lowe's and Home Depot, she'll be able to answer today. So, so if you have any off the bat, just go ahead and put those in the Q&A, and I will, line those up for our Q&A section at the end of this webinar. 
 

I am a supplier. I am a writer on SupplierWiki as well. I don't have any technical knowledge. Just kidding. I do have some. so, for today, we'll, we'll talk at, again, I was referencing this a little bit already, but we'll do a high level overview of deductions or chargebacks at Home Depot. we're going to go through a little bit of, you know, the real zingers, the shortages, the ones that you see basically throughout, across the whole spectrum of suppliers, these will be pretty common and usually, the more common, the more devastating. 
 

So, we'll talk about that a little bit and then we'll go through the actual disputing process and then we're going to have a good, better and best section for proof documentation. What's the the ideal, dispute from a purely. Proof documentation perspective, then we'll do a little bit of a general Q&A before going into a mini demo of our Home Depot product, that Annalee will be guiding us through there at the end as well. 
 

So SupplierWiki is we are, I'm on the SupplierWiki team. And so what we do is we create. webinars like this one, we create a lot of articles and eBooks, we have a bunch of great Home Depot content on our website, and I may just, send an article or two here in the chat at the beginning, if, if you haven't seen those yet, we have a Home Depot, acronyms cheat sheet, which we have Usually a cheat sheet like that with the common acronyms for all of the major retailers that we're in, that we have a product in. 
 

So we like to, we like to lay out that, from the very beginning, there's a lot of jargon in the industry. And so if we can create a single source of truth sort of document for suppliers and retailers, it can, that alone can help to remove a lot of the kinks in the supply chain. So that's more what SupplierWiki does. 
 

We create the, the Educational materials that can help make communication between all these parties a little bit more smooth and, and maybe a little more efficient in that sense. So, Supply Pike is the product side of things. If you want real help, real accounting help with your deductions right away, you want to, you want to automate your dispute process. 
 

That's what Supply Pike is for. SupplierWiki is the, is more of a higher level educational branch of that product that will, Be helpful in, in more of a high level sense. So, stay tuned for some of those. I'll send some of those articles in the chat once we get started. So, some common questions we get in these webinars. 
 

Will we receive a copy of the slide deck? Yes, you will receive a copy of the slide deck and a recording to the inbox of the email that signed up for this webinar in about three to four business days. So watch out for that. If you're curious about other webinars that we've done, all of those live on our website as well. 
 

So supplierwiki.supplypike.com. If you have a team that's in a different retailer, or if you have to do deductions for Home Depot and a different retailer as well. All of that information could be pretty helpful to you too. So that all lives on our website It also lives on youtube if you're a youtuber, like I am I am obsessed with youtube I consume vast amounts of youtube in my free time So, we have a supply pike youtube page as well and all of our webinars I believe exist On that page as well. 
 

So if you wanted to just subscribe to that YouTube page, you could do that as well. But, it is helpful. I like, I always, I'm a teacher too. So I always tell my students to, I always tell my students to take notes, even if you will be getting a copy of the slide deck at the end, that'll help you remember it a little bit better. 
 

So some stuff you might want to do that for, but, you know, take it with a grain of salt. You will be getting a slide deck. All of our slide decks, all of our webinar recordings live on our website too. So you can go and view those as well. We also have two main avenues for communication during these webinars that I like to parse out in terms of what communication is happening. 
 

If you have a formal question for Annalee or for myself, that can go in the Q&A tab. There you can put your questions as they come up throughout the webinar and then we'll cover those at the end. Or sometimes we'll cover them a little bit earlier. If it's relevant to one of the slides that we're on, then we can do that. 
 

The webinar chat, which, you'll see next to it is for more of the public side of communication. So if excuse me. If you have, if we have a question for you guys, we want your feedback on something or if there's more of an open ended conversation that's happening about the types of deductions that you received or something like that, all of that can live in the chat. 
 

So feel free to use either one. You can also use the chat for formal questions by selecting the host and panelists for your recipient of your message. That way it won't be public to everyone in the webinar. But if you have a little helpful tip or something like that, that you'd like to share with everyone else on the call, then you can select everyone for that. 
 

And, and share that there as well. We really like to facilitate open and free communication between, different business partners in these, in these webinars. So. please feel free to use either one. 
 

So I mentioned a little bit about what SupplyPike does already at the beginning. We'll also go over a little bit of, specifically in Home Depot, what does our product do. but generally, SupplyPike, what we do is we automate the dispute process. So we take the whole We can aggregate shipping documents automatically to do validity proofs on your deductions that you're receiving so that you don't have to go through that whole process by yourself. 
 

