Root Analysis Cause at Walmart

[00:00:00] Allie: All right. today it's myself. I'm Allie Trong. I'm the SupplierWiki research manager. and then we have Ryan Petty leading today's content. He's our senior product manager on the Walmart team, and he's going to talk about root cause at Walmart. Ryan has a wealth of knowledge. He has been on our product side for a long time here at SupplyPike, and he is a great resource to ask questions to. 
 

So get your questions in early today. as I'll be queuing up some of my own questions for Ryan as well. We also have a packed agenda. So we've got a full list of what we're going through today. We're going to start by talking about some of the helpful terms to understand what root cause is, particularly at Walmart. 
 

And then we're going to talk about three areas where there are, common root causes, and that's going to be in shortages. In full charges, which are a part of the OTIF program, and then allowance deductions. Then we'll make some space for questions and discussion. And then at the very end, we'll jump into a product preview of SupplyPike for Walmart, so be sure to stick around for that. 
 

And then we have a couple FAQs that we get on our webinars. The first being, will you get a copy of the slide deck? Yes, we're always going to send you a copy of the slide deck and we'll send you a recording of today's webinar to your inbox in three to four business days. So be looking out for that. That will show up in your inbox shortly. 
 

And then the other FAQ that we get is, what is the best way to ask a question? We prefer, if you'd ask in the Q& A tab, it's the two speech bubbles on Zoom. That's the easiest way for me to tee up questions for Ryan. And then, if you have stories or learning experiences, please show those in the chat. It's a great way to engage with the rest of the group and share helpful information, as this is a learning community for Walmart and retail suppliers. 
 

All right, and then wanted to just call out, if this is your first webinar, who we are, who SupplyPike is. SupplyPike is a platform that helps suppliers get paid and get better. We do this through software. It helps identify, recover, and prevent deductions and compliance issues. We do this at a couple different retailers and a couple different revenue loss areas. 
 

Today, we're talking about Walmart. We're going to be talking about some of the OTIF program. We'll talk a little bit about AP deductions, but we also help with SQEP, with overages, with audits. There's a lot to unpack in the Walmart space. Another thing I'd like to mention is here are a couple of the logos or the, Companies that we work with. 
 

we actually are trusted by 500 plus CPGs and we've helped them recover a ton of money across all different product categories. So if you don't see your logo up here, you may in the future. and we'd love to just talk about how we can work with you. All right, last thing. We're SupplierWiki, so if this is your first time hopping on a webinar, we're a part of SupplyPike, but essentially what our job is helping suppliers like you have free educational content. 
 

That includes the webinar that we're on today. We've also got plenty of ebooks and articles, and other resources that help support supplier education and success. So I'll be sharing some of those in the chat today, so be looking out for those as well. And now I'll hand it over to Ryan to get into today's content. 
 

All right.  
 

[00:03:35] Ryan: Thanks, Allie, and thanks everyone for joining. as Allie said, we'll be diving into root cause for several different charge types, shortages, infill charges on the OTIF side, and then allowance deductions as well. But hopefully some of these steps that we go through will be actually applicable for other charge types as well. 
 

Since root causing is very important, it helps you understand why do these charges and deductions occur in the first place and, what can you do to prevent them. so if you don't, understand the problem very well, it's hard to fix, obviously. so we think it's important to get down to the root cause of these charges and deductions so that you can actually reduce these and not have to go through that fun, disputing game, reconciliation, outstanding payments, all the problems. 
 

that these deductions and charges cause as they occur. with that, we'll get started on the shortage deduction side and just go through some, first initial basics here. so if you work with Walmart, you probably have experienced some shortage deductions and what that is. as a scenario where Walmart, or another retailer, is withholding some or all of the payment of the invoice that you sent to them because they state they didn't receive some or all of the goods, that you billed them for. 
 

So that, in a sort of nutshell, is what a shortage deduction is, where they're withholding that payment. And then causes of shortage deductions. We'll get into this, some more and how to identify these scenarios. But, there's several potential causes of this. the receiving process at a lot of retailers, including Walmart, is still a manual process, with people counting boxes as they're unloading trucks or pallets, human error is involved. 
 

so sometimes things like. or labeling or similar packaging can cause some of those miscounts when, people are trying to count up cases and unable to distinguish between items or between orders and leads to that kind of human error on the receiving process. Of course, that could happen at your shipping locations as well, when you're picking and packing and loading these trailers up. 
 

so not as often, but sometimes that can happen at the shipping location, but definitely on the receiving side. And then another scenario that we see fairly commonly is mismatched items. So maybe Walmart, may order one, certain packaging of an item. You may have a low quantity of that available and so you may substitute a different item. 
 

