How to Win Your Amazon Disputes

How To Win Your Amazon Disputes 
 
[00:00:00] Peter Spaulding: I am Peter. This is Allie. We do these about two times a week. We have a lot of webinars here at Supplier SupplierWiki, SupplyPike. So we're the content coordinating team. We're the ones who are kind of working behind the scenes to generate all the webinars, eBooks, articles, other kinds of resources, cheat sheets, that will be of interest to you guys. 
 
So, let us know in the chat or in the Q&A if if there's a particular thing perhaps about Amazon that you're curious about, that you would like for us to kind of research for you on your behalf. That's what we do. That's what we're here to do. And, yeah, today I said we'd be talking about Amazon deductions. 
 
So we're gonna start with a quick overview do some more kind of general kind of essential information stuff at the beginning. Then we're going to look at some of the most common ones. How to avoid deductions generally. And then we'll get into disputing and winning back the fun stuff there at the end. 
 
And then we'll do a, a Q&A kind of portion at the end. And some of those questions, we might kind of deal with a little bit earlier on if it's more relevant to the particular section that we're in. But we may save some of those for the end as well. These are some frequently asked questions that we get pretty regularly. 
 
Don't worry about taking too rigorous of notes because we will be sending out the slide deck in three to four business days. And we will also be uploading a recording to our YouTube channel. So if you haven't subscribed to our YouTube channel I highly recommend it. We post all of our webinars there and if we do like an educational in-person event, we'll record it and we'll post it there as well. 
 
So it's a good way for you to just kind of keep your finger on the pulse of the supplier of supplier updates. But also if there are, you know, new kind of developments in Amazon or other supply other retailers as well, we'll be, we'll be covering all that stuff there. So definitely subscribe to our YouTube channel, SupplyPike's YouTube channel to, to stay up to date with all of that. 
 
Also. kind of a common misconception that we have a lot or misunderstanding that we have a lot in these webinars is the difference between the Q& A and the chat. The chat is just public. That's for if we ask you guys a question maybe what's your most common deduction at Amazon? Then you can feel free to put that in the chat where everything else goes. 
 
You can put questions in the chat. It's just that everyone will be able to see them as well. So if you have a, a question that you want us to see put that in the Q&A section and then we can kind of, appropriate those for wherever we are in the webinar. If we want to save it to the end, if it's a more general question or if we want to do one earlier, when it's more relevant to a particular slide, we can do it then as well. 
 
So that's what those two are for And we are SupplyPike. So I mentioned our YouTube channel already. For those of you who don't know, we sell a product for dealing with deductions in Amazon, Walmart Kroger, and Target and basically it's it's a way of Saving people time our software will gather the shipping documentation that's needed, automatically really quickly, and depending on the retailer, we'll most often assemble it. 
 
into an actual dispute to do all that for you really quickly and save you a bunch of time. So these are some of our partners that we're really proud to work with. We got our start in Walmart, but we're expanding into Amazon now and really excited about all of that too. 
 
A little bit more about SupplierWiki, which is the team that we're on within SupplyPike. We're creating a lot of free resources like this webinar. So as I mentioned before, you know, we want to cover all of our bases. We want to make sure that everything that could be an issue or that could be a stumbling block for you guys is well researched and that we have a good kind of answer for it on our end. 
 
So if there's any, if there's anything that you've been, particularly struggling with go, go over to SupplierWiki, check it out, explore a little bit, sign up for the newsletter. Just like subscribing to our YouTube, it'll be a great way of kind of staying informed with everything that we're doing. 
 
And these right here that are pictured are some of our eBooks, our most kind of popular eBooks. So at Walmart, again, I said, we started at Walmart. That's where a lot of our content kind of stemmed from for the first couple of years. So we have those Walmart deduction codes and OTIF and SQEP. are both Walmart kind of specific as well, but we've recently been expanding out into Target and Amazon making up, making a bunch of content for those as well. 
 
All right. And we're also excited to have some of our, account executives and account managers available on call at the end of this webinar, if you would like to join with one of them to hear more about our product. So as we go through, think about that. Is that something that you'd be interested in? 
 
And we'll be able to give you the Zoom links for them at the end so that you can hop on a call right away with someone if you're curious about more about that product, about saving time, fighting Amazon deductions with them. 
 
[00:06:15] Allie Truong: Awesome. Thank you so much, Peter, for the introduction. Yeah. Like Peter said we're going to focus on the content today, the learning that we have on Amazon deductions, but if at any time during today's call, you're interested in talking to someone about how your business might benefit, we can connect you with either Nick or Sam. 
 
They're all great resources for deduction Amazon, Amazon deductions. All right, so let's get started with today's content. We're going to do a quick overview of Amazon deductions, kind of just level set, and then we'll get into more of the understanding, avoiding, disputing, and ultimately winning Amazon deductions. 
 
All right, so the first place we'd like to land when we start talking about Amazon deductions is Vendor Central versus Seller Central. So in this webinar, we're only covering how you can dispute on Vendor Central. Really, the platforms aren't necessarily completely different, but we want to call out that we're focusing on Vendor Central. 
 
So if you're using this information for a Seller Central account, we cannot guarantee that that's completely accurate because we're focusing on Vendor Central. So the main difference between these two different platforms and the type of supplier that would be using them is who actually sells to the consumer. 
 
So for Seller Central, who we won't be focusing on a whole lot here today, is it's a third party seller. So the supplier is actually going to sell directly to the consumer through Amazon Marketplace, and anyone with products can set up an account. A good way to think of this is either, you know, your mom and pop just starting, or someone with an Etsy shop who wants to move over to Amazon for another avenue to sell their their products. 
 