You can really take a look at all the deductions you're getting and see how valid or invalid they are, and then you can actually automate that dispute process as well. once those shipping documents are, are automatically attached to that. So really what we're doing is we're taking a lot of time out of the accounting process so that suppliers can focus on their retailer business. 
 

deductions are a part of life, as a supplier. So they're not always, invalid. I always like to say that. You know, there's human error at all kind of points in the supply chain. what we're doing is really just trying to figure out, you know, where are those valid deductions? Where could you improve, or where could your 3PLs improve or, or something like that? 
 

and then also we'd like to be able to hold major retailers accountable as well for some of the receiving errors that they, that they do that result in revenue loss for suppliers. So. That's that one of the favorite things that I like to point out at this point as well is just that we're in a lot of product categories were in a lot of different retailers as well. 
 

So we're doing the, we're doing the home improvement side of things today. But we got our start in Walmart. So, and now we have a great Amazon product as well. So, yeah, We're, we're working with a large variety of suppliers, which is my favorite part of it. We get to talk with people who are in really big organizations, where maybe Walmart is a, is a smaller fraction of your total business as a CPG. 
 

And then we also get to work with some suppliers who are in one or two Walmart stores, who are really trying to just keep their head above water. with Walmart, with their Walmart business, but who are also excited to grow that business. So that's my favorite part. We get to interact with a bunch of different people, and that gives us a, a bunch of unique perspectives on the supplier situation. 
 

So that's my job at SupplierWiki is to make sure that we're creating content for everyone, that is relevant and helpful to everyone. and yeah, so I'm really proud of that too. But now I will hand it over to Anna Lee. She's going to talk about Home Depot. Take us away. 
 

[00:09:28] Annalee: Okay, thanks, Peter. 
 

Yeah, so what are deductions at Home Depot? So, you know, every retailer has a little bit of a different terminology for what deductions are. At Home Depot, they refer to AP deductions as chargebacks. But basically, you know, AP deductions, anything that the retailer is withholding from an invoice. 
 

So like Peter mentioned, lots of different buckets of revenue loss. But actually, well, First, where would you find those in Home Depot? So you can find all of your chargeback information once you log into SupplierHub. It'll be living in the Merchandise Payable self service portal. I know that's a little bit of a mouthful of a name, but that's where they live. 
 

And if you can't see this application, or if you're missing any other applications that we might reference, today within the webinar, in your Supplier Hub account. you can always reach out to your partner guardian, and they should be able to grant you access, if you are not sure who your partner guardian is for your Supplier Hub account. 
 

if you go up at the top once you're logged in and click account, you'll see all of your high level account information and then it'll also list your partner guardian. So, if you're wanting access to an application that you don't have, that's the best way to try and get access. And most of the applications that we'll talk about today, including merchandise payables, are going to be living in the financing and accounting bucket within SupplierHub. 
 

moving on, what are our most common chargebacks at Home Depot? maybe a little bit dissimilar to some of the other retailers. Home Depot actually has a a condensed list of AP deductions or chargebacks. so this These are our three that we're dealing with at Home Depot. So shortages, pricing discrepancies, and trade discounts. 
 

shortages and pricing discrepancies are really going to be the two that are disputable within, Home Depot, within merchandise payables. So we'll go over in detail, you know, what they are and then how to dispute. trade discounts. Contractual deductions. So we'll go into more detail on them as well, but did just want to go ahead and preface with, let's see last summer. 
 

So summer of 2024, you know, Home Depot did come and say, Hey, you know, trade discounts can no longer be disputed within merchandise payables, which You know, has its issues sometimes, but for the most part, it does seem like Home Depot takes them, correctly. but since they are contractual, a little bit harder to dispute anyway. 
 

So, we'll go over in more detail what that encompasses, but did want to go ahead and call out that they're really the two main chargeback types that suppliers will be disputing will be the shortages and pricing discrepancies, and really honestly, primarily the shortages, which we'll spend most of our time on today. 
 

so what are shortages? So, shortages are definitely, you know, By far the most common issues suppliers across all different retailers, are, you know, getting hit with from retailers. So basically this is at any point, you know, where Home Depot or another retailer says that they received less than the amount that was invoiced for. 
 

quantity wise. So, pretty straightforward. I bet everyone on the webinar probably has dealt with a shortage or two. and just for visibility on Home Depot side, if you're looking at their remittance, advice, which we'll get into more detail later on how to pull that within merchandise payables. 
 

this is flagged as shortages, so pretty straightforward. They make it easy, at least in that regard to know exactly what you're up against. and then pricing discrepancies. So pricing discrepancies are anything where, Home Depot expected to pay less, than what was the listed amount on the supplier's invoice. 
 

so that cost difference, they're charging you back for that cost difference. the reason code on the remittance or just across the board within merchandise payables for these pricing discrepancies is just simply pricing discrepancy. So again, at least you know what The the chargeback is there. 
 

just some high level information about pricing discrepancies. Like I mentioned earlier, we'll go into more depth on the shortages just because that's where the meat of the deductions are with Home Depot, but I did want to spend a little bit of time just going over pricing discrepancies in case anyone on the webinar here did want to try and dispute any of those or have, you know, incurred some of these chargebacks and want a little bit more detail into what they are. 
 

