Retail Link Apps for SQEP

[00:00:00] Danielle: welcome everybody. I hope you are all having a wonderful day so far. We have a lot of content that we are going to get into today with RetailLink Apps for Walmart Supplier Quality Excellence Program, or as we like to say, SQEP. Before we start, with the content today, we always like to introduce ourselves. 
 

My name is Danielle Gloy. I will be monitoring the chat today. And then leading our content is the incredible Allie Truong. So we work on the SupplierWiki team. Which, if this is your first time joining one of our webinars, here at SupplierWiki, we help create free educational resources like these webinars. 
 

We also have multiple ebooks that cover topics across different retailers. We do a variety of articles. We even throw in some content in our Vanderbilt newsletter, so be sure to sign up for that if you haven't already. It is great. Our goal is to make content that is going to be the most beneficial to you. 
 

And that is ultimately going to set you up for success. So if there is specific content that you maybe want to see more of, or even if there's some new topics that you want us to explore, please feel free to reach out to us. We would love to help you with that. So moving on to the agenda, we have a packed one for this hour. 
 

We are going to start off going over an introduction to the SQEP compliance program. So we'll discuss what it is and then just go over the different phases in the program. And next we'll explore the RetailLink apps for SQEP. So we'll first go through the SQEP dashboard where we will see how it is used to track compliance. 
 

Then we'll go through Fixit which is more suited for tracking and correcting defects for phases two and three. We'll wrap up the content portion by going through some high radius content, where we will see how we can dispute some of those SQEP binds. And then finally, at the end of the webinar, we will open the floor to a live Q& A with Allie and myself. 
 

So lots of good stuff to cover today. All right, so here are a few FAQs that we typically get during webinars. So first being, will we be getting a copy of the slide deck? Yes, so you can expect to see the PDF version of this slide deck, as well as the recording of the webinar, appear in your email inbox in about three to four business days. 
 

If you want to find another webinar that you maybe weren't able to attend, you can go to our website, SupplierWiki. SupplyPike. com, where you can find the recordings there, as well as the slide deck. All of our slide decks are available on our site as a resource for you to download. And then the second question that we typically get is what is the best way to ask a question? 
 

So today, like I said, I'll be monitoring the chat for any questions that come through. I'll first be prioritizing the Q& A section. So the Q& A tab is at the bottom of your screen. It has two little text bubbles, and this is where we ask you to please submit any questions related to the content as I'll be able to monitor them and then tee them up for Allie for the Q& A time at the end. 
 

But if any questions pop up in the chat tab, I will definitely get to them, but the chat tab is mainly a great place to share any insights or to engage in conversation throughout the webinar. so please just feel free. we love facilitate learning among, the group. Okay, so last little thing, if you are new to our webinars or have never heard of SupplyPike, SupplyPike is a platform designed to help suppliers get paid and get better. 
 

we do this with a software that identifies, recovers, and prevents deductions and compliance issues. we do this in a lot of different ways and with multiple different retailers like Amazon, Target, Home Depot, Walmart, Kroger, and Walmart. And some things we cover at Walmart include like AP deductions, OTIF, we have some solutions for SQEP compliance, we also do overages. 
 

So anything that could be impacting your bottom line, we have built these tools to help target and resolve those revenue loss issues. And just a little shout out, we work with a lot of great suppliers, we have some of the brand logos up here on the screen today. And if you aren't currently working with us, we would love to see your brand's logo up here in the future. 
 

And with that, I'll hand it over to Allie to get into today's content.  
 

[00:04:30] Allie: Awesome. Thank you, Danielle. And before we get into today's content, just to reiterate what Danielle said, we do at SupplierWiki focus on educational content. If you're curious about SupplyPike and our products that we have for reducing and recovering revenue loss at different retailers, we'll send a link at the end here for how you can get involved, see a demo, get a free analysis of what revenue loss you have. 
 

at particular retailers, but today we're going to focus on our educational content specifically at Walmart and specifically understanding what SQEP is or S Q E P. So let's get into it. First we're going to start with what is SQEP. So if you're new to Walmart, if you have just joined or you are now just learning about this compliance program, you're digging into your compliance finds and you I have no clue what this, acronym means. 
 