That would be one example. Whereas Vendor Central, where we are focusing most of our attention today is a first party seller. Amazon is actually going to purchase the products from the supplier and then resell them to their customers and this is by invitation only. So you're usually going to be pretty established by the time that you're invited to Vendor Central, and that's going to be your bigger suppliers too. 
 
Think of, you know, your Clorox, your, QuakerFoods different products like that. Your Bounty, wipes that would be more on the vendor central side. All right, so in terms of the focus areas of Amazon Deduction within Vendor Central is about five main categories and this is how Amazon buckets them out as well. 
 
And it's important to understand the lingo when you're working in any retailer, whether that's Amazon or Walmart, because that lingo or the way that they phrase things is going to help you understand the process. And we'll dive into that here in a second. But as I'm taking a drink of water, we've got this question for the chat. 
 
What type of deductions does your business receive most often? Is it the missing invoices? Is it invoices that can't be processed? Is it shortages, whether those are potential or remaining? Or is it defects that happen in the supply chain, invoicing, or the catalog? 
 
As we go through, we'll, we'll focus on all of these actually, but the one we see the most, and I wonder if anyone's mentioned it in the chat. Perfect, Lynn came in right on the buzzer when I was going to say it. Most people say shortages, so we'll be focusing more of our attention on shortages today because that's the most pervasive problem for suppliers in general. 
 
So I'm talking about Walmart, Amazon, Target, Kroger. Those are the retailers we focus in. But just widespread, we hear a lot of issues with deductions that are pertaining to shortages. So we're going to kind of dive into each one of these and we're going to start with missing invoices. So what are they? 
 
And a missing invoice is what it sounds like because Amazon will not pay a supplier if they're unable to match an invoice to delivered products. This is an issue that can happen for a couple of different reasons, but essentially it's important to understand the technology that Amazon uses. What happens is Amazon has a invoice matching system and they're going to have the PO and the invoice and if the information on all of those line up, there's several different pieces of information that are going to be important. Then they will actually be able to say, okay, yep, we received that. 
 
Yes, it was in full, so we're going to pay that. Reasons that you would have missing invoices, the invoice was never sent. So either you had an issue with your EDI or someone dropped the ball and the invoice just never got sent through. That could be a reason. The invoice could have been sent, but it's not received yet. 
 
That can be a timing issue or it could be another EDI issue where it actually isn't coming through at all. Another reason would be that the invoice doesn't contain the needed information to automatically identify and match the invoice. So it could be missing things or have the incorrect information or the invoice was rejected due to non-compliance. 
 
That could be something from leaving information out, not filling it out properly, the list could go on and on, but having those important details that are pertinent to invoices is the key with those possible reasons. All right, so let's say you sent the invoice, Amazon has it, but for some reason it's not being processed. 
 
That's going to come down to errors or inconsistencies. Some of the reasons we've seen suppliers are having unprocessed invoices is incorrect or incomplete tax rates, so checking those out. Tax registration numbers, that's another one, maybe leaving a number off or having numbers incorrectly. Incorrect or incomplete Amazon bill too address, so making sure the correct addresses there, making sure that you're not having other issues with your address, if you've left off numbers, or you've moved. And then lastly, kind of the catch all for invoices, whether they're missing or can't be processed, is EDI issues. This is when we see a lot with suppliers who may not understand what EDIs are, and that's just essentially the It stands for Electronic Data Interchange, and that's how different information is sent between one party to another in these types of situations. 
 
So in this business supplier world, that's the basic definition. So for EDI issues, contact your EDI provider. If you don't have one I would suggest getting one and getting those issues worked out. We also have a pretty helpful document on EDIs and the different types that are out there, and that can also help if you know the ones that you're sending, what they mean, and if there are any errors. 
 
So I'm sure Peter can send that in the chat here in a second. All right. So like I said, the one we're probably going to focus on the most today is shortages. What is a shortage? A shortage is when the quantity of an item on invoice does not match the quantity that the facility received. And here's another kind of lingo call out that comes with Amazon. 
 
When we're saying shortages, oftentimes we also mean PD, PQV. So this is how Amazon refers to a shortage. If you hear that word, it's pretty interchangeable. A PQV stands for Purchase Quantity Variance. So basically what it sounds like, there's a variance in the quantity of what you said that you were going to deliver to Amazon. 
 
This graphic's really helpful to just illustrate that simply. Let's say the invoice says, hey, I wanted three of the grapefruit juice boxes. And I wanted three of the pomegranate juice box. Yeah, the pomegranate juice boxes, but when it gets to the Amazon fulfillment center, they open up the box, they're separating the case packs and they go, Oh, I only received three of the grapefruit juices, but I don't see the pomegranate juices anywhere. 
 
So then you're going to receive a deduction for that because they're saying, we're not paying you for the three juice boxes that didn't show up. No, that's pretty simple, but it is, it can be helpful to use something like this to explain to other teams that aren't familiar, or if you're a new supplier getting started, this is an easy way to kind of remember what a PQV or a shortage is. 
 
All right. And here's another call out. So the way that Amazon works is they have these two distinctions, a potential shortage and a remaining shortage. So the difference here for me, this is how I remember it is kind of the difference between a tornado watch and a tornado warning. So with potential shortages, it's really more of a, hey, just letting you know, this is coming down the pipeline, this may resolve itself, it may be fine, but we are seeing something where this might be a shortage. 
 