And so Walmart will, now cause a shortage because they didn't receive the item that they actually ordered. So that can cause shortages. And then another kind of common scenario is, if you are invoicing, often a lot of suppliers invoice the same day that you ship out goods. And sometimes that truck may take some time to get there or sometimes it may be a drop trailer and being unloaded and take some time to unload and ultimately Walmart could actually try to process your invoice before they've received in the goods and then Walmart's system will say, we don't have these goods yet and create a shortage deduction. 
 

so doesn't necessarily mean all of these are valid shortage deductions, but all those scenarios can result in shortage deductions that you may have to fight through disputes. in addition to just getting, the payment withheld on these invoices, You could also receive, compliance failures, so if there's a discrepancy of some kind, then that discrepancy could impact your OTIF scores, especially the in full side. 
 

it can even impact the SQEP program, the Supplier Quality Excellence Program, Walmart's newest compliance program. where you might even get an overage fine as well on the SQEP side. just a single order and invoice can result in three different types of chargebacks across the spectrum, which is no fun. 
 

and now you have, three sets of charges to dig into. they can really load up on you. All right, so we will dive a little bit deeper into the shortage deduction codes just so you understand, exactly what we're referencing when we're talking about these shortage deductions. some of you may be very familiar with these. 
 

But we'll just hit sort of some of the most common ones. So code 22 is a Walmart accounts payable shortage deduction. It's described as goods billed, not shipped. And so from Walmart's perspective, they've received your invoice and maybe, an invoice quantity of six for one item, but they didn't receive six. 
 

They only received three. So they're going to withhold payment of three of those units, instead of paying you the full invoice amount. And, when they withhold payment, they'll issue that as that Code 22 deduction. So Code 22 is very common. Another very common code that you may see is Code 24. the Walmart description is Carton Shortage Freight Bill Signed Short. 
 

however, it is very similar in nature to the 22. at its most basic level, it still means that, Walmart was invoiced for more units than they received. even though this does mention the freight bill being signed short, we actually see a lot of instances where the freight bill is not necessarily signed short. 
 

That's just their default description for this code. so you can never take, Walmart's data, at face value and, believe it to be true. Sometimes you've got to do a little bit of legwork to, verify this. and so code 24 we see is often invalid. but another just very common shortage deduction code. 
 

And then the last one we've got here that we're mentioning is code 28. this is probably less likely than the 22 and 24. but the description carton damage, freight bill, sign damage. So this could happen if Walmart's receiving facility believes some of the product was damaged upon receipt of those goods. 
 

So you may have to look at the shipping docs to try to verify if Walmart's proof of delivery actually states that, there were damaged goods. But this is another essentially shortage, you invoice for more units than they received. or received in good condition. so code 28 is another shortage one. 
 

one we don't have on here but is also pretty common is the code 25 and that is when you get a full invoice deduction. so you've invoiced them for a PO and Walmart says they don't have any goods. So in that case they deduct the entire invoice. and issue a code 25. So those are the most common shortage deduction codes that we see, and all relevant to this set of root causes that we'll go through in a second. 
 

And as I said, common root causes for shortages. So we're going to walk through several, root causes specifically for shortage deductions. And, the thing, the common theme here is that what we are trying to do is look at multiple data points to better understand what happened on this PO, on this invoice, for this item, what happened that may have caused this shortage deduction, or at least how can you tell if this shortage deduction is valid? 
 

or invalid. So a common tactic that we'll look at for all these root causes is what other data points can we look at to try to verify if it's valid or true or not true. So in this case for this root cause we are comparing your invoice quantity on this PO with shortage deduction to the shipped quantity. 
 

So how much you shipped out. And in this case, we're looking across the entire PO. and what this root cause is saying, if you look at the total invoice quantity on the PO and you compare that to the total ship quantity, these match. but you had a shortage deduction. based on this, you shipped the same amount of cases or each is that, you billed for. 
 

So most likely it is probably a receiving error. either your shipping data is wrong, and you didn't actually ship out that much, or Walmart had a receiving error. And in most cases, what we see is if, Suppliers ASNs are typically more true, and Walmart's receiving data is typically off. if you can identify this scenario, this is a kind of likely invalid scenario in which we'd recommend disputing. 
 

But the way to identify it is to compare the shipping quantities to what you actually build and just make sure that everything you build for was actually shipped out. One way to get to capture that shipped quantity is with the Walmart Advanced Shipping Notice or the ASN. So that's something that you have to send Walmart on every PO when you ship it. 
 

Or else you can get a fine if you don't, but that's a good data point to reference to get that chip quantity per item and compare that to your invoice quantity. And you'll see, by the way, I should say, the sort of likely point of error culpability. So we've either got retailer or supplier here, depending on who is likely at fault based on the particular root cause or scenario that we're identifying. 
 

So for shortage deductions, a lot of these will see retailer fault because there's a lot of common Walmart caused shortages. So this is similar to our first root cause here, the received quantity. In this case, it's even more likely that Walmart is at fault in its receiving process. And what this is saying is the total invoice quantity on the PO matches the total received quantity. 
 