Here we go. we refer to this SQEP as SQEP, which you'll hear through today's webinar, and it stands for Supplier Quality Excellence Program. But what does that actually mean? in 2021, Walmart released a new program that they referred to as SQEP, and essentially the reason that it was rolled out was to encourage a zero based mindset with quality defects in the Walmart supply chain. 
 

So why would Walmart release this? essentially, Walmart is a huge retailer. It has countless DCs and a complex network that makes up its supply chain. And with that, There's always going to be errors, right? no system is completely perfect. However, it's really to address minimizing those issues so that Walmart can continue to pass EDLP and EDLC on to the customer. 
 

So it's really, making sure the stuff on the back end doesn't affect the front end, which would be where the customer interacts and being able to maintain that EDLP. So what is inside SQEP? What does it mean to be focusing on supplier quality excellence? So there's a couple different sections. You're going to hear us refer to some of the buckets. 
 

And then we'll get into some of what those buckets mean, not in the depth that is there, but we'll point you to some resources if you want to dig into some of these buckets. So some of the active buckets that exist in the SQEP program are PO Accuracy, Barcode and Labeling, Packaging, Load and Palette Quality, and those are the active ones. 
 

And so Walmart has released this in a couple phases, and I'll show that in a second. and we'll, dive into those phases and some of the sub defects under that. But what's important to understand is who these SQEP regulations affect. So this is going to affect any Walmart supplier who is shipping to D.C. s in the continental U. S. This is going to include fulfillment centers, so suppliers for e commerce and walmart. com are still going to be subjected to SQEP regulations. Direct import suppliers, which is really key to note because OTIF does not apply, so OTIF is the on time and in full program, and direct import suppliers have not had to deal with that. 
 

And those, these programs, SQEP and OTIF, really are what I like to call sister compliance programs. They have similarities and we'll talk about those and how they can interact. so if you're a direct import supplier and you've always been a direct import supplier, it's really key to understand what SQEP does. 
 

the one caveat is that ASN requirements are, you're not subject to as a direct import supplier. But there are, the barcode and labeling and the palette load quality that are going to be included too. And then last is DSDC. So your direct store delivery consolidation makes sense, with some of the mention of the e commerce and fulfillment centers. 
 

So if you are on this list, you are in one of these buckets of the type of supplier and you haven't Looked at any scrap regulations. I'm gonna point you to a couple resources here. The first being, you can find this on Su Supplier Academy on Retail Link. but you can also just Google it. Google Walmart Secondary Packaging guide and look for A PDF. 
 

Danielle can also send a link in the chat, so this is not a supplier Wiki resource. This is Walmart documentation and it is key to understand some of the nuts and bolts of what is going on there. We also, SupplierWiki, does have a resource on the Secondary Packaging Guide that you can download, and Danielle will send that in the chat, too. 
 

You're going to notice in today's webinar, I'm going to make Danielle work in the chat. If you have questions, you can send those to her. She can probably find you a resource on, one of your SQEP questions today. But let's talk about who's not subject to SQEP regulations. Sam's Club Suppliers, but I'm going to put an asterisk here. 
 

If you're not familiar with S. Q. E. P., which is different, and I'm forgetting the acronym because I'm all in my S. Q. E. P. world, my S. Q. E. P. universe, Sam's Club basically has their version of S. Q. E. P. called S. Q. E. P. We have an article on it, if you're not familiar with it, familiarize yourself today, because you would be subject to S. Q. E. P. regulations. Other, other suppliers who wouldn't be subject to SQEP regulations are gonna be suppliers of Walmart, Canada, and Mexico. I have heard, or we have heard at Supplier Wiki some rumblings of that happening, but nothing has necessarily been released That s Swep is going to move to Walmart, Canada or Mexico, as well as anyone shipping to Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Alaska dcs. 
 

Those are. not included at this time. And then D99 and D96, and that's going to be department. So if you know who you are, if that's your department number, that's going to be more internal to Walmart. So think like cleaning supplies or office supplies, selling direct to Walmart for Walmart to And then, others are DSD Delivery, so different than DSDC, and Drop Ship Vendors. 
 

You're currently not going to be subject to this, which makes sense because you're going around the DCs or FCs. Alright, like I said, we're, this is the slide I was referring to. These are the different buckets of the SQEP program. Within them, they have other layers. You can see, sub defects underneath these, and we'll talk a little bit about these. 
 