Remaining shortages are saying, Yes, we're not seeing any invoice that's matched, so we're going to call this a shortage and you're probably going to be deducted from it, most likely, if you're not responding with a dispute. So, we'll kind of go into the details between these two, but they both essentially are going to mean that the quantity of an item on the invoice does not match the quantity the facility said it received, kind of like what we learned on the last slide. 
 
And with potential shortages, like I said, These are more of just a call out and a warning to your system to look and see if there are any ways that you can mitigate this issue. So some of the other points here is it's going to be labeled as a potential shortage until processed or the match is found. 
 
So it will sit there for a certain amount of time before the invoice's due date is processed, and it can be, it can have the potential to be matched and paid later. So you really want to keep an eye on your potential shortages and make sure they're not moving to remaining shortages. And like I said, this is more of a warning for suppliers to be ahead of their discrepancies. 
 
Check some things out. Maybe this is a great way to be ahead of your shortage deductions, which Amazon, if you're not familiar, has a 30 day window for disputing. So this is actually a really helpful tool if you're seeing a lot of shortages to get on on those and start looking at proof documentation early. 
 
So with remaining shortages, like I said, this is going to be the result of a potential shortage that's moved and was never matched to an invoice. And the remaining amount of the invoice was not matched. And where we see the root cause in this is usually due to a supply chain issue or a shipping defect. 
 
A really simple example is, let's say, let's go back to our juice boxes here for a second. Let's say you actually Get the remaining shortage back and you have something that lets you know that they received six juice boxes that were in the pomegranate. So we'll go back to our graphic here. But they didn't receive any of their pomegranate juice, but they received six of their grapefruit juice. 
 
Well, maybe if they, on further inspection, if they open the boxes up, they would see that maybe both of the boxes were labeled grapefruit, showing that they, you know, have an overage of the grapefruit and a shortage of the pomegranate, but really it's just a labeling defect and the pomegranate juice is present. 
 
It just looks like it's in a grapefruit case pack. So that can, that can be an issue that we've seen and that can be a reason where you might have a shortage and an overage. Alright, and then the last type of deduction that you see at Amazon is the supply chain invoicing and catalog defects. These seem to be kind of the catch all of the things that don't really go into the shortages and invoicing bucket when it comes to processed or missing. 
 
So, some of the areas are already invoiced. So that makes sense. If you've already invoiced Amazon, they're probably going to say, no, we're not paying that one, that particular invoice, because we paid the one prior and that is actually the first and original invoice. The second one would be late shipping. 
 
That's pretty standard across retailers. At Walmart, it's referred to mostly as on time and full. It's pretty standard across the industry. Another reason might be invoiced for canceled items. So, Amazon is No one is going to pay, not just Amazon. No one's going to pay for items that a supplier canceled, whether that's due to Inventory constraints or, you know, the pickup for collect or whatever the issue is, no retailer would pay for a cancelled item. 
 
Another one is Invoice Quantity is greater than the ordered quantity. I kind of alluded to that earlier. Another way to refer to that is an overage. Purchase Price Variance is included in here as well. So that's going to be a difference in what the purchase price is supposed to be. Maybe the PO says one thing, but the invoice says another. 
 
That's just another place where you need to make sure that the catalog setup is correct. Incorrect product received. That makes sense. It was not Amazon's not going to pay for, you know, the pomegranate juice when they wanted the grapefruit juice, unless you work out something, but usually that's not the case. 
 
We actually have that kind of reminds me a great webinar on Walmart. Sorry, not Walmart on Amazon returns, and that can kind of help you understand the logistics and how to dispute any Amazon returns around either you. Products being sent back or damages, so Peter can send that in the chat. Another thing is incorrect unit versus pack quality. 
 
Other things are multiple ASINs for a single product. That's just kind of another catalog defect. An unrecognized product, so for some reason it's not necessarily connected to any of the labeling. Overages are not being invoiced, so you're not There's no invoice for an overage, so something that's sent an inventory that's sent over the capacity that Amazon requested. 
 
Deleted appointments without any proper documentation or going through the correct channels. Product not listed on a purchase order. That's important. And then liquidated products, which would fall under Amazon returns as well. And Peter can send that deck. All right. So in terms of the types of supply chain, invoicing, catalog, defects, I listed a lot, I believe there's even more. 
 
And this is kind of a place where I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon added more just to kind of parse out the different. areas that can be, included in this. If you want to look at the types of supply chain invoicing and catalog defects in Vendor Central, log into Vendor Central, go to the Payments tab, it's on the top nav, and then click into Operational Performance. 
 
You can actually view each of these defects in your scorecard and drill into underlying issues. So this supplier would have only has one populated for liquidated products, but you can actually toggle between this and you can see the different the different defects that you have and kind of over time what they've looked like and understand where. 
 
the information you need to see for, okay, there's an unrecognized product. Let me dig into that and see what the issue is there. So that's kind of a helpful place to start if you're seeing a lot of a specific type of defect at Amazon. All right. And then this is just kind of a big picture view. These deductions have a lot of overlap and there's good news with that. 
 
And there's bad news with that. So the good news we'll start with that is that. A lot of these deduction types actually are linked together. So if you're seeing a lot of supply chain, invoicing, and catalog defects and potential shortages, you actually may be able to kill two birds with one stone because you'll find the root cause issue and then you'll be able to resolve both of those types. 
 
