How to DIspute Shortages at Walmart 

[00:00:00] Peter Spaulding: Okay, today we're doing our bread and butter. We've got shortages at Walmart, AP deductions. This is where SupplyPike really got its start. and it's a, it's an evergreen piece of content, really. It's something that, is always relevant. Shortages are always an issue. It's something that people are always talking about. 
 

we want to hop back into it again today, with all of you wonderful people. This is us. Melody is the head of the SupplierWiki team. She was there at the very beginning of SupplierWiki, and really created a lot of things that we have that are now a staple of who we are. 
 

I'm a writer on the team, usually do a lot of these webinars as well, if you're not familiar with us. But yeah, so SupplierWiki, if you're new or if you're not subscribed to our newsletter and all of that, basically our job is to create a wiki that is interactive for, We always are focusing on Walmart because that's our neck of the woods, but we've expanded into a lot of other retailers as well. 
 

And what we want to cover is just anything that could be helpful information for people that can be hard to find, or, difficult to, difficult to learn about in a more practical and carefree way than a lot of the official documentation is. basically, we just create ebooks, these webinars, different articles. 
 

to make the supplier, life as pain free as possible, or at least as, as, educated as possible. Today, our agenda, again, we're talking about shortages, AP deductions, really some of the the core stuff of being a supplier, at least from the financial perspective. so we're going to start off with very high level stuff on shortages. 
 

If there's newer suppliers. on the call to do some, some really high level, just conversations, conceptualizations about what shortages are, and then we'll go into the, the, more technical side of things with avoiding, disputing, and then we're going to look specifically when it comes to Walmart. 
 

what is the form that shortages take? What are the specific code numbers? And then what is the documentation really that you need to dispute and win those particular code deductions back? Then we'll have a general,Q& A session. we'll talk a little bit more about how to ask questions. 
 

later on, but we'll save those for the end, most of them, unless there's something that's particularly relevant to an earlier slide, then I'll interrupt Melody. And then we'll finish it up with a little bit of a sneak peek for SupplyPike if you're interested in that. Our product is really started with the shortage deductions in mind. 
 

Deductions that have a Melody will get into all of that. And so if you're interested in that, you can stick around for that at the end too. Question that we get fairly often is, will we be getting a copy of the slide deck? Yes. You don't need to be taking super intense, vigorous notes throughout this, webinar process. 
 

In about 3 4 business days, we'll get you a copy of the slide deck. We'll also get you just a recording of the webinar itself too. So if you want to pass it on to some of your team members or something like that, you could do that that way as well. And then also quick shout, a lot of you are familiar with the webinar chat as well. 
 

there was an update, a Zoom update that I think put the Q& A portion in the more section down there at the bottom tab. but if you want to ask a formal question of us about, shortages or there's a particular issue that you're struggling with, go ahead and put that in the Q& A section. The chat is more for kind of public conversation and discourse. 
 

So sometimes we'll ask y'all a question, like our fun question, but a little bit more technical. that can go in the chat, but the Q& A, the questions, specific questions that you guys have for us, put that in the Q& A tab down there. All right, now we should have a little bit about SupplyPike. I talked about this already, we got started with basically, How can we take the manual work out of disputing deductions? 
 

And now we're really in a bunch of different what we're calling revenue loss spaces, right? So anywhere that suppliers can, can lose revenue in the process of working with retailers, that's really where we're trying to be. We are working with people in just about every kind of product category. 
 

There's some, some Not exactly categories, but areas of the CPG world that we don't really operate in because they have different sort of protocols and stuff like that. But, we work with a lot of different sizes of suppliers as well, which is my favorite thing because I'm on the research side of things. 
 

So I, I like learning from the biggest suppliers and the smallest suppliers. What are their different pain points? How does it,how does it work for them as well? That's that makes me really excited and we've represented over 50 billion dollars in retail impact, which we're really proud of. 
 

We're, we're winning a lot of money back for people too. So let's get into it.  
 

[00:05:21] Melodie Hays: Awesome. This is where I take over. I'm excited to talk about shortages, you guys. It's been a while since I've done this webinar. So they don't usually let me come up here and talk to you all. So excited to, to present on this today. 
 

but Peter said at the top, we're going to be covering just what our shortages, how to avoid them, how to prevent them, get into the details around everything. So let's dive in. Okay, so for everyone, and just a reminder, this is all on Walmart. However, some of the information that we're going to be presenting on today will be applicable to the other retailers. 
 

a lot of this is in the context of Walmart. So in the context of Walmart, a shortage deduction is going to be on Walmart. Where a retailer is withholding payment from the invoice, saying that they didn't receive all or some of the goods. And there's going to be a few codes that are involved with this. 
 

this is the most common deduction, especially inside of Walmart, that suppliers are going to be facing. thankfully, this is going to be most commonly paid back. And I think we'll get into some of the benchmarking around that here in a little bit. So let's go into an example. This is a code 24. your invoice is deducted for a shortage, code 24, stating that some of the pomegranate juice and the grapefruit juice is missing. 
 

So they're saying, Hey, I only, Walmart is saying, I only received the orange juice. And I was expecting, the. Grapefruit and the pomegranate as well. So what causes this shortage reduction from happening? There's typically going to be multiple different reasons such as poor labeling, receiving error, mismatched package types, or the invoice arrives before the shipment. 
 