But I wanted to give some context of how this was rolled out. So SQEP phases one kind of were broken into two parts, B and C. there was an A phase, and it was this is going to happen, rolling out. and this happened a couple of years ago. And then subsequently afterward, we see barcode and labeling compliance roll out, packaging, palette, and load compliance. 
 

And Walmart has mentioned, Phase 4, and we've waited with bated breath to see if the scheduling and transportation phase would roll out. since they rolled this out, there's been a lapse. you can see these happen pretty subsequently after each other, whereas we're, we're in FYE 2025 at this point, and it hasn't rolled out, but we'll keep you up to date if we see this, rolling out or we hear rumblings from other suppliers. There are some applications where we've seen in RetailLink that, suppliers have a scheduling and transportation, but nothing has been officially documented, so stick around for that. 
 

But if you've heard something, share it in the chat and we'll, talk about it here. All right, now let's get to the meat of what we're talking about today. So we're talking about SQEP apps, and this webinar is titled, Retail Link Apps for SQEP. Makes sense. We could almost do a little asterisk there, because there is one that is not like the other in this group.  
  So let's focus on Retail Link, and then we'll get to this one that's hanging out on the side. So inside Retail Link, if you log into your Retail Link portal, you should have access. We're going to talk about how you can get access to these two applications and we can talk about if you're not seeing these applications how you can get access to those if there's a question around that, but first let's focus on Fixit. 
 

So Fixit is a portal that can help with viewing, tracking, and correcting defects concerning Phase 2 and Phase 3. we'll talk about how you do that, but it is a platform. Really to understand root cause, if I had to summarize it in my own words, essentially you can get photo evidence of what's going on and a little bit more context that can help you dispute them in Fixit and have them resolved, or pulling that documentation over to HiRadius to then dispute. 
 

So we'll talk about the nuance there, and how it could be a little bit tricky with RetailLink. There's another application that you can use called the SQEP Dashboard. If you have OTIF, if you have OTIF compliant standards, which stands for on time and in full, then you would also be familiar with the layout of the SQEP dashboard. 
 

It feels very similar. It's really for tracking SQEP compliance across the three active phases and understanding at a certain level that you can, toggle down to what's going on and how to start mitigating those issues. So it's really the, analysis and then you go take action in other applications. 
 

And then lastly, we've got HiRadius over by itself. HiRadius is not a RetailLink app, so it's a different portal that you log into. However, Walmart utilizes a specific HiRadius application that you can get access through your Walmart team that you work with, or your site admin, with RetailLink. And this is a third party app. 
 

that helps pay, help suppliers pay or dispute their AAR charges, and that's going to include OTIF so you're on time and in full and your SQEP charges. And that's why I was referring to OTIF as the sister or cousin compliance program to SQEP because you do dispute them the same and they will have some overlapping RootCause, and you can even see finds for both on one particular PO. 
 

So we'll get into that here in a little bit, so I'm just teasing that information. But to summarize, these are the three apps you will use that are internal to RetailLink or are managed specifically by Walmart. All right, so let's talk a little bit about those phases and understand what Walmart is asking suppliers. 
 

So phase one is to that PO accuracy. And it is to ASNs. And essentially what it's trying to mitigate is making sure suppliers have the right item in the right invoice. So it's around the receiving process at Walmart, DCs, and FCs. And particularly the relationship between making sure you have the right SQEP. 
 

the correct quantity. So if you're familiar with OTIF, you're starting to say, this sounds like in full and on time a little bit, which you would be correct. but it's getting down to some of the more nuanced parts of that, rather than something more high level like in full. And here's an example, if you haven't seen a SQEP charge, of how it would be calculated. 
 

So let's say we did incur a SQEP charge. We had, an issue on the PO. and if the PO had 70 lines. And let's just say three defects. Here's how it would get charged to you. So Walmart would say, all right, you were at 100%, you had no defects, but then, I have three of these defects on 70 lines from a PO. 
 

That's 95. 7%. And then essentially Walmart has a metric that they've created, defects per million. And what they'll do is they say, okay, you had 43, 000 defects per million. What does that mean? You'll actually, that defects per million will be calculated and it will, depending on the fine and the subcategory of that fine, I know this feels a little bit like playing, a board game with these rules, but essentially what happens is, there will be a specific calculation with that defects per million and the amount of cases affected that will result in a dollar amount. 
 