However, the bad news is these can be connected and it can kind of feel like dominoes that are falling over. You have a potential shortage, which triggers a supply chain defect. You might have a missing invoice that triggers a supply chain defect. Your potential shortages fall into remaining shortages. 
 
So our advice here is just to kind of step back, spend time on root cause analysis, build your team in a way that makes sense for you because of the certain Amazon rules, which we'll talk about in a second. But there's a way to do this strategically, and we can kind of go into some of those. those tips here at the end. 
 
All right, so we're going to talk about the most common Amazon deductions and how to avoid and fight those. All right, so we're kind of reiterating a little bit, but this is the most common deduction, and that is the shortage claim, also known as the purchase quantity variance, and it's the most common form that retailer suppliers face, kind of like I mentioned before. 
 
So if you're seeing these at other retailers, let us know, we'd like to talk about those as well. But today is focused on Amazon, and It's no surprise that that is the main issue for suppliers that we work with. So why might a shortage occur? This can be I'm going to go through these kind of as a root cause analysis. 
 
This can be a jumping off point for your team when it comes to understanding root cause because there are a lot of areas where you kind of have to start at the beginning and go all the way to the end when it comes to understanding the process and finding that root cause. So the first place to start is errors in the catalog setup or ASINs. 
 
Make sure you have the right product information. Make sure that you have the correct ASINs, that it's not attributed to another product, that you're not missing a digit, that if you did a hard change and you needed to update the ASIN, that it is updated, details like that. Forgetting the ASN, so that's the Advanced Shipping Notice, or the Advanced Shipping Notice has the incorrect information. 
 
So what's kind of different about Amazon compared to other retailers is they don't care as much about BOL and POD as they do ASN. So ASNs are going to be kind of your bread and butter when it comes to proof documentation. So making sure those are correct and being processed correctly is a big area of root cause that we see some suppliers dealing with. 
 
Why else might a shortage occur? Sending the invoice too early or duplicating the invoice, and we've got some tips on this. Amazon has a specific process for this. And we'll kind of talk about that here in a second. Other things are compliance with Amazon's labeling standards. You can find that on Vendor Central. 
 
I, if you're seeing a lot of root cause analysis, if you're seeing a lot of root cause issues with your packaging or labeling, I would go ahead and peruse that. It would be helpful just to kind of understand where it might be going wrong. Amazon, Because the fulfillment centers are basically mini factories that are receiving products, sending them out. 
 
There's a lot of labor, labor involved, human labor, and then also automation. You have to do things by the book or it's going to get delayed and therefore it's going to just get put over into a pile that they'll deal with later. And oftentimes that means because it's delayed, you're going to receive, receive some kind of deduction. 
 
Other reasons there's vendor lead time, AKA accurate. PO management. This is how Walmart, Walmart, this is how Amazon reversed to just, you said you were going to send 16 pallets, but you were only able to send four. That's more Walmart terms because I'm talking about pallets, but with Amazon, just saying you're going to send the amount of product and doing that in the time you said that you're going to. 
 
That can be a forecasting issue, that can be an issue with your overseas manufacturing, so just understanding that and communicating it proactively will help reduce the amount of shortages you receive at any retailer. Another error can be more on The, retailer side with Amazon. So automation errors, like I said, there's little many factories that we call fulfillment centers. 
 
There can be issues there and that might create an error that you can bounce back and give the responsibility to Amazon. Or it can be something that you've set up your packaging incorrectly or your receivable process incorrectly that Amazon is counting that under an automation error. Other things are inbound receivable has to be processed manually. 
 
That kind of comes back to your packaging and your labeling, making sure that's just easy to scan through the sensors that Amazon has when you're actually receiving a package or sorting it. And then lastly, issues with loss prevention. And we kind of dive more into that in the Amazon Returns webinar that we have. 
 
And I know Peter shared that in the chat. All right. So with Amazon, there's lots of buckets and within those buckets, there's even more. So we kind of talked about shortages at a high level, and then we talked about the timing aspect. So potential versus remaining, and here are some of the types of shortages that you might see at Amazon. 
 
So the top one is just the basic shortage claims. That's going to be created when Amazon can't match the shipment amounts, the receipt that they have, that's going to be the one you're seeing the most. Then there's missed adjustment claims, or MACs, and those are detected based on inventory adjustments made at the system downstream after the invoice is matched and paid. 
 
I, we don't see those as much, but if you have seen those, go ahead and let us know in the chat and we'd like to talk about those. Then other shortage ones can be disaster recovery claims or other recovery claims. They're referred to DSCs, and these are when Amazon issues suppliers with one or more payments in error related to outstanding shortage deductions. 
 
So essentially saying, Hey, we think we owe you this. Oh, wait, actually we don't. We need to pull that back. And then Shortage Claim Reversals, or SCRs, occur when Amazon's system creates a separate child invoice and a Shortage Claim Reversal invoice directly related to the shortage claim. So, the SC Reversal Notice allows suppliers to dispute the shortage by claiming, by submitting valid evidence. 
 
in Vendor Central for review. And the Shortage Claim Reversal allows Amazon systems to search for the receipt records, match, and pay for the product after the due date of the original invoice. These we don't see as much either, but wanted to include it just for, for reference. Here's something I really wanted to focus on especially when it comes to shortages. 
 
So if most of you are dealing with issues with shortages, this may be the reason why you're not seeing a lot of success when you're disputing with Amazon. So essentially your dispute window as a supplier is about 30 days. And with other retailers, you have a certain amount of times you can re dispute. 
 