So like I mentioned, this is at any point where, you know, the invoiced amount was greater than what Home Depot expected to pay for it. And so it can sometimes, especially within merchandise payables, there's not any item level detail as far as, you know, What was deducted. So it can be kind of hard to pinpoint, you know, what items might be causing these deductions or, you know, action step action steps that might be needed to be taken. 
 

so for the pricing discrepancies, there's a couple different places where you could find information on, you know, where these. chargebacks might be stemming from. So one is what, Home Depot refers to as the 531 SKU detail report. so this is basically just a report that has, you know, all of your SKUs with Home Depot, and then breaks down the, you know, Home Depot's costs that they expect to pay for those items. 
 

So this can be requested, of your buyer with Home Depot. and then two, it's just a good practice to maybe request this information from a buyer every so often. So, you know, it might involve working with, internally across teams at your organization to, to get, you know, in contact with the buyer to get this information, but it is helpful just to understand, you know. 
 

All of the different item breakdown details, Home Depot is expecting. So that's one place. and two, the 531 SKU detail, you know, if there is a discrepancy that supports, you know, hey, maybe this pricing discrepancy chargeback was invalid. It's a great, Item to attach to a dispute. some other places where you might be able to find information regarding pricing discrepancies and what items are causing, those deductions. 
 

so IDM is, you know, ida, data item, data management, that, tool within Supplier Hub that H houses all of the item information, skew information. So that includes cost, pack size, UPC, all of that good stuff. so in there, you could also see some great information regarding pricing, you know, do some analysis, some research to understand if there are any discrepancies and back up any claims, for pricing discrepancy chargebacks that might be invalid. 
 

And the last, application that I'll mention that might have some of this data, some of you might be familiar with it, but Home Depot within Supplier Hub has an application called the Automated Dispute Resolution Platform. Another mouthful of a name for an application, and some of you may not have access to this application. 
 

It's another one where you can request, your partner Guardian to give you access if your organization has already been onboarded to this application. if not, you can request from Home Depot by submitting a ticket, and requesting access for your organization to this application, but within it, they'll have really good information for POs that were sent to an RDC or a DFC, and this does include cost information as well. 
 

so you can look up a specific PO and try and better understand, you know, if there were any cost discrepancies. and see exactly, you know, what Home Depot was expecting to pay for that item. And again, that's another great one too, where you can have some backup information from there to attach to a pricing discrepancy dispute if you did deem that that was an invalid deduction that Home Depot took. 
 

lastly, we have our trade discounts. like I mentioned earlier, you know, These are still chargebacks that Home Depot might be deducting, however, they are no longer disputable, which, again, for the most part, did seem like Home Depot was taking these, they were valid deductions, just because they are based on that contractual amount, in the supplier buyer agreement. 
 

So whenever that was signed or revised, your organization was agreeing to the, that allowance amount to be taken from each invoice. And this is typically on the M vendor or the merchandise vendor number level. So we've got our payables vendor or P vendor, and then all of the M vendors that roll up into that P vendor or payables vendor at Home Depot. 
 

so. Just every single invoice, you know, a percentage of that is allocated towards these trade discounts. Again, that varies on the end vendor. And then two, that usually another allowance that gets rolled up into this trade discount amount, would be the IBX, percentage, which is just a flat one and a quarter percent that Home Depot, takes across all of their invoices. 
 

and two, if you want more information on that IBX. Discount if you go into Supplier Hub, they have a couple of great resources and their, resources folder about IBX. If you just search that you can get a little bit more detail on exactly what that allowance is encompassing. but really trade discounts. 
 

to make, you know, just for cash application efficiency. sometimes it makes sense or most of the time it might make sense for a supplier to really make sure and be conscientious of their EDI mapping. just making sure that they're taking their correct trade discounts. at the time of invoicing to prevent some of these, trade discount chargebacks from being incurred on the back end. 
 

So, again, might be something that, you know, if right now you're, you're receiving a lot of these trade discount, chargebacks and you want to get that on the front end. it might be something that you would want to work with, internally with your EDI team to see if there's any improvements that can be made. 
 

with your EDI mapping to make sure that that those appropriate discounts are being taken at the time of invoicing. Again, a lot of great resources within Supplier Hub on just what they're expecting on their EDI mapping side. But two, if you have any additional questions, they also have their B2B production support system. 
 