It can be anywhere from a couple like fifty dollars or twenty dollars to a hundred when you start multiplying how many defects you're seeing per case or what the metric is and it will depend on what phase you're in. So we'll get into that here in a second. for phase two, it's really focusing on right item and right condition, which makes sense, since that's about barcode and labeling. 
 

and it's wanting to identify any of those, labels or barcodes that are making the receivable process difficult, or, It mislabeled, so it's creating extra manual work. barcode compliance is really going to speak to the ability to receive those cases based off a scanned barcode. Whereas labeling compliance is adhering to the guidelines around cart label, identification, carton markings. 
 

And if you're newer, or you haven't spent a ton of time in the packaging world, this is when I would go say, read as much information you can on that secondary packaging guide. understanding, labeling compliance, because Walmart has specifications on where you would put it on the box, or what type of unit identification that it would like, how it wants the barcode even printed, and the layout. 
 

So if you are just copy pasting from a different supplier or you have your own internal system, make sure that you're You know, comparing what you have to what Walmart asks for, because that may be, the root cause of those issues. And then I won't go through this too much, but essentially this is how you would calculate that defects per million. 
 

And for that SQEP charge, especially with phase two, you're going to see more multipliers against those, cases, affected. So this is where it can get really expensive. And then phase three is, addressing that packaging, pallet, and load defects that make it difficult for, the receivable process to get those from, suppliers to stores. 
 

And there's a couple smaller categories that then have subcategories underneath. And let me just. call out here. We do have a couple other resources that go into what these sub defects are. Danielle will send that in the chat. the ones that we have that I can think of off the top of my head are, we've got a playlist of the top 23 most common SQEP defects, some of the sub defects, and how you can even dispute those. 
 

We've got a couple different ebooks that cover And I would also say, follow our newsletter. We even had, a discovery about ASNs that I'll address here at the end that I wanted to share with this group, and how understanding some of the sub defects and how Walmart refers to them can then help you understand how to dispute those. 
 

that's my tangent. let's get back to packaging, palette, and load quality compliance. packaging, this starts to overlap a little bit with barcode and labeling, but essentially, that's the carton's ability to endure the handling process. making sure that, you've got your shrink wrap or your palette is built correctly, you have the correct tie high. 
 

And then you have PaletteCompliance, just making sure that you have, the correct labeling, securement, quality standards, and then LoadQuality is that stability and segregation. these start to overlap, but as you get into the sub defects, you can see how each one is a little, is unique and, Really, if you are charged one of these and you can see what that sub defect is, it's really going to help you address that, whether it's, you're writing it off and you're preventing it, learning, taking those learnings and applying it to your supply chain, or disputing it, whichever one makes sense for the situation. 
 

All right, I'm going to skip this because this is essentially the same thing. You can see how this is calculated and then it will get applied to, what palettes are affected. And then we're into SQEP apps. So let's talk about the SQEP dashboard. So this is what the SQEP dashboard looks like pretty generally. 
 

again, it looked pretty similar to, the OTIF dashboard. And you have these broken out. You can see this DPM, that's the defects per million. And you can see how this is trending down. in this example, this is just like a dummy account, essentially. This supplier has zero TAL compliance, zero load compliance, but it looks like they are dealing with line accuracy, and you can see how those fines are being calculated. 
 

yeah, we'll get into that a little bit more here. All right, so with the SQEP dashboard, a couple things that you can look at are invoice charges versus projected charges. So essentially what you're looking at here is SQEP and OTIF, similar system, they are on a monthly cadence. So you'll have charges that are projected. 
 

So Walmart system is saying, hey, from what we're looking at, this is probably what we're going to end up invoicing you for. And in that time, you can start to dispute or mitigate those charges. And then invoice charges, those are ones that Walmart is saying, hey, You need to pay these, they've already passed that monthly time before projected, and they are solidified. 
 

You can still go and dispute those, however, it can be a little bit more difficult since they're at that invoice stage. just different viewpoints. for Phase 1 PO accuracy, charge, avoidance, the first thing you want to do is identify from the SQEP dashboard what the specific issues are. So you can actually toggle down, and this card you can see is highlighted. 
 