With Walmart, we like to say baseball rules, three strikes and you're out is usually what happens, but you can still go back. Amazon is pretty one and done. So you have this 30 day window and you can either Get it disputed and get paid back, or you've kind of lost it. And we can talk about some of the ways you can go back and do that process, but it is different than the process we're talking about. 
 
So this is disputing in Vendor Central through the application. And if you wanted to do it outside your 30 day window and your first attempt, you're going to have to do it through an email chain. My suggestion and the suggestion we have for the suppliers we work with is Doing that on a case by case. So if you're going to dispute outside this window, outside your one kind of shot, it better be worth it and you better have the proof documentation just because the work and the likelihood that it would get approved is going to go down significantly after this 30 day review window. 
 
So we'll kind of talk through this. So we kind of talked about the timing potential versus remaining about shortage claims are usually generated before the due date of the invoice. And once the invoice due date is hit, they're probably going to move into remaining remaining shortages, which is where this dispute window would open up. 
 
You could dispute before But this is kind of that 30 day window. So the invoice due date has happened, you have this dispute window, and this is a stat we've seen with the suppliers we work with. We work with about 400 plus suppliers and past 40 days is about zero to five percent likelihood that you'll actually turn those over and be able to win them. 
 
Now, this 35 days at the backend is not necessarily time that suppliers are working on the deduction. It's more for the Amazon team to process, approve, and pay the supplier. So, overall, the good news is When it comes to Amazon and you're getting paid back, you actually have a really short window compared to other suppliers. 
 
I know a lot of suppliers at Walmart are having a hard time right now getting paid and getting their disputes looked at. So they're just kind of sitting in the system and Walmart can take up to, I believe, like three months, which when you have a tight cashflow, that can cause a lot of issues with Amazon. 
 
It's a little bit shorter. However, the dispute window is shorter, which means it can be a little bit difficult to actually get yourself to a approval. Here's just another call out about optimal disputes. So, when we say optimal disputes, we mean disputes done in that 30 day window. It's going to significantly increase your win rate. 
 
We have a great article on this that Peter helped work on. And he can send that in the chat and this kind of details the report that we had between two suppliers that we work with. So we saw, just to kind of recap this, we saw the dispute win rate for suppliers. We had one supplier who is not winning a lot, it's about 20%. 
 
And then we had another supplier who we were working with who was killing it. This is a great dispute win rate. So our team got curious and said, what is the percentage of optimal disputes that these suppliers are actually submitting to, for approval? And with Supplier 1, they're not really submitting that many optimal disputes. 
 
And you can see there's not a huge difference between those numbers. That's pretty key. With Supplier 2, we saw that Basically the full percentage, almost a hundred percent of the disputes they were submitting were submitted in those 30 days. So it's really, it's a really cool thing to see that the optimal win rate is probably the best strategy. 
 
So being able to be agile and disputing that 30 day window is going, you're going to have more success. Whereas, You may be able to win a mature claim or past 30 days but you can see with Supplier1, they haven't had that much success and it looks like Supplier2 may have submitted some, but at the end of the day, they're having a great win rate just focusing on that 30 day window. 
 
So really, Unless they had a mature claim that they just, it was a ton of money, it was worth disputing, they had all the proof documentation, that can be harder just to dispute. So if I were to pick a strategy, I would pick focusing on that 30 day window and just getting more money back from, from that strategy. 
 
All right, so let's talk a little bit about actually doing the work of disputing shortage deductions. So this can be another checklist we talked through this a little bit I'll, I'll highlight some of these, some of this is the same information, some of it's different but our kind of mantra when it comes to disputing at any retailer is a good offense is a good defense. 
 
So with Amazon Fines, Knowing your root cause, knowing what's going to cause issues and avoiding that is going to save you from a lot of those fines coming through and actually hitting your bottom line. So I'll read through these in a second. And again, this can be a great checklist if you're like, I'm seeing deductions, but I don't know where they're coming from. 
 
Where do I start? This is some of the things you can go check in your Vendor Central account. All right, so the first is ensure that the accuracy and catalog setup and ASNs is all buttoned up. That can be kind of the conception of a lot of those widespread issues. Other points are invoice content needs to match PSO, PO, and ASN. 
 
Other things, cancel invoices with enough time if you're unable to make shipment. It's a lot easier that way. You may incur a fee or a fine depending on when you're canceling them, but it's better to be proactive at any retailer you're working with than just saying, You know, sorry, I don't have any product. 
 
Thought I would the day that they're looking to pick up the product or waiting to receive it from you. Other things about invoices, send those about one to four days before delivery date. Too early, you may see an issue with not being able to be processed or missing. You can have issues with shortages or too late. 
 
That's obviously going to be an issue as well. Other things that can help you avoid Amazon fines. Only one label on your carton and master pack. This is pulled from that label compliance document that Amazon has in Venture Central. Familiarizing yourself with that and the rules that Amazon has. 
 
Sometimes those change depending on the retailer you're working on, so just make sure you have someone at on your team who knows the label compliance front to back at this retailer in particular. Other things, no UPCs on Carton or MasterPak. That will mess up the processing. So make sure you're following, again, some of those labeling and compliance things. 
 
And here are the titles of the two documents I've referenced when it comes to shipping defects and avoiding those. So you've got your Review Amazon's labeling and delivery compliance that's due to packaging and things like that. When it comes to Amazon suggestions for reducing vendor lead time, go ahead and read that. 
 