So even though you've got a shortage deduction, their own receiving data matches matches the total invoice quantity on the PO. a couple of ways this could happen. One, there could be one item is short and another item was received as over. And so that might be a scenario where someone's unloading, mixed pallets or multiple pallets off a truck and they count too many boxes of one item, for, in replace of another. 
 

So they can mix up items on that unloading process. So the total quantity received would still be correct, but one item has an over, another item has a short. So that's a very likely Walmart receiving error. And then sometimes, Again, I, we talked about the timing. If there was a truck in the yard, or if this was a scenario where two trucks were actually delivering a PO, Walmart may have issued a deduction before the second shipment showed up, potentially. 
 

so sometimes it's a timing scenario. If the received data matches the invoiced data. This is definitely a scenario where you have good reason to dispute because the receiving data shows they got the goods. All right, this one's very similar to the last. I won't spend too much time on it, but specifically the last one was about just comparing totals at the PO level and this is one way to do it, but you can also get even more specific. 
 

You could just look at the items on the PO that were deducted and look at the received quantity for those items and Again, if you build, a hundred units of one item and you look at Walmart's data and they show a hundred units received, yet you also had a shortage deduction on that same item, which seems crazy to think about, but that does happen. 
 

This is another scenario where this is likely a Walmart issue. It could be timing reasons, Or something else in Walmart's system that's, messed up, and this would be a good reason to dispute. if you are comparing received to invoiced on your deducted items, and they match. Very good reason to dispute. 
 

This is probably a Walmart issue. And then one more, very similar to the very first root cause. if you're looking at, again, just the deducted items, maybe the received quantity doesn't match the invoice, but a good reference point as well. even if the received is less than what you invoiced. Again, if you shipped, 100 units of that item and that's the same amount as what you billed for, then this is still a, good chance of a receiving error. 
 

If you ship the cases, Walmart should have them. So this is where you would compare that ASN. And again, you could do it total at the PO level, or you could just zero in on the deducted items. so these are all kind of good data points to reference when trying to understand what happened on the shortage deductions. 
 

And then, I touched on this in one of the other root causes, but just to hammer it home, again, there could be overages and shortages on the same PO. And what will happen is the item that was over, Walmart's not going to automatically pay you for the goods that were over. 
 

and you likely won't have invoice for them, especially if it's an invalid receiving error. so Walmart won't pay you for the extra goods on the over item, but they will withhold payment on the item that they marked as short. So now you have a shortage deduction, and so if you can spot a PO where you've got some items over, some items short, and this is likely, again, a retailer kind of failure scenario and a very good reason to dispute. 
 

so yeah, always good to look at the entire PO, what was shipped, what was received, to understand, is this a scenario where I'm at fault or is this a retailer at fault? And then lastly, I think there's maybe one more after this. there's potentially scenarios where a shortage is not Walmart's fault. 
 

so this one's pretty uncommon, but we have seen it. and it could be a confusion in your operational process. or systems to where your invoice quantity actually shows it's greater than how much you shipped out. And so if you are comparing invoiced and shipped, and you did indeed ship fewer items than what you billed for, then this is going to cause a shortage. 
 

So you billed more than you shipped. you'll get that shortage deduction. And in that case, it's likely not to be won through disputing, and you would want to investigate with your teams that are in charge of, the invoicing process as well as your shipping process to make sure they're aligned, and see what happened on that PO that caused you to bill for more than you shipped out. 
 

So Still using the same data points, but a little bit different scenario where there may be an opportunity to improve and actually reduce this scenario in the future. All right, and I think this is the actual last one. and so this one can happen, Vendor, so this is a scenario where the vendor pack quantities for an item could differ. 
 

and that could cause shortage issues. maybe on the purchase order, Walmart is stating there are four each's in a case. but on your invoice it could be something different. It could be, one each in a case or, two, in a case, whatever the numbers are. They could differ between the PO and the in invoice, and especially if you're invoicing in case. 
 

Which not all suppliers do, but some do. If you invoice in cases and those vendor pack quantities differ, then there's going to be a discrepancy between the total units ordered and the total units invoiced because those vendor pack quantities differ. So this is sometimes an item setup issue. 
 

which we've talked about that here on the bottom of this slide. So this is one where you'd want to check both systems, Walmart's system as well as your own, to try to understand which one is correct and needs updating. So that's also another data point you may want to look at when investigating shortages is looking at those vendor pack quantities on the PO and the invoice and just making sure that your items that are short that you've got the right vendor pack quantities, especially again if you're invoicing in cases. 
 

All right, so lastly, some tips and practices for invalid shortage deductions. So just to sum up some things that you may want to do, if you are seeing that scenario where POs are often having overages and shortages, then it may be helpful to understand which items are frequently getting mixed up. 
 