Here it's showing you exactly what is making up your, charges. And for this example, you've got ASN not downloaded and then an overage charge as well, in here. And that's the, breakout. Another callout here is, Fixit is not available for these SQEP charges, so there's actually other ways to start mitigating those issues, like with ASN not downloaded, you, the best example would be to just go in and look at your EDI, see what's happening with your ASNs, seeing why they're not being downloaded. 
 

And then overages, there's other options. we actually have a webinar on optimizing your overages, and it speaks to how overages can happen in OTIF, the program we've talked about before, as well as AP deductions. There is a charge for overages, and you could see a potential overage for, on one PO, charged in those three different compliance and deduction programs. 
 

All right, here's some more examples of just how you can view PO accuracy. So there's even an option for seeing those, lists. You can see here, just the different versions, the PO number, the network, etc. and then for phase two, You've got your barcode and labeling compliance. The SQEP dashboard details this as case compliance, just to call out. 
 

And then photos for this phase are available in the FixIt dashboards. I believe now they have them pulled over into the SQEP dashboard so you can see those. But really, we just point to FixIt because there is still, good information, and there can be actions that you can take on the FixIt dashboard as well. 
 

Because FixIt has that access to dialogue, so you can chat with someone, and we'll talk through that a little bit, and show you the conversations and how charges can get resolved in FixIt as well. I'm going to pause before I go on to phase three just to call out we do have a event from a couple years ago that we recorded. 
 

We did it with one of our, SupplierPartners that we work with, Ken Lettery from GNC, so he actually walked through some of his experiences with Fixit. I'd highly suggest looking at that video, taking a look, downloading the, webinar slide deck as well. Danielle can send that in the chat. But we'll share some of those slides in today's webinar, but we won't go into all of the wealth of knowledge that can provide during that conversation. 
 

And then last, this is going to be feel pretty similar. You start to get a rhythm for what the SQEP dashboard looks like. So for phase three, this supplier in the example had a palette quality that is their number one issue. So It makes it really easy to say, okay, let's go over and understand it. And again, you can toggle and see those at that line item, and you do that with this button over here. 
 

All right, we're going to move over to Fixit. Okay, so the Fixit portal addresses Phase 2 and Phase 3 defects, and they're reported in there. Walmart also collects those, the corrective action from suppliers, based on the packaging error that's reported. And essentially that corrective action is a great place for suppliers to pause and understand what's going on. 
 

Walmart will give a canned response, essentially, of what's, going on, but you can actually ask them. For more details, and if I don't have these slides, I'll talk through some of those examples as well. and another call out is just clicking on that individual ticket. It's going to give you access to those photos taken at the DC, that will pertain to the particular error. 
 

and here are some of the main barcode compliance violations that we have seen. So wrong format is one. So essentially that is. what Walmart describes that as barcode not printed in proper symbiotology, and it's not, containing the required information. It could be an AND or That's where you'd want to go and look at the packaging, the packaging guide and understand, okay, what, is my format wrong? I'd pause there before you even do that and just go a step further. Make sure it's your barcode. So an example that Ken mentioned, when he did this talk with us is that he was getting, and this was more when SQEP was rolling out, but still I think it's pertinent to mention, he was getting pictures of product that was not his. 
 

And so replying in and fix it to the chat. Hey, this is not my product. That fine then was pulled off and was not on his fix it dashboard and it wasn't on any of his projected or invoice fines for his, high radius to then be paid. So that, that is one example. but you do want to check and make sure they're yours and then go in and make sure you have the proper, formatting and symbotology. 
 

Another barcode violation that can happen is incorrect quantity. So here's a call out directly from the secondary packaging guide. Walmart requires two properly formatted labels on each carton. With at least one placed on the longest side. That can start to feel like, okay, how do I build that? How does that affect my packaging? 
 

Go look at the supplier, secondary packaging guide, and you can see different examples. They've got those listed there. And then another here, is wrong location. So it's actually placed on the wrong side of the, So here's what the Fixit portal looks like. Essentially, you have your ticket ID, you have the categories, so you can know if it's Phase 1 or 2, or 3, sorry. When it was created, the network and location, how it was delivered, department, that PO item, and assigned user. There's a couple more things listed there, but really just clicking in and toggling can be helpful to understand. 
 