You can reach out to them via ticket. within Supplier Hub to try and get, you know, the conversation started the ball rolling. They also have an email Available within Supplier Hub where you can reach out and really try and figure out some of those edi mapping Issues if you know trade discounts don't seem to be lining up quite right And to again really the main goal there would just be Hey, let's take some of these trade discount chargebacks that we might be receiving Offer plate, get them out of the way and really then start to focus in on more of those shortages and pricing discrepancies where you'll have, you know, one, the ability to dispute and then two, possibly an easier time winning those back. 
 

and then, like I mentioned before, Home Depot has also done, you know, has. created several resources, especially recently with a lot of changes that they're doing at their different DCs, just in regards to EDI mapping. So if you aren't familiar with that, again, might be a great place to look, within Supplier Hub or work with their B2B team or your EDI team internally to really try and understand, you know, the mapping and all the ins and outs of that. 
 

All right, now let's get to the fun part. How do we dispute these chargebacks, at Home Depot? So like I mentioned earlier, merchandise payables, that's the application within Supplier Hub where all of this is going to take place. I'm sure probably most of you have seen this application before, but we're going to just walk step by step. 
 

How would you come in and really start to tackle some of these deductions? Like I mentioned, we know shortages and pricing discrepancies are fair game, to be disputed. Another rule that Home Depot has, you have to dispute, you can only dispute over 25. So they do have that minimum in place. 
 

So, your chargebacks, a dispute package, which we'll go over the terminology of that here in a second, will only be created if the amount is over 25 for any shortage or pricing discrepancy. so once you log in to merchandise payables, you'll see that page looking. There's a couple different ways that you can navigate, to narrow down to a deduction that you might want to work on. 
 

one great place to start is this dispute chargeback invoice. another one, you know, I think the easiest way to is just if you have an invoice or PO or even, you know, a dispute package number in mind that you want to tackle, there's that great, quick search bar on the top right hand corner. you can just plug in that number. 
 

There's a bunch of different search criteria. Hit go and it'll take you straight to, the chargeback dispute package that you, that is correlated with that invoice or PO. you can also. You know, navigate this way. Dispute chargeback by invoice, and that will take you to a page where you can see month by month, all of the chargebacks associated with those invoices that were sent. 
 

so this can be a long list, so, but it's also really, you know, sometimes beneficial to go through this list and see, you know, sometimes chargebacks can get swept under the rug, but if you're coming through this list, you'll definitely see all of those, chargebacks. that you incurred for each month, and just a reminder. 
 

So at Home Depot, you can only dispute chargebacks, back 12 months based on that deduction date. So that usually ends up being about 10 months. Just depending on your payment terms based on invoice date. So just something to keep in mind. And then this page will be sorted by month invoice and you'll have some high level information of just the number of invoices that were impacted and then that total chargeback amount. 
 

and then once you click into, you know, a month, depending on how many, You know, that there were, they might break it down a little bit further into day, hour, sometimes even, but, so it can be a lot to come through, but again, it's sometimes important to just go through and make sure that you're doing a sweep through everything to make sure that any So if you have a shortage or pricing discrepancy dollars that you want to go after, you have visibility into and can do so. 
 

so once you click into that month, you'll see a lot of different information on a table on that page. Some of that's listed here on this slide. Probably most important is going to be the invoice number and then that total chargeback how much was deducted from that invoice. And then you can see a lot of other just tracking metrics of, you know. 
 

Disputed amount, received date, all of that good stuff. So some that happened before, some that happened after that initial dispute. two, also on these pages, you can always export. I will say the exports that, live on these pages have a little bit less information than what you're seeing here. so, you know. 
 

Take, take that with what you will, but, can still be helpful, especially if you're looking at, you know, have a large set of chargebacks that you incurred in, in a month. It might be easier to work from an Excel sheet and prioritize based on amount, typically is what we see suppliers do. and then you get to, once you've picked one out. 
 

You say, Oh, I've got this shortage. I'm going to go after it. Now we get into the really fun, actually disputing part. so one thing I did want to call out with, Home Depot and just how they structure their deductions. like we mentioned earlier, you have your chargeback, which is likely going to be that shortage, pricing discrepancy or trade discounts, will still be visible. 
 

but Home Depot will wrap. those chargeback deductions into what they call a dispute package. And this is the disputable entity within merchandise payables. so if you incurred, you know, a shortage chargeback and a pricing chargeback on one invoice, you'll have those rolled up into one dispute package, as Home Depot refers to it. 
 