And if you have things like mixed palettes where there's multiple items on the same palette, Or if your packaging for these items are very similar, then, those scenarios can lead to more human error during that manual receiving process. some suppliers that we've worked with have actually used animal stickers or different color stickers on each item, or just, good practice of keeping slip sheets between items. 
 

and different layers just to make it very easy to distinguish between items and make it clear and easy to unload and identify cases. And then, of course, labeling is important as well. That also helps with scanning and just better differentiation. I know those are not always easy changes to make, but if you are getting tons of shortages, And, there's certain items, that are commonly being mixed up, then it may be worth considering. 
 

we've even had suppliers reach out to the Walmart DCs where they're getting more of these shortage deductions just to talk to the people who are doing the unloading and try to understand You know, what may be happening leading to that mix up, to understand what to do. But, again, just knowing the process of unloading these boxes and what they're going through can help you understand, okay, what can we do to help prevent those manual errors? 
 

All right. so switching gears into the infill charges side. we'll talk about the in full side, very similar to what we just did on the shortage side. And so in full charges is part of Walmart's OTIF program, and obviously that's the other side outside of on time. So in full can be related to shortage deductions, but not always. 
 

Not always, but they can happen on the same pos. So the definition in full, for Walmart is if they receive a hundred percent of the cases that they have ordered on the po, then that would be considered in full. and not in full is the opposite. If they got fewer than what was ordered or if, of course nothing arrived at all. 
 

that would not be considered in full. and the goal, by the way, on the OTIF side to avoid charges, some of you all may know, changed in 2024. and we're glad to see that it actually lowered down from 98 percent to 95 percent across all departments. so that is the new in full goal. And if you can be at least 95 percent in full for an entire quarter, then you can avoid in full charges altogether and avoid that expense. 
 

some various kind of practices you can take in general to be in full. Obviously you need to understand what is Walmart likely to order of all of your items. So you want to pay attention to forecasts to make sure you have the inventory to fill orders. and that might involve creating kind of supply and demand plans to make sure you, again, you understand Walmart's demand and have the supply to fulfill that. 
 

and, of course, things change, so you have to monitor those. We know Walmart can change the forecast, up until, until they're ordering, so you have to stay on top of that and do the best you can to have the inventory needed. clearly mark packaging. This kind of goes back to the invalid, scenarios where, clear packaging can help reduce some of those manual errors and, avoid invalid in full charges. 
 

And then the last one, which we'll talk about a little bit more, but if you are canceling or editing POs, entire POs or specific items on POs, it is very important to pay attention to the reason codes that you're picking. Some reason codes will leave you entirely with the accountability and you'll be liable for charges for that. 
 

Or some reason codes can help you avoid accountability and you can avoid paying charges when you cancel those items or entire POs. So reason code's helpful. We'll touch again on that before we finish. And we'll dive into some common root causes for in fold charges. So probably, there's really two primary common, reasons for in fold charges where the supplier is the one at fault, quote unquote. 
 

so one, I just touched on it, If, lines or entire POs are being cancelled, then even though you're telling Walmart, hey, we can't ship this product, from an OTIF perspective, you're still responsible for those cases that got ordered. so they will still count it as not in full if something is cancelled. 
 

but you can still cancel and avoid accountability if you use certain reason codes, that said, the most common reason code we see that gets used is, Supplier does not have product. And it's the easiest, most obvious reason code to use if you're canceling. typically if somebody is not going to ship an item because they don't have the product, so it's very easy to pick that reason code. 
 

However, that reason code will always leave you on the hook for OTIF charges for that cancellation. so there is an entire list of reason codes you can pick from, and some of those are actually Walmart accountability. So things like weather, natural disaster, system issue, there's five or six different reason codes, which we can share out in our documentation, where Walmart will take the accountability. 
 

now sometimes Walmart can actually push back if they disagree with your reason code that you've picked. However, so I wouldn't necessarily encourage you to always, pick a Walmart reason because that can be overridden. But if you have any justification to use any of the Walmart reason codes, I would strongly encourage you to do that because that removes the accountability on those cancelled units, from your score and you won't have to face charges on that, assuming Walmart accepts that reason code. 
 

So this is a common root cause and you definitely want to look out for, cancellation or edit reasons when looking at your POs with not in full charges to understand. Okay, what reason codes are we picking, and could we have picked something else? So another common scenario where this is more of an invalid and full charge, is by comparing either the shipped quantity from your ASN, or the received quantity from other data sources in RetailLink like Nova or DSS. 
 

so What we're looking at here is in your OTIF data, you'll see a PO with a not in full charge. if you can look at your ASN quantity or shipped quantity, and it shows you shipped that item in full, then that is a scenario where you may want to fight back and dispute because, again, you've, according to your data, you shipped those cases out. 
 