I just want to show you what the theme is. What I'd say is if you get into Barcode Compliance and you're clicking into all of these and it's very similar, you can start to make sure you're building some of those. canned responses on your end to then either address the corrective action, take responsibility for the error and address it, or start to get those cleared out, because they're disputable. 
 

So here are the different ticket action statuses, in the FixIt portal. There's a couple here. If you've been on our APDP one, or some of our others that deal with, waiting for a response from Walmart or a supplier, these may feel similar. essentially, the two that suppliers need to be looking out for are awaiting corrective action and clarification, provided. 
 

So we'll start with awaiting corrective action. This is when a ticket has been submitted to the supplier and then they're waiting for corrective action. You can actually see that on the side here with the statuses. So the supplier would need to go in and address all of these issues. And that's when you're reviewing that ticket, providing, additional information, whether it's, you're taking responsibility and writing it off and applying those learnings or starting to dispute in that channel. 
 

And then the other is clarification provided. So this is when Walmart has responded to the additional information request. You want to review that and then address or take corrective action. And what Ken mentioned in the conversation we had is. You have one shot, so I wouldn't necessarily in that chat think about getting clarification provided several times. 
 

try to keep your responses concise, clear, but betting on knowing what's going on. Asking the most important questions at the top, just because of the way that the ticketing system, I think it gets pushed back to the bottom. We don't have, definitive answer on that, but you want to go with one, one shot answer and see if you can get something helpful back. 
 

And here's some of the fix it tips that I've mentioned. Asking very specific questions is important. You don't want to, receive the wrong answer, so make sure that you are honestly learning the language that Walmart expects. A lot of that is from the Secondary Packaging Guide or some of the other documentation under SQEP in Supplier Academy. 
 

learn how to understand what their copy paste responses are or some of those canned responses that Walmart may have as well. and like I said, keep it to one question per SQEP charge. You're going to get the best results. That way we're just not seeing suppliers, messaging back and forth. 
 

If you've had something different, a different experience, let us know. That's what we've seen from the suppliers we've talked to. All right. A little bit more about fix, the Fixit portal. Again, this is for phase two and phase three compliant issues. You can't necessarily dispute those. but we have seen suppliers that if there's You know, if it's not your product, or you can provide something really definitive, you may be able to get that cleared in the system there. 
 

But really, FixIt is there for suppliers to understand that information, and then you can pull that over into High Radius to dispute. Last thing here is reassigning a ticket back to Walmart. And FixIt has worked as an informal dispute process, which I've mentioned here, because it can be a Error on Walmart's end. 
 

there's pictures being taken, manually by someone in, DC, as well as responding into the chat and assigning those tickets. So you can informally dispute. It has worked, especially if you're seeing stuff that's just not yours or just completely incorrect. But if you don't see success and fix it, don't worry because you can take that over into High Radius, dispute it. 
 

and when back that compliance fine and not have to pay it. All right, I love the asterisks here, I've been using them. SQEP apps, this is HighRadius. Again, this is not actually in RetailLink, but we will show you a little bit about how you can get into HighRadius if you have not already. so essentially if you want to get into HighRadius, What you can do is you can message your site admin and you can get access. 
 

We'll show you here at the end, I've got some emails and numbers for who you can call. But what do you need to dispute a phase two or three fine and high radius? Let's say You know, pulled some stuff over from Fixit. You weren't able to informally dispute there. No worries. All you need is PO number, item number, the defect type, DC number, which a lot of this is going to be in Fixit, the number of cases impacted, and then the Fixit ticket number is also helpful, as well as maybe some screenshots from Fixit. 
 

And then, There are supplemental details that can be helpful. So anything that, let's say, in Fixit, they were like, yes, this is incorrect, but they didn't actually waive it in Fixit, and it's showing up in HighRadius. Go ahead and make sure you take a screenshot of that and just save it in a folder that's just proof documentation, because this could help reverse that. 
 

Fine. And then any relevant shipping documents like the ASN, DSS, maybe not anymore, but the Luminate, maybe a Luminate report, or NovaData has been helpful in the past. Like I said, pictures from Fixit, whether those are the ones, screenshots you're taking of the actual portal, dashboard Fixit, or the screenshots that are sent back to you, the pictures that are sent from the DC. 
 