And if you wanted to dispute both, you have to do so at the same time. so that's one really important thing to keep in mind, because once, you know, if you dispute the shortage and you don't dispute the pricing discrepancy, once that's been submitted, you lose out on disputing that pricing discrepancy. 
 

so, you know, take some analysis on the front end to really make sure. and you understand what you want to dispute because you don't want to miss out on any dollars. once that initial dispute has been submitted because you can't go back after that. And we don't want to leave any dollars on the table. 
 

So, once you've got your dispute, your shortage, let's say, you. You know, from there, it's pretty, basic standard of what you're going to submit. So comment and disputed amount are definitely those required fields. there's a couple other fields that you might want to fill out as well. So, within merchandise payables, there's going to be a field for a freight carrier. 
 

So this is a pre filled list that Home Depot provides based on their core carrier. so if you are a collect supplier, which probably most are, you might be able to find your carrier within that list. if you're prepaid, there is just a generic vendor truck. and I will say, you know, sometimes Hope Depot is always updating their routing guide, so you may not see, the carrier that was used for that shipment. 
 

And that's okay, because really this freight carrier and even this tracking, slash BOL number field that are available for you to fill out are totally optional. but it definitely doesn't hurt to fill them out if you have that information ready to go. but no sweat if you don't because I would say probably attachments are going to be the biggest thing. 
 

So making sure that you're attaching, and we'll go over in detail best practices for attachments here in a little bit, but really those shipping documents are going to be most important when you're disputing with Home Depot. So once you've got, you know, your comment, Hey, Home Depot, take another look at this. 
 

You've got your tracking information possibly filled out. But like I said, most importantly, those shipping documents, you can go ahead and submit that claim. Typically, we see Home Depot is pretty quick to respond to disputes once they've been submitted. I know on here we have 10 to 14 days. might even be a little bit generous. 
 

I've seen them as quick as, you know, a week, but in some cases it does take them a little bit longer and can be up to 18 days. So, just something to keep in mind, they are quick and two on that same note, they're quick if they're going to be putting it back into supplier action. So they've requested something, more of you after that initial decision. 
 

So they can submit a BOL request. they can also submit a BOL request. to request a POD. to request a POD. to request, a request for a payment, or anything that they need to do. 
 

Because you want to make sure that you get to that pretty promptly because after they put it in Supplier Action, you only have 30 days to respond or they're going to automatically deny that dispute package. and that would be really unfortunate because, and we'll talk about this in a second too, I know I keep on saying that, but once something's been denied, it's, it's a little bit more difficult to, get Home Depot's attention again. 
 

There's really no official re disputing process. so Being really prompt with your response, especially when Home Depot requests another document of you, is important just to make sure that you're making the most of that dispute. And like I mentioned earlier, we don't want to leave any dollars, on the table. 
 

so disputing denied claims. Here's the slide that I was talking about. So Home Depot, they don't really have an official way to re dispute denied claims, unfortunately. trust me, I wish they did. but you can. re dispute by, opening a dialogue after that denial. so, this is I like to think of it just like as a message center on that dispute with that initial reviewer who looked at your claim. 
 

so let's say, you know, you submitted your shortage dispute, you know, five days later, seven days later, Home Depot came back and unfortunately denied the dispute. if you really feel confidently, you know, Hey, we shipped this in full. you can always open a dialogue. and that will basically send a message to that initial reviewer to take another look at that. 
 

Initial dispute again. I will say it does seem like there's a little bit of more of a delayed process versus that initial dispute with Home Depot. It might take a little bit longer for that reviewer to take another look. And, you know, sometimes they may not even respond, unfortunately, but, you know, there is some value and Taking this approach and re, opening a dialogue on these denied claims because we do see on occasion that suppliers will get, approved after the fact. 
 

So, and that's probably just because Home Depot has some new receiving information, you know, to, to overturn that original denial. So there is some value in opening that dialogue and seeing, after the fact, you know, if Home Depot, might have some new information to overturn. you know. 
 

The only way that they're going to do that is that initial, or that reviewer will then reopen the dispute package. So you'll see, see it move from the closed to open status, which we'll go over the statuses here in a second. and then they'll move it back into the review process. And then you would see it move from the denied to the approved status. 
 

And then the package would be closed again. I got ahead of myself, but here are the, the statuses that I was alluding to. so just because, like I mentioned, that hierarchy that Home Depot has, for their deductions, so you have your deductions, also known as your charred backs, so those are your shortages, your pricing discrepancies, and your trade discounts, and then those roll up into what Home Depot refers to as the dispute package, which of course is your disputable entity. 
 

with Home Depot, and I'll say it again because I think it's really important. If you've got two chargebacks in one dispute package and you want to dispute both, you got to do so at the same time or you miss out on the opportunity to dispute one of those. So I'm going to harp on that, but I do think it is important. 
 