And so sometimes this, again, could be a receiving issue, and you may want to dispute that. So it's important to look at that shipped quantity. and then in rare cases, we actually see other data sources in RetailLink show that Walmart did actually receive the cases, but OTIF's data doesn't reflect that. 
 

so sometimes it can even be helpful to look at a third data point of received quantities on those items that were short in OTIF, and see if NOVA or DSS shows differently, and obviously that would be a reason to dispute as well. And then the last one, which is another common scenario, unfortunately, is just a short shipping scenario. 
 

Walmart orders 100 cases and maybe you actually did ship 50, nothing got canceled or edited, so there's no reason codes, it's just simply a short shipping scenario. and in that case, obviously, you want to try to still understand, which items are being short shipped, why did we short ship these items, and that can help you get to some of that root cause. 
 

but for this, you try to exhausted all options. There's no reason code that was picked. the shipping data doesn't support an invalid charge. It's just simply, we short shipped. so that's a valid in full charge. And, at the least identifying the POs and items where you're seeing this kind of trend is helpful to understand the big picture, of, what is driving these in full charges. 
 

lastly, some tips, for in full site. we recommend disputing in full charges on the OTIF side because there are always some invalid, almost always some invalid receiving issues. That said, the majority on the OTIF side do seem to be valid, which is the opposite from the shortage deduction side where most of those are invalid. 
 

so on the OTIF side, you may not get as much back as far as recovery, but it's still helpful to dispute, just to make sure you're getting the dollars you should back. and then in the other key points, again, always use Walmart Accountable Cancel and Edit Reason Codes whenever you can justify it. 
 

you still want to understand if items are being mixed up. you may want to look at your packaging to help, avoid those manual receiving errors. And then again, if you're short shipping, it's helpful to understand which items are typically being short shipped and even which items are causing you the most in full charges because then you can really assign a dollar figure to the problem. 
 

and that may be at a specific SKU level or item level to see that problem. So it's helpful to break it down that way. 
 

All right, and this is the last charge type that we had to walk through. so this, we're now going to talk about allowance deductions. And, if you're not familiar, allowance deductions are scenarios where, On your supplier agreements, when you're agreeing to do, business with Walmart for a specific department, you'll agree to potentially give Walmart some allowances or discounts. 
 

on all of your invoices. and there's various allowance types out there. we'll go through some common ones as well. But, and sometimes, Walmart's going to require or strongly encourage you to give Walmart these discounts. so they're very common. And when you agree to give them, if you don't actually do it when you're invoicing, if you don't give them that allowance percentage off your invoice, then they'll come back and take it as a deduction. 
 

And, so that's what the scenario we'll talk about. Sometimes Walmart improperly issues these allowance deductions. and then often a supplier is just not giving the allowance as well. Talk about how to identify sort of those root causes to see who's at fault and what you can do about it. a common allowance type, just to give you an example, is the defective allowance. 
 

of course, with all the goods that you're shipping to Walmart, some goods may be damaged or returned as defective, so in order to offset this, Walmart often requests their suppliers to give a defective allowance, and the percentage varies, of course, It's always helpful to look at how much in damaged goods has Walmart actually seen in the past, or how much is a realistic amount to expect when you're negotiating that percentage, because we do see a wide range of defective allowance percentages. 
 

But in this scenario, maybe you agreed to give 1 percent off of all your invoices to compensate for the cost of those damaged and returned goods. And when you go to invoice Walmart, if you're not giving that defective allowance, then they'll come back and take it as a deduction. And so that's what we'll dig into now. 
 

So some common deduction codes that you may see. Code 54 is a warehouse allowance. It has a sister deduction, a code 57 quantity discount. They're very similar. so this is really, an allowance for the benefit of being able to use Walmart's distribution network. So if you're shipping to their DCs, then this is a common allowance type that's requested or sometimes even required of Walmart suppliers. 
 

so if you do not, if once you agree to give this allowance, Walmart will start issuing new POs against this nine digit sequence related to this agreement, and when they send you that order, they should specify on the EDI purchase order, here's the allowances we expect to receive. And when you go to invoice them, if you leave that allowance off your invoice, then Walmart will take it as a Code 54 deduction in this case, if it is a warehouse allowance that you've agreed to give. 
 

So if you see that Code 54, that's what it's related to. Pretty much all the allowance deductions will mirror that format and rules or criteria. Code 59 is a defective merchandise allowance. So that is that scenario when you agree to give Walmart a defective allowance and Walmart expects it, doesn't see it on the invoice, then they'll take it as a code 59 defective allowance. 
 

and even though all this sounds very straightforward, sometimes you can get one of these allowance deductions and it could be invalid. So Walmart could be taking it in scenarios where they shouldn't. so again, you definitely can't take Walmart's word always at face value. You have to dig a little bit more. 
 

but these are some of the common allowance codes. There are certainly more allowance codes, but 54, 57, 59, a lot of that 50, code 50 range is where you see a lot of these allowance deductions. we will dig into, the common root causes for allowance deductions, and there's just a few of these, if, probably the most common one we see, if Walmart is expecting a allowance on an invoice to be given and you do not give that to them, then again, they're going to give you that deduction. 
 