And then the other key information that may not be actual proof documentation, but really the mindset or the additional information before you start disputing, understand the best way to dispute each type of fine. There are some patterns, but actually when it comes to, under PO accuracy or barcode and labeling, there are specifics that help under those buckets as well as maybe just that little additional information for an ASN not downloaded or an overage that can help win that over. 
 

So an example here is suppliers have won overage disputes proving that their trucks were completely full. so the example here was a supplier that we worked with, they had an overage issue. And a shortage, and really they just said this couldn't be possible because we ship full truckloads, so there wouldn't be any less information and had any less inventory because it was our full truckload. 
 

And they had screenshots or rather pictures of the packed truck to prove it, which kind of helped reverse that. And the last thing here is timeliness is always better. Like I mentioned. earlier, SQEP and OTIF are on that monthly cadence, so really getting ahead of those and seeing if you can clear out any projected charges is key. 
 

Awesome. but if you have invoice charges, going and disputing those kind of on a monthly cadence as well. So you're not getting, six months of compliance charges and you're not doing anything about them. They're just sitting in your high radius portal. All right. I mentioned this a little bit before when it comes to disputing packaging relating fines, review those images attached in Fixit before disputing in high radius. 
 

I spoke to this, a supplier that we, work with found images on Fixit that weren't there. So it was pictures of pallets of product that were, had defects, but it, wasn't their product. So they were able to then pass that on. All right, let's talk a little bit about High Radius, how you can navigate this application. 
 

So there's two sections, there's Open Bills and Closed Bills. So bills that have not been paid, or matched with the transaction are considered open. After matching those bills, they're marked as closed, but both can be disputed. So I wanted to call that out. So essentially, what you're going to do if you start disputing is you'll select the charge that you'd like to dispute by clicking the box, and then you can dispute that one more time. 
 

So with high radius Disputes, all you have to do is fill out the dispute information. You'll have to do dispute reason, the amount to be disputed, the comments, if applicable, so maybe you'll want to pull something over from Fixit, or maybe you've come up with a canned response that makes sense, and then attachments for those relevant documents like screenshots or pictures from Fixit. 
 

And then this is very important, If you've, come to our APDP ones, webinars, you'll know that FixIt is pretty similar. So you want to make sure after you've filled out these boxes that you're clicking save in the bottom right corner. It may be hidden, especially however you have your tabs, situated so that your dispute will be filed. 
 

And then If you just want to double check that you've, made this move through, the entire system, you can check in the Disputes tab on your home screen in High Radius and see that it is disputed. Alright, so here's just a quick reminder. I alluded to this, but we always want to call it out at the end. 
 

This is a little bit, we've been in the weeds, we've talked about what the different portals do. But at a higher level, there is a potential for stacking fines. So Walmart's suppliers, you can be penalized by three separate compliance programs. We talked a lot about SQEP today. I mentioned OTIF a little bit more. 
 

if you are more on the AR side of your business, there is AP deductions at Walmart. essentially it's, there's about 70 plus codes, and some of those are very similar to SQEP. Let's say an overage, for example, there's an overage find in deductions. SQEP finds under one of the buckets of the phases does have an overage sub defect. 
 

And then OTIF fines, can also be subject to an overage because that in full and on time could apply in that situation. So what can happen is These are all being executed at different times by different people. Really, it's just an expansive system at Walmart. And these programs don't talk to each other. 
 

a supplier, it's on your diligence to make sure that even if your team, you have different teams handling these programs, or whatever the case may be. that you are making sure specific POs are not getting double dipped on these particular compliance or the deduction program. If you're not, if you don't have a system in place, to check that for you, then you may see fines from all three of these at different time periods. 
 

And really the kicker here, the one that I'll add, is post audits. So we have seen suppliers who have had a post audit, and they have basically POs or fines that were disputed through one of these programs but then during the audit process it came back up because Walmart has some kind of documentation that it makes sense that this shouldn't have actually been, it shouldn't have been, resolved and the supplier shouldn't have had to pay the compliance fine or the invoice should actually have been deducted when it comes to the deduction part. 
 

important to just remember and have a system where you're saving proof documentation, where you are addressing these different compliance programs and making sure that you're seeing POs that aren't overlapping because it could be as simple as you have the proof documentation disputed and resolved in one channel and you need to just pull it over to the other. 
 