You can find that in the help articles in Vendor Central. And that'll help if you're having issues with PO management or in any of the inaccurate forecasting issues. All right. And then these are important caveats to Amazon's deduction process. Each retailer kind of has their own set of rules. It's kind of like playing Monopoly at someone else's house. 
 
And, you know, the banker has this type of rule or you can, you know, go past, go and collect 200 or more. There's just different rules when it comes to playing with different retailers. So important things to know. We've already kind of talked about the 30 day window. That's probably the first rule. The second rule when it comes to working with Amazon is PODs. 
 
So that proof of delivery is not required. And it's probably not going to be the smoking gun that it is at other retailers. So focus on ASNs. PODs are not as important at Amazon. EAN codes, delivery, collection dates are preferred because they're related directly to the dispute, so use those as well. 
 
That's another hot proof documentation that comes with Amazon that they would prefer. And then lastly, you're only being fined for the short paid items, so not the entire invoice. That's just one call out we want to make. Some retailers are different, can be wholesale, you know, the, the order's wrong, so we're going to fine you for the full amount, make sure you're only being fined for the accurate amount of those short paid items and dispute accordingly. 
 
All right. So, Vendor Central has a lot of tabs and things you can click through, and it can be helpful to see all the information that's listed, but also it can be difficult to find. So this is an easy reference for the different options under the Payment tab, which is where you'll do most of your disputing. 
 
work related to deductions. So that first one is the financial dashboard. That's an overview of payments. It's really quick, high level view of payables, receivables, open disputes. This is where I would start if I was talking with a director trying to understand the full picture of what my disputes look like at Amazon. 
 
Then the second tab is invoices, and this is an action page for invoices. You can create new invoices, review rejected invoices, shortages, price Discrepancies, et cetera. One call out I'll make here is sometimes the options will look different on the invoice tab, and that's based on the type of deductions you have. 
 
So if it says, you know, dispute price discrepancies one day, but then you don't see the next day, it means you don't have any price discrepancies. that are cataloged in Amazon's system. Now, if you feel like you have a price discrepancy that you want to go dispute, you can actually create that in a different place in Amazon. 
 
So, it just kind of depends on what you're, you're looking to do. That third tab is financial scorecard. So, this is the data for diagnosing and addressing issues in your supply chain. And it's going to be more related to your shortages and your invoices rather than your shipping your supply chain, invoicing defects that we've talked about. 
 
Those are going to be in operations management, which is under a different tab. And then lastly, you have the dispute management tab. Another, it's just another dispute viewpoint for creating and reviewing types of disputes. So you can actually go in and create a dispute. If you see it on an invoice that would be required. 
 
So here's just the step by step. We're going to go and dispute it together and it will list some of the tips and tricks as well. So Amazon will notify you. The person in your department responsible for accounts receivable should receive an email. If that person has left your department or it's changed responsibilities, go ahead and make sure that they're the correct person that's receiving those emails so you're being notified and you can dispute in that 30 day window. 
 
For specific POs, again, check Operational Performance under the Reports tab. Each PO is assigned a chargeback ID, so that's another place for more information. And then, this is just kind of a callout for any notifications. Go to Settings, and that's how you would change emails to receive updates quickly. 
 
There's a part later when it comes to disputing if you want to add more emails, and I can show you how to do that to keep a team in loop about specific POs. All right, so this is how, this is the process that we give for all suppliers who are working on deductions where, whether it's at Walmart, Amazon, Target, Kroger, make sure that you're understanding if the client, the claim is valid or invalid. 
 
This is pretty key for one. Understanding root cause and validity. So saying, okay, this is something our team needs to work on. This is our responsibility. Let's fix this. So we never see this issue. And then there's the invalid portion. So let's say, you know, you're, you're researching to either determine. 
 
If you as the supplier need to make any corrective actions, or if you need to have the documentation that says, you know what, actually, Amazon, this charge doesn't make sense. Here's the proof documentation, please advise and pay the invoice. So that's important. for the supplier, but it's good to know the checks that Amazon has as well. 
 
So they have two checks before the supplier is notified. Kind of, we can use the example of potential and remaining shortages. So let's say they see a potential shortage. Their system is going to search for a match for the invoice. If they can't find it, then they might It might be later in the process. 
 
It's not at the invoice due date. So with shortage claims, they can be sent five days before the invoice is due and then they would move into a potential, a move from a potential to a remaining shortage. And so because of these checks, Amazon feels pretty solid about the decision they made, so acting quickly and being able to turn it around in that 30 day time period is the supplier's priority. 
 
So we talked a little bit about from the beginning, just make sure you're being notified, and once you're notified, go ahead and do a validity check. Is it valid? Yes, it's valid. We need to work on this root cause issue. We understand that. We're correcting it. Here's how we're doing it. Or is it invalid? You know, here's the proof documentation. 
 
I'm looking and seeing that that doesn't match what Amazon has said. Please pay back. So here's how you would actually create that dispute in the Vendor Central portal. So you've got the Payments tab, you go into invoice and you can click review and dispute shortages. You'll go into that and then it will populate a page with a list below. 
 
This is what the list looks like and you can actually begin the process. So, you've got the list of disputes that are open at the, at that You can review the information like invoice number, date, amount, status, quantity variance, so what they're going to be deducting from your check. You can see if it's already been disputed. 
 
These have, but let's say we're going to go in and dispute this. You click on actions and then you click dispute shortage by ASN. You can actually also on the very end of this, if you were actually in ventures. Central. Select several lines to dispute so that you can go in and dispute more than one. So then it just comes down to entering information. 
 