And this is really supplier caused because if you agreed to give it, upfront and you're not giving it on the allowance, they're going to take it as a deduction. And there's not really much to do in terms of fighting it. so this can be remedied, and it could be a mistake. an accident that it is not getting included on your invoices. 
 

Sometimes across different agreements, you have different sets of allowances or even percentages to give. So you have to make sure your accounting or EDI system is set up to give the proper type of allowance back to Walmart for each invoice. and then sometimes it may just be, a new agreement allowances have changed and you've got to update your system. 
 

or some suppliers choose not to give the allowance on their invoice. We don't necessarily recommend that, but some suppliers just choose not to give it. the main reason we don't recommend that is because you can never tell what's valid or invalid because Pretty much every invoice you'd expect to get a deduction, and you basically rubber stamp approve all of the allowance deductions if you're just expecting Walmart to take it. 
 

And sometimes they may get greedy and take more than they should, and it's very hard to find those scenarios when Walmart doesn't want to take it. A lot of the deductions are valid. So to figure this out, you want to look at your supplier agreement for the nine digit sequence of that invoice, see what allowances are agreed to, and then look at your invoice and see what adjustments or allowances you actually gave on that invoice. 
 

And that'll help you compare those two data points. Second scenario, You would be looking at the exact same data points, the agreement, and the invoice. And this is a scenario where, you know, if Walmart gave you that code 54 warehouse allowance, but you actually gave it to them on the invoice, so you gave the allowance on the invoice and Walmart still deducted it. 
 

And that would be an invalid scenario and you could fight that back and say we already gave the allowance on the invoice. So this would be an issue on the Walmart side. so again, same data points, to compare that supplier agreement and the invoice. And then Lastly, some actions to consider here. make sure that you're looking at the latest version or the correct version of the supplier agreement. 
 

Sometimes, you can get different agreements for the same department. That's what that ninth digit in the nine digit vendor number specifies is exactly which agreement that order or invoice is related to. So make sure you're looking at the right agreement. look at the allowances specified on the agreement to understand what you're supposed to give. 
 

And then if you see discrepancies, or you did give the allowance correctly, or you weren't supposed to give it altogether because it's not on the agreement, then what you want to do is dispute providing the copy of the supplier agreement and a copy of your invoice to summarize the evidence and submit that. 
 

And then sometimes If you don't get that dispute approved, then we would still recommend escalating it even further, especially if the evidence is on your side, because Allowances should be pretty cut and dry. you're either supposed to give it or not, and you either gave it or you didn't. 
 

if kind of the evidence is on your side, and for whatever reason, APDP is not accepting your dispute, then I would summarize that data, again with the agreement, with the invoices, and potentially escalate that to your buyer to try to start a sort of reversal process, or just to use as leverage for other scenarios in the future. 
 

but it should be cut and dry, so if you don't have dispute success initially, then we'd still recommend to escalate because, these are agreements, it should be standardized. 
 

All right. Thank you, Ryan, for walking through that great content. We've got a couple questions. I will say, if you're thinking of some questions right now, go ahead and send them in the Q& A. We'll get them, answered for you. But the first one I wanted to start with, Ryan, if you're ready, I know that you just spent like 40 minutes going through that great content. 
 

I'm ready. Bring it on. All right, here we go. April, sent in that her FOB is Shipping Point. Does Walmart recognize this or does Walmart expect the supplier to cover damages caused during transport? so that's a good, so if, I might actually have to pull that question up myself just to make sure I understood. 
 

Yeah. ShippingPoint, does Walmart recognize this? so if you are prepaid, then, if you're a prepaid supplier, and I'll speak in generalities to start, if you're a prepaid supplier, you are responsible for the transportation all the way to Walmart's D. C. And in that case, you're going to be responsible for the, sort of, state of the goods, put there. 
 

upon delivery to the D. C. So if something happens during transit and you're prepaid, then you're on the hook for that. If you are a collect supplier where Walmart is coming to your facilities and picking up the product from you, then it's really about what was the state of the goods at the time of the pickup. 
 

That's what should matter if you are a collect supplier. so in that scenario, it really depends on the freight terms. I know there can be some unique, shipping scenarios too that aren't even quite as simple as prepaid or collect. And if you have deeper questions or a more nuanced scenario, of course, reach out and we'd be happy to dig into your specific scenario. 
 