All right, I mentioned this before, but with SQEP updates, Phase 2 and 3, Phase 3 charges are protected to uptick Walmart, in Walmart DCs. There has been updated technology. If you guys have been following some of the stuff that Walmart's been working on, they are updating a lot of their Walmart DCs. hopefully, there's the good side and bad side. 
 

With Phase 2 and 3, there should be less manual and more automation, that's coming through. So there can be the upside of, this, human errors taken out of that. But as systems get started and they're being applied, there can be, a learning period. So just monitoring that and having that context in the back of your mind when you're looking at your Phase 2 and Phase 3 charges. 
 

And then Phase 4 is still TBD. Walmart has not released anything of that, We, the fiscal year beginning came and went and we haven't seen anything. So if you've heard of phase four rolling out soon, let us know. We'd love to share with the rest of the supplier community. All right. And I mentioned, that I had some contact information. 
 

So if you need, if you have questions about customer service with High Radius or to sign up, with High Radius, you can email this email here as well as the supplier contact center and a link to, the contact center that Walmart uses. So we can send that in the chat here if needed. and you can also take a screenshot, but we're going to send you this deck afterwards as well. 
 

All right, let's get into the Q& A section. How's it going,  
 

[00:45:37] Danielle: Danielle? thank you so much for going through all of that content, and thank you everybody in the chat for joining us today. For the Q& A, a common question that we've seen pop up, even outside of the webinars, that I was hoping you could shed a little bit of light on, Allie, is SQEP ASN not downloaded the same as ASN error?

[00:46:01] Allie: Yeah, that's a good question, and that's something we've been asked before, and if this is something that you'd be interested in, SupplierWiki writing more about, please let us know in the chat. we love it when you guys are asking for specific content, it makes our job even a little bit easier to understand what we should research and publish. 
 

So essentially, what we've seen is There's a couple different ways Walmart can talk about ASNs. the first being no ASN received. And I'm just reading from my notes. That's meaning no ASN was transmitted from the supplier to Walmart. So nothing happened, essentially. They never received the ASN. 
 

ASN not downloaded is different in the sense that the ASN was transmitted But the entire document cannot be received by Walmart's system, and that's usually due to an EDI error. So going into your EDI system or talking with your EDI provider and seeing what's going on there. And then ASN error, is then also different. 
 

And you could see these, in, you could see all three of these happening. So I want to call that out. But essentially an ASN error is that the ASN was received into Walmart's system, but there was some kind of error, not in the sense that it wasn't downloaded, but more that the line items don't match the PO. 
 

So I want to just Dig into that one more time. ASN not downloaded is saying, no, as Walmart, I have received it. I just can't see what's going on. The, there's an EDI issue. Whereas ASN errors, I received it, I downloaded it, but I'm looking at this information and it's not correct. It's not matching what shows on the PO.

So hopefully that answers your question, Danielle.  
 

[00:47:53] Danielle: Yes, thank you. And maybe just reiterating what you said earlier in the webinar is just always follow up with your EDI provider to see if there's any issues that can be corrected. They should be able to help you. it looks like we don't have any further questions that have come through. 
 

I'll just give it a little bit more time and in the meantime, just call out some of our resources. I know a lot of them came through on the chat, so thank you for just being patient with that. If you're looking for more hands on material, we have multiple free educational ebooks. A great one to go hand in hand with this webinar is that common SQEP defects that I sent earlier. 
 

But we also have ebooks across different retailers, like I mentioned. So you can find all of these resources on our website, which is SupplierWiki. SupplyPike. com. and if you think of a question later, I still don't see any that have come through. so if you think of a question later or would like to share any insight, please feel free to reach out to us on our email, or you can find us on, supplypike. 
 

com. So we would just love to continue that conversation with you. and hopefully we see you at our next webinar. I see a few people have signed up for the Optimizing Overages. So really excited to see you all there.  
 

[00:49:09] Allie: Yeah, super excited. Thank you, Danielle, for walking us through this. And the last thing that I'll, say is If you are interested in a solution that helps automate some of those SQEP issues, as well as can cross check and have a different automation and understanding of what's going on at Walmart, go ahead and find us at SupplyPike. com, look into our solution. We won't do a sales pitch here. But, that's always an option there for you. 
 

with that, I think we are done for today. Thank you guys for joining. And thank you again, Danielle, for, sending all those resources in the chat.