So the chargebacks will have, you know, your approved or your denied statuses, because that happens on the individual level with the individual chargeback level. and then your dispute package will either be in draft status, so, this is, you know, dispute has not necessarily been started yet, nothing's been submitted, and then you're open status, this is when it's either in. 
 

Pending Home Depot review, or like I mentioned, supplier action or vendor review, and then closed. So this closed status would happen after they've made their final decision on those, chargeback disputes. so, just something to keep in mind, this is the process flow that Home Depot takes. So once a dispute package has moved into that closed status, if there is a denial on it, Like I mentioned, it's hard, to get Home Depot's attention, but opening a dialogue just might do so, and then they would move it back into that open status. 
 

and one thing too, you know, if you are disputing a pricing discrepancy and a shortage within one dispute package, you know, those can have different outcomes. So your shortage could get approved, and your pricing discrepancy could get denied, or vice versa, or both could get approved, both can get denied. 
 

so just something to keep in mind, especially when you're looking, at that resolution and trying to understand, you know, approved dollars versus denied dollars on those claims. All right. Now, let's get into proof documentation. So, like I mentioned earlier, I covered, pricing discrepancies and some of the proof docs that you might, find valuable, to dispute with. 
 

In those different sources within Supplier Hub, another great document for pricing discrepancies is, you know, any communication between a buyer that might have happened to validate the price for an item. But in this next section, we're really going to focus on the shortages just because, you know, probably the most easily disputed. 
 

I know I say that. Take that with a grain of salt, but probably most easily disputed, and you know, most rounded out way to look at it for, from just a proof documentation side. so we'll go over what is good, better, and best for proof documentation to dispute shortages at Home Depot. so good proof documentation, like I mentioned a little bit ago, there are those fields on every dispute package, where you can select the carrier from Home Depot's little dropdown that they have there. 
 

If you can't find your carrier, that's okay. You can leave it blank or just select another option. They have some just generic ones in there. and then they have that field for either, you know, BOL, PRO, tracking number. If you have multiple, make sure you're separating that by a comma in there. but again, you know, this is You could just submit this and leave it at that if you have that information, but I think really what's going to be most impactful is making sure that we're getting some sort of shipping document attached to that dispute. 
 

so probably going to be most beneficial if you're a collect supplier with Home Depot is going to be that BOL, I would say is number one, making sure you get that attached and get your disputes out there. gonna be a good deal. If you're a prepaid, POD is awesome. And then two, just some other proof documentations that, you know, definitely don't hurt to attach if you have them available, would be a packing slip and an invoice. 
 

packing slip especially, it's sometimes nice for Home Depot just to get that granular level information for that claim that may not. Or for that, shipment that may not be listed on the BOL. and then two, invoice. and one thing I didn't mention earlier, but for pricing discrepancies, if you are disputing those, I would say an invoice copy is also going to be a really great proof documentation for that. 
 

And then just looking at, you know, if you wanted to go above and beyond disputing, your shortages, photos of pallets might be beneficial just at the warehouse before they leave. Could could make a good claim there and then too if you had an asn copy this could also be beneficial when you look at disputing shortages with home depot and but you know really at the end of the day if you had to ask me what's going to be the best To dispute a shortage with home depot if you're a collect supplier. 
 

I definitely say getting that be a little attached Is going to be most important. And then if you're a prepaid supplier, definitely getting that POD attached is going to be most important. All right. I think that wraps up my, my slides, Peter, if we want to get into some Q&A.  
 

[00:36:51] Peter: Yep. we don't have any questions right now, so we'll go on to, the next little bit here, we're going to put our, Oh, not yet. 
 

so. I mentioned some of the resources that we have already, we've got an ebook on Home Depot that I did not share in the chat, but that will have a little bit more of a the bigger picture of revenue loss at Home Depot. so that could be helpful, but as you can see here, we have a lot of Walmart content. 
 

We have a lot of Amazon content as well. So just another pitch for, for those longer form, pieces of content that we do on SupplierWiki. so there's that. I'm also going to put our emails up here in a little bit, too, so that on the next slide. Oh, sorry. Could you go one more, Annalee? Or we do the that. 
 

So y'all could get our emails down. If you don't have a question right now, you think you might a little bit later. whether that's a just general Home Depot question for us or a product related question. So Emily is going to go into our product here in a little bit and talk about some of the things that we started the conversation with the webinar. 
 

She will talk about some of those parts that are most relevant to the product itself and some of the benefits there. so if you have any questions about that process as well, you can definitely still ask them in the webinar, but you can also just, email us later on too. So I think that's, I think that's plenty of time. 
 