Yeah, we've got some more questions around, shipping. So I'll start with Jeanette's first question. how can we see the amount of units that Walmart has received? Is there an easy way to pull this in Walmart's data, Ryan? It's a good question. yeah, lots of places in retail link to look. there are a couple of spots. 
 

Number one, you can use an app called Nova, N O V A. And if you have access to that, then you can search for that PO number and you can see per item how much was received. You also can look at SupplierOne. It's one of Walmart's newest apps, and it's similar in terms of Nova. You can search for the PO. 
 

You can see the total units received for the PO as well as per item. So those would be the two places, Nova and SupplierOne, to look at that information. Yep, I would say the same, and I'm sending a couple resources on Nova and SupplierOne in the chat. So if you guys are not familiar, you can check those out. 
 

Okay, the other question that we got is, How do we contact to request shipping documents from a carrier if we ship collect? Yeah, for collect suppliers, you lose a little bit of visibility and ownership at the time of pickup since Walmart's, responsible for the transportation. 
 

So at a minimum, your warehouses should get a copy of sort of the signed bill of lading. So when Walmart's, truck or third party carrier they dispatch comes to pick up the load, they'll sign a bill of lading to take ownership of the goods and your warehouse should have a copy of that. So I'd always recommend making sure that is stored, somewhere that you can use for disputing later on. 
 

and then that may be as far as you can get, as far as a collect supplier, because you don't have that delivery stamp or proof of delivery, the signed BOL for CollectSuppliers is the most important. Sometimes Walmart will come back and show you what was received at the DC, but it's really the signature at the pickup location on the BOL that's the most important. 
 

Awesome. Yeah, that's a question we get a lot. I feel like almost every other webinar, so thank you for answering that, Ryan. One more that we got that just came in is, How can we submit a claim to Walmart Fleet for damaged or lost goods? if you are a collect supplier and Walmart's transportation is picking up, really, the, the results, if there was damaged or lost goods during transit, then what would probably happen is you invoice for, say, again, 100 units, and then Walmart says, oh, you only got 50, or 50 were damaged. 
 

then you're gonna get a shortage deduction and kind of the first step in our experience is to fight the deduction. and in terms of trying to recover what you're owed. So that's when you'd have that signed bill of lading at collect that shows the carrier picked up these cases in good condition. 
 

And, if they arrived at the DC damaged or lost later, That's not your fault because the carrier signed for those goods at the location of the pickup. so that's typically the best way to fight that scenario is to fight the short deduction, and supply proof that, wasn't your fault. 
 

so that's step number one there for that scenario. Okay, good starting point. And then just last question, We talked about root cause for allowances, for in full charges, and for shortages. If you had to pick one, Ryan, where should suppliers start when it comes to diving into some of that root cause? 
 

Yeah, I'll give my it depends answer, as a sort of cop out, but, first, I would try to sum up the charges, by count and dollar amount by code, so you can understand, What type of charge am I seeing most for my organization? And, that may be where you want to start. 
 

I will say in full charges for OTIF and the allowance deductions tend to be the ones where they're most likely valid. So these are scenarios where you actually have the ability to potentially prevent those charges. So if you want to reduce deductions, then you might lean towards in full charges or the allowance deductions would help you reduce. 
 

But if you're getting tons and tons of shortage deductions, and that just sheer volume and amount, it significantly exceeds the rest. And it may be worth a deep dive into those to better understand them and see if you can prevent or at least make sure you can identify the invalid ones and recover some of that dollars. 
 

Awesome. It depends makes perfect sense. So I'm glad that you started it with that. It really does depend on your business and what type of supplier you are. that's the end of our Q& A, guys. Thank you for submitting questions and engaging with us during today's webinar. We're going to share, before we jump to a product preview, these are some of the ebooks. 
 

I sent some resources. If you have not gotten to our other resources, please go dig into those. They're a wealth of knowledge, and helpful, especially that Walmart Deduction Codes Explained is. Particularly helpful. I can send that in the chat. and as we're transitioning over to our product preview, these are our emails, both Ryan and myself. 
 

If you guys have additional questions, please feel free to reach out or you can find us at SupplyPike. com if you're interested in some of the other, offerings we have when it comes to our, product. So without further ado, I'll let Ryan switch gears and get into our product. he's going to have an emphasis today on the Walmart dashboard. 
 

And show you a little bit about, the features built out with Root Cause. But if this is where you jump off, we totally understand. but we'll all let Ryan get into what we've got for today's product preview. Yeah. So thanks, Allie. And thanks everyone again for attending. so just want to give you a little bit of an idea of how we. 
 