This is why we suggest doing your research ahead of time so you're not having six or seven different tabs open and different platforms, but you'll need to have this information pulled up. You'll need to have this information researched before you start disputing. So you'll want to know the dispute quantity, what you believe was delivered, The shipped product and having some type of proof documentation here, so ASIN, EAN, or other barcode product being disputed, and then shipped date. 
 
So if you're prepaid, it's going to be a little bit different. That's when products were delivered to Amazon, and collect is when dates were handed to the carrier. And then, We're kind of getting to the end here, but don't forget comments. That can be really helpful to explain. If you only get one shot, we really recommend including as much imagery or proof documentation that would be beneficial and being clear and concise in the comments that you can add. 
 
And then other dispute details. These are more for suppliers, so it's easier for suppliers. if you want to add this to a dispute title or summary for additional context for your team, or having an internal way to refer to these types of deductions. And then I kind of mentioned this earlier, but optional items is a place where you can actually add More supporting documentation or emails of call links to be included in further communication. 
 
All right, and then from there, hopefully you've reviewed and submitted in those 30 days, and once you've submitted, you can either cancel the invoice if more information reveals that the claim is valid, or wait until you receive a verdict and repayment. And remember, Amazon does not allow for resubmissions, but the way you can do that is go into the Help Center. 
 
It's the tab it's on the same navigation as Payments, and you can actually go through and click through to find a way to email the team that would handle that. And for additional help, this is where I would start. You can go into Login to Vendor Central. Like I said, click Support up here at the top. 
 
Resources, and then contact. You can send an email or request a call, and it can be based on different things. We've got EDI integration here, but maybe you want to change the issue to shortages or deduction issues. All right, I talked a lot, so I'm wondering if Peter, you have any questions for me today? 
 
[00:48:51] Peter Spaulding: Yes, we do. Well, it's more of a kind of an ongoing conversation that we've been having a few of us about. Shortages, disputing with the buyer, and timeliness, and and I've also been kind of trying to do some research and contacting some of our Amazon team in the meantime as well but, one person shared just that they were having trouble, with older disputes, so these are already kind of matured, so it's kind of fallen out of that optimal window. 
 
So yeah. Disputing older ones with the buyer, they, they won't accept PODs and, and BOLs in that context, and they really won't from our experience, won't accept anything so, but, they were, this person was having some success with winning some disputes back, but  
 
They were having the same issue with newer ones as well. So it's something that we'll be looking into a little bit for sure. I know that Amazon will sometimes do kind of auto rejections of older ones. And, and I'm not sure if the message that this person sent is that auto rejection or not. 
 
So we'll be looking into that just to see kind of what that is in the meantime, but. The long and short of it is, and I, and I know that this is kind of frustrating sounding, we're starting to sound kind of like a broken record, but that timeliness, that dispute timeliness window is, is everything when it comes to Amazon. 
 
It's what we were always talking about is just that 30, 30 day window for optimal disputing. is really kind of the key, which, which is difficult. It's really difficult to get all that done if your team isn't doesn't have a ton of people who can prioritize, all of that in that kind of short amount of time. 
 
So, and, and I, I think I posted something about our Timeliness article. I posted it in there. That's a good review kind of of the process, to get a sense of that. But I don't know if you wanted to kind of add anything to that conversation. 
 
[00:51:01] Allie Truong: I would just say, you know. From the work we do with suppliers, we accumulate a lot of knowledge of what's working, what's not. 
 
We've baked that into our software, but when it comes to building your strategy, like we said, knowing how to do a really quick validity check. How you can either determine if that's a root cause or an issue that a supplier needs to fix, or if it really can be disputed. And then that 30 day window, those are the top strategies that have had near success, near a hundred percent success with suppliers that we've worked with. 
 
But then kind of going into that, maybe it is your proof documentation. Maybe that's not clear. Maybe. There are other issues when it comes to disputing that you're not seeing. Maybe it's the way that you're phrasing something or, you know, you have to kind of use Amazon's language to explain to them what's going on. 
 
And that can be a difficult part. So I would say we want to provide what's worked. the most and the best, but every dispute, every supplier is going to be a little bit different. So that, that's just adjusting to whatever your category or the specific issue of that type of deduction is. 
 
[00:52:18] Peter Spaulding: Yeah. It's interesting. 
 
Shayla copied in a quote from the response that she got that a little excerpt that I took out and I've already shared it with our Amazon team because it's a little kind of disconcerting to me and it's probably just something that some kind of misunderstanding that we're all having, but the quote is Amazon does not accept proof of delivery POD or bills of lading BOLs as documentation for the receipt of goods. 
 
So that's, no biggie. That's an interesting sort of thing, because my understanding is that those would be, those would count as proof of of the receipt of goods within the Optimal Dispute window, but Not at Amazon. 
 
[00:52:57] Allie Truong: Yeah. Unfortunately, they're the outlier. So yeah, mention, I mentioned a couple of the resources that they will use, ASNs, EANs and anything, I can go back to that slide if I, I find it. 
 
I think it's anything, yeah, anything or the other barcode of the product being disputed. So that's kind of where you would wanna sit as well as the, the ASN can also be helpful. So that's what I would suggest. I, I know that that's very different from other suppliers or other retailers rather. 
 
[00:53:35] Peter Spaulding: Yeah. Okay. Great. Thanks for that. Yeah. We also had a question here from Jill about how do you handle potential shortages? Do you just ignore them until they transition to actual shortages and then dispute them in the window and etc.? 
 