We can, we can go to the. product now here. 
 

[00:38:26] Annalee: Let's see. So yeah, like Peter mentioned, I'm going to walk through at SupplyPike, just our product offering for a Home Depot solution. so I know Peter, Peter mentioned it earlier on really a main goal at SupplyPike is for us to just take the friction out of disputing. 
 

We know that that's a super manual process today, for suppliers and truly it's, it's hard to go after every single dollar. and so we want to make, you know, our goal here is to one, how do we take the friction? How do we take the time and just the manual man hours truly that go behind disputing? And then to just go after every dollar that you're owed from a retailer. 
 

so we, you know, we sit on top of these retailer portals, but really we're just giving you the tools necessary to, you know, automate the process. And then two, I think another huge benefit that we offer is just the visibility. It's it's hard sometimes to manually pull all of that data and really aggregate it and try and understand it and digest it so we want to make that easy again It's really just about that time savings and then to just having a really good understanding of the rev loss that you're incurring with these retailers can really help Inform business decisions and really help you better understand supply chain and maybe some areas that you might be lacking and some opportunities to improve your supply chain as well. 
 

And of course, you know, we talked about the disputing, but I also like to think that. solutions for all of our different retailers are really beneficial across your organization, too. So not even just accounting teams. there's a lot of good detail and information that we have out there that other teams within your organization might find beneficial because really, again, at the end, at the end of the day, we really want to make sure that we're just You know, putting a lens on everything related to your supply chain. 
 

So, without further ado, I'll walk through our Home Depot solution. so we'll, we pull in all of the supplier's, data. And like I mentioned, we're really just wanting to do a lot of dashboarding, a lot of reports on this information, aggregate the data. Again, something that would be a very manual process. 
 

We want to make super easy because. Half the battle is just visibility. So we'll break down all of the different codes that we talked about. So shortages, pricing, discrepancies, give you the high level information, you know, Hey, for the past year, here's the amount that you've incurred with this retailer, and then we give a couple other different metrics. 
 

So. deductions by amount. I think that this is a really cool, graph that we break down here because, you know, whether your shortage was under 100 or over 1, 000, it takes the same amount of time. But it's really interesting just to see from like a time savings cost perspective, just the analysis there. 
 

and then to another thing that I think is really impactful, especially for Home Depot suppliers is breaking down deductions by location. you know, some RDCs might be a little bit worse some of them are actually more cost effective than others when it comes to deductions. And it's really interesting to just see, you know, RDCs that you might be shipping to very frequently. 
 

are you receiving higher deductions there versus others? So really great look at just understanding, you know, where your deductions are falling just. within, Home Depot's, DC distribution. So, a lot of good data here, again, and this is super customizable too. A huge, you know, thing we encourage within our, applications is just, you know, slice and dice the data, really get in there and try and understand, cause, you know, you can only take action when you truly understand your data. 
 

So we offer a lot of different filter options, and then, of course, the ability to export. So we're also really big on, hey, There's a lot of data in here, but we recognize, you know, suppliers also want to take that data and export it, share it within their organization, keep it for their own record keeping purposes. 
 

So we always make the data available. And then two, just, I think a huge benefit of supply Pike. And really what I like to think is just the backbone of what we do is that document integration piece. So Peter alluded to this earlier. So, you know, half the battle of disputing these claims is just where are my documents. 
 

It's the manual process of trying to track down those documents and get them attached to the dispute, along with all the other things you have to consider when you're disputing. so we have really awesome software that, you know, if a document's living digitally somewhere, we're going to be able to grab it. 
 

And then we can, with our OCR technology, we look, we scan all of those different documents and we associate them to the claim that they belong to. So. You know, potentially taking hours out of someone's time to really track down those documents, and understand, you know, or try and pair them up to the dispute. 
 

So a lot of manual time savings, happens there with our document piece and then to all the other details and information that come along with, you know, just understanding how to dispute. We fill in the gaps there. And we also make everything super customizable with that automation. So, You have a lot of different ways to dispute a claim within our software so you can single click, but really where our suppliers find the most benefit is when you economies of scale, I like to think so you can bulk submit claims. 
 

You can also opt to turn on auto disputing, which, Candidly, most of, you know, suppliers that are using our software today do turn this on. And then basically our system, once we get those, documents attached to the correct claims, we just submit them right back to the retailer. so, you know, you don't even have to necessarily. 
 

worry about lifting a finger, to get those disputes out there. You're really maximizing your time. And then you can come in and manage exceptions or, kind of like we talked about during, the presentation, you know, a big thing with Home Depot is making sure that we're managing, any exceptions or anything that comes back into supplier action. 
 