Show you some of these root causes that we talked about. so obviously when you're comparing all those different data points, it can get tedious. And so that is what software is good at doing is automating a lot of those sort of tedious, simple processes. on our deductions. solution, we have this dashboard with kind of high level visibility of your Walmart deductions, to where you can understand the total amounts received, you can see your dollars by status to understand what's been disputed, how much has been paid back, what's been denied. 
 

etc. to understand, the state of your dollars at any time. You can do things like filter by, date range or even look at specific codes. So if you wanted to look at those shortage codes we talked about, you could break everything down by those. You can also see a roll up by code. So again, I said, Comparing dollar amounts and quantities, this helps you do that very quickly to understand, what codes are you receiving the most and how much is that impacting you by. 
 

And then lastly here, and there's other graphs on this dashboard. There's a lot of things like breaking out your deductions by Walmart receiving DC, by item. So you can understand which items are, incurring the most shortage deductions. So especially for the, if you're getting a lot of shortage deductions and you're trying to figure out, okay, what, which ones of my items are getting mixed up, these tables are helpful to look at to say, here's the items with the most deductions, or these DCs. 
 

that are most frequently triggering shortages. and then lastly on this dashboard is just a little sneak peek in this demo company. There's a lot more root causes in our solution, but you can see some root causes that we've identified of here's some deductions with, scenarios where you shipped in full per the ASN, but you still receive that shortage deduction. 
 

And. or you actually invoiced for more than you shipped out. so there's shortage root causes here. There's allowance root causes. so again, this would be a scenario where, this is an invalid one. Walmart took a deduction and, however, it was not on the agreement. So we would automatically flag it as invalid. 
 

And kind of summarize the scenario. And so this is just the dashboard roll up to see what's happened across the board. But then you can go into our deductions view and. Look at all of your deductions. You can see the ones that are not yet disputed or that have been kicked back in supplier action. 
 

Everything that's actionable and still in the dispute window. You can see everything that you've disputed and is in progress to track those as they Get processed on Walmart's side, and then finally an area to see all the ones that have reached their final resolution. and AllBucket as well. 
 

And one thing, since we talked about root cause today, I'll highlight among the many filters here that you can filter your deductions. by dispute status, dates, whether or not a deduction is valid or invalid, so that's a helpful one to understand which ones you should fight, and or which ones are opportunities to reduce valid deductions. 
 

but we'll look at root causes. So here's a little bit more complete list of our root causes that we would potentially identify. So things like overages and shortages on the same PO, or when Walmart's data is showing received in full, or if the vendor pack quantities differ. so these are a lot of those shortage root causes we talked about. 
 

And then same thing with the allowances. There's even more allowance root of, if the adjustment is missing off the invoice, or an invalid scenario where an allowance was not found, on the agreement. So all you have to do is click the root cause and it will automatically filter the list of deductions down. 
 

And the nice thing is when you dig into the details of these deductions, We pull together all of the supporting documentation for this deduction, so copy of the PO, copy of the invoice, copy of the claim, any shipping documents like the BOL or the proof of delivery if you're prepaid, And then, since this one's actually an allowance related deduction, we also attach, automatically attach a copy of the supplier agreement. 
 

all of that is there as your proof documentation if you want to submit a dispute on this. And then, the nice thing is, this root cause is clearly laid out to state what we've found. in this scenario, this is a likely and valid deduction, where The allowance that relates to this deduction code was not found. 
 

on the supplier agreement. So Walmart may have improperly issued this deduction. And even what I think is cooler, you can see the details. So we have the agreement details here. we can see when it went into effect. We can, we'll show any allowances you agreed to on this supplier agreement. In this case, there were no allowances agreed to. 
 

Then you can see any adjustments that were given on the invoice. And finally, you can see any claim details for this deduction. if there was an allowance that you agreed to give, it would show up here on the left side, then we would show any related adjustments given on the invoice and the claim amount. 
 

So you basically have that full picture of what happened. on this invoice as well as what did you agree to in the past and you don't have to keep track of the 30 different agreement PDFs that may exist in RetailLink or that you may have in email inboxes. The data is summarized here and will automatically compare the agreement and the invoice to see who's at fault or what should you have given if you needed to give something and didn't. 
 

this is just one example of what our root cause looks like for shortage scenarios. it is very similar to that kind of root cause, except, we'll show some different data, including around quantities. So for this shortage deduction, we still got all that same information, but in this case we're showing you the details related to what was the quantity ordered, what was shipped, what was invoiced, and finally what was received on each one of these items. 
 

so we would call things out if there was an overage on one item and a shortage on another. so Basically all that homework is done for you and you can look at the final picture to understand what happened on this deduction and if we recommend disputing, or if it's an opportunity to get better and reduce valid deductions, so that's how we treat root cause at SupplyPike is rolling it all up at the dashboard level. 
 

but then quickly allowing you to filter down to the individual deductions that fit a scenario. And then you've got all the data there to understand how we came to that conclusion and what you should do to either recover or prevent that type of deduction in the future. So hopefully you found that helpful. 
 

There's tons of other features. We do the same thing on the OTIF side. Love to show you more if you're interested, so please let us know and thanks for watching.