[00:53:51] Allie Truong: Yeah, that's a great question. I would look at your invoice. Has your invoice been sent? 
 
Okay. Then Why has Amazon not been able to connect those dots? Maybe there's an error on your side, maybe there's not. You can work on resending that, maybe canceling the first one and resending it if they're not, they're not receiving it, but being ahead of that. I would say if you can be ahead of those potential shortages and know exactly the ones that you want to go after and the other claims that the likelihood is that they'll, they'll push through and not go to remaining shortages. 
 
That would be my tactic because you do, once they get to remaining shortages, you have like 30 days. So those would just be more of like a warning rather than like red alert is the kind of the way I think of it. 
 
[00:54:44] Peter Spaulding: Yeah. Okay, great. Well, that's all of it. I hope I did justice to the conversation we were having, we were having about shortages. 
 
It was, going on for quite a while, but that's something I think for all of us to kind of keep an eye out for, but yes, thank you so much, Allie, for for that, that presentation and for answering those questions. We'll be transitioning now into the latter portion of this, of this webinar where you can speak with someone about our product if you're interested. 
 
If you want to go back to the last slide, Allie, real quick, just for our email, sorry about that. If you, if you would like to reach out with us, to just follow up more about that those questions about shortages and dispute timeliness or something like that. Our emails are here and this will also be sent out with the deck in three to four business days and they'll also be on the recordings that will be posted later on as well.  
 
So feel free to reach out to us in any of those ways. And then also if you're if you're interested in talking with someone about SupplyPike for Amazon, We have Nick and Sam standing by while there are seats available. So you can private message me, in the chat if you're interested in that and we can hopefully get you in while those seats last. 
 
Yeah. 
 
[00:56:22] Allie Truong: I wanted to say one thing about this, Peter. Spend a lot of time on the content. If you have more in depth questions about your category at Amazon, about a specific type of shortage claim that you're seeing, these are the guys to talk to. They're product experts, so our product is built on a lot of research and Analyzing what has worked and what has not. 
 
These guys know that information very well. Again, we're SupplierWiki, so we focus a lot on the content, but we pull a lot of the insights and knowledge from the customers that we work with on our product. So if you are interested in meeting with either Sam or Nick, they would be excellent people to have a one on one Brief conversation about, you know, this type of shortage and why these proof documentations or this type of dispute summary didn't work and can possibly help you to see if you're interested in automating that process for yourself.  
 
So again sorry, I kind of cut you off Peter. I did just want to mention, like, we focus a lot on that content, but we work in tandem with these teams to build that out. 
 
[00:57:39] Peter Spaulding: All right. Thank you very much, Allie. I'm not sure if you want to kind of go through the visual display of that as well for now. 
 
In the meantime, for everyone else. But if this is where you hop off, thanks for joining us and thank you for your lively engagement in the chat and in the Q&A section. We love that. We love to hear what you guys are, what you guys are going through and what all of that is like. But Allie will give a, just a brief kind of sneak peek about, what SupplyPike does, for those of you who are interested in seeing that as well. 
 
[00:58:16] Allie Truong: Yeah, so if you're, this is where you hop off. We're going to talk about salesy stuff. But we appreciate you jumping on for the content. This is the product we have. If you're interested in kind of leveling up and you don't want to spend very much time in Vendor Central, this is the product for you. 
 
We just have a quick dashboard that allows you to see, you know, what's been approved. Average days, kind of give you better stats to share with your, your VPs or your senior directors and to see what's still on the table. So if you don't want to just receive a bunch of emails about specific POs, this is an easy way to kind of monitor what's actionable, what is approved, your dispute win rates. 
 
You can see this is a demo account, but you can see what's been optimal versus overall. There's lots of information in here. Again, this is a demo account, so it's not necessarily pulling through all the information you would see with your real data connected, but you can see payee code, deductions by location, line item, deduction type, which can help with root cause analysis rather than digging through all of your proof documentation and waiting for a potential shortage to come up. 
 
And here's the part I really wanted to talk about, is how you can actually dispute. So we have lots of different filters and Sam and Nick can talk to anybody if they're interested in actually doing a real demo and pulling in your data, which takes about a day or two, and you don't really, you don't have to involve your IT department, which is awesome. 
 
But let's say we wanted to just dispute optimal, you could go through there. You can actually see that all of these that are pulling through are considered mature, but maybe we could see that, you know, we want to only do shortage claims, so we could click through and dispute this one possibly even though it is mature. 
 
And you just have all that information being pulled in automatically. You can actually set up attachments or proof documentation to pull in automatically. You've got the invoice history, you can pull those up. It's just really streamlined and simple. And it also gives some explanation on why Amazon might deny. 
 
And you can click through that and have access to help articles, or you can submit the dispute and it can go through, or you can mark it as will not dispute depending on the strategy you're doing. So just wanted to walk through this. This is not really a demo. This is just to show you what either Nick or Sam could help you. 
 
integrate into your business and pull in your data. We also do a free trial. So that's a, that's an option that you could mention to Nick or Sam, but I know that we only have a limited amount of time and we're over that anyways. So I'll go ahead and hop off today's call, but wanted to thank everyone who stuck around. 
 
Again, you can always email us if you'd like to get in contact with. That's about a question you have about an Amazon shortage or a question you might have for Nick and Sam, who are some of our product experts. But with that, everyone have a great rest of your week and we hope to see you at another webinar. 
 
Take care. See y'all.