So really making the most use of your time, and, and really understanding, you know, Prioritization and what to work on next is a huge thing within SupplyPike, so we really like to organize a lot of these, you know, disputes and claims, into these different workflows and then two on top of that, lots of different filters to just truly dive into the data, understand it better, and just, you know, really get a better vision of your RevLoss as a whole within, Home Depot. 
 

Let's see, I think we have a question. Peter, can you maybe help see? I think we had a question possibly. 
 

[00:45:09] Peter: Arthur wants to know, this is from the chat. How did we get the key rec number? 
 

[00:45:15] Annalee: Yeah, that's a great question. So a couple, a couple of different ways. So sometimes you'll see on a shortage dispute that Home Depot will already have that key rec number populated. 
 

in other cases, you know, they might say no key rec. and to be honest, when they say no key rec, it might be possible that That key rec can't be found just because they have no record of receiving that product within their system. I know I mentioned this application earlier, the automated dispute resolution platform, within Supplier Hub. 
 

I will say for RDC and DFC shipments. Sometimes, in merchandise payables where you might see no keyrec or that generic keyrec. that generic keyrec a lot of times will just be the RDC number and then followed by some zeros. And that's how you know they have no record of receiving for that particular shipment or no keyrec was found. 
 

anyway. The automated dispute resolution platform within Supplier Hub sometimes will have the actual key rec, and so you can get a lot of more granular, visibility into key recs for a particular shipment. So, I would recommend, you know, if you don't have access to the application today, maybe requesting it from a partner guardian, or if you need to ask. 
 

related to Home Depot to try and get on boarded onto the application. There's a lot of good information. And sometimes you can find a key rec, in there that may not be visible within merchandise payables. in which case you can update, that key rec within merchandise payables to be what you find in the automated dispute resolution platform to submit with your dispute. 
 

I realized that's a little bit of a manual process and, you know, sometimes it can be hit or miss. but if you were, you know, had a particular dispute where you're missing that key rec, you could try and go find that information within the automated dispute resolution platform. 
 

And then two, just from a SupplyPike side, we will, we're grabbing that key rec, whatever is visible in merchandise payables and making it visible within our application. So again, we're just grabbing that information. From merchandise payables, we actually grab a lot of the high level order information from a lot of different spots within merchandise payables and make it easy, put it in one spot, and associate it to its correct dispute. 
 

another thing, too, is we're just, we're always going to show you activity on a dispute. So as you're, you know, taking action on a dispute package, we'll show you all of that updated history. And then, like I mentioned in the webinar, or in the slides, you can open a dialogue straight from the SupplyPike app as well. 
 

So, we make it a little bit easier, especially just with some of our workflows. it makes it really easy to narrow down, identify what you want to work on. And then two, What I think are best features. it's a little bit manual one by one to open a dialogue on all of your denied claims, but we actually make it super easy within SupplyPike to go ahead and open a dialogue in bulk so you can open a dialogue on up to 100 denied claims at once, just requesting, you know, hey, Home Depot, can you take another look, whatever you want to put in there, but something that would And Probably take you hours to do one by one. 
 

You can do with a couple of clicks on those denied claims within our supply pike applications. So again, letting the automation do the work, taking, you know, giving back some time savings. and then, of course, hopefully we see some approved dollars from that, too. So, just one of the cool tools that we have within the supply pike application for Home Depot suppliers. 
 

and how I was mentioning earlier, really, another huge benefit Of course, being able to filter down data, better understand, but we're going to keep track of your data indefinitely, which is really nice, especially, you know, we've seen in the past sometimes, data within merchandise payables just goes away after some time. 
 

So we're always going to hold on to that data. And then you always will have the ability, like I mentioned on the dashboard, to export that data. so. Really a great way to keep track of things. A lot of good information within our export deductions and our export chargebacks, CSVs that we have here. 
 

So, a great way to look at the data and really truly understand. and then, you know, once you've saved the time and the disputing, letting the automation handle that, you can really start to dive into some of this data and try and look at some, some root cause. 
 

Well, Peter, any other questions in the chat? 
 

[00:49:55] Peter: I don't think so. I really liked the, the made up names on the, for the actors side of things for our custom data. Those are pretty fun. you don't get to see that if you buy the app. you only get to see it on demos. so. 
 

[00:50:09] Annalee: Where the fun is.  
 

[00:50:11] Peter: Yeah. 
 

Crookshank. Anne Crookshank the third, something like that. All right. Well, that's all that we have for y'all today. if you have any questions, of course, feel free to reach out to us, you know, you'll be getting the video recording and the slide deck in the next couple of days. So, if you, if you didn't get our emails, then you'll be able to get them, later on as well. 
 

So, but yeah, thank you all for joining us. it's great to have you. Till next time.