So these are definitely the four most common that I will see when working with suppliers. For those of you who don't know, Walmart DCs are still receiving things very manually. There are of the automated DCs that have, Some machines that, or automation that will help, supposed to help some of these receiving errors go down. 
 

But what we've actually seen inside of SupplyPike is those automated DCs that have some intelligence for receiving are one of the more common, DCs that you will actually see for shipping errors. So just in general receiving errors, either in a manual or an automated DC, is very common for why you might be receiving some of these shortage deductions, especially the invalid ones. 
 

Thankfully, those are the ones that are easy, easiest to win, because you can have proof documentation that you show in order to say, hey, no, it's just your system that is saying that we actually, we missed these items, when in reality, you did receive these items, you just, Counted it in correctly for labeling or item setup, such as mismatched package types. 
 

That is going to be very common as well. That's one of the first areas that if you don't have the proof and you've determined that it's valid, we would go and say, Hey, you should go look at your item setup and make sure that's set up correctly. And then your invoice arrives before shipment. that's going to be very common for code 25, which I think we're going to dive into a little bit here in a second. 
 

Cover that. But the impact of shortages, this really can be threefold. So you can not only receive an AP level deduction, but you can receive a SQEP fine or a Supplier Quality Excellence Program fine, such as POD fact, as well as an on time and full fine or something that we call an OTIF fine. So not only will you receive the AP level deduction, like that code 24 that we've been talking about, but you can receive three fines for this. 
 

Same exact issue that may have been honestly a problem on Walmart's side rather than you shipping something incorrectly or not following protocol.we have a lot of content on SQEP and on OTIF. Maybe Peter can send some of it in the chat, but if you're wanting to dive into, okay, how do I prevent that? 
 

Or what is the, What are these programs mean? there are we have so much content around that. Books, and webinar recordings. So please dive into that if you're curious and want to learn more. Okay, as I mentioned up at the top, shortages are going to be making the vast majority of all of Walmart related deductions. 
 

So that code 22, the GoodsBuildNotShift, that's going to be a partial shortage. So that, that in code 22 and 24, those are going to be the most common ones that you're going to see for whenever Walmart is saying hey I received some of the order but I didn't receive all of the order. typically you will see with this one overages, potentially on another item. 
 

And again, that can come down as receiving error. we'll talk a little bit more about that later in the presentation, but keep in mind that these partial shipments, you're usually going to see typically a, an overage somewhere else. and typically those are going to be receiving errors. And then a code 25, this is that code that I was talking about, where it's actually a full shortage and it's typically caused by a mismatch of whenever the invoice is actually sent versus the items are received. 
 

This is going to be a full shortage. So the entire invoice, the entire PO is, Walmart is saying that they haven't received it.so keep that in mind, but as you can see up here at the top, that's making up, what, 60. 75, 90 percent of all of the deductions, that A supplier typically is receiving from Walmart. 
 

Pretty drastic. Let's talk about avoiding them. So now that you know what they are, now that you know that they're a big problem for most suppliers, let's talk about how to, avoid them in the first place if you can. Now, we know that preventing shortage deductions is easier said than done. typically it is going to require If they are valid shortages, it is going to require change management inside of your company, in order to prevent this from happening. 
 

There are usually some easy fixes, some easy wins, especially if you're receiving a lot of those Code 25s, but typically we're going to be seeing, really company wide changes that are going to need to be implemented in order to avoid, valid shortage deductions. So we'll cover that, but, if that sounds really scary, don't worry, because most shortages you can win back, because most shortages are invalid. 
 

So this is some tips in order to actually prevent even invalid shortages from happening, as well as best practices in case they happen. 
 

So as I mentioned previously, item setup and invoicing, these are going to be ones that will really help you with valid shortages. you're going to want to make sure, and also invalid, such as this first example of submitting only one invoice per P. O. when possible. So a lot of the systems that Walmart has set up are automated, in terms of, Giving you deductions. 
 

So what Walmart is doing is they're trying to match your purchase order with your invoice, and if your purchase order and your invoice do not match up one for one, a lot of the times their systems are going to just kick a deduction your way, because it's saying, hey, I have this purchase order, and this invoice only shows half of the order, therefore they must not have shipped me. 
 

I must not have received everything that I need. And so if you are splitting multiple invoices for a single PO, a lot of the time they're not going to catch that. And even if you have actually shipped all of the items, they're going to assume that you didn't. So that's one of the reasons why we have the suggestion up here at the top of making sure that you're only submitting one invoice per PO. 
 

Now that's not to say that you, that's typically going to be an invalid deduction. You can actually go and typically win money back on that, but you're trying to make it, you're This tip is trying to make it as easy as possible for Walmart to, not find you in the first place so that you don't have to go through all that manual work and dispute it. 
 

Next, this one is going to be really helpful, for both valid and invalid deductions, confirming your item setups. you're going to want to make sure that your vendor pack quantities and your warehouse pack quantities are correct, because Walmart Again, Walmart is going to be checking how much that they received, and if those are not, those units are not set up correctly inside of, it's not item set up anymore. 
 

It's supplier one, which we also have a lot of content around. maybe that can be another thing that Peter sends in the chat, but, supplier one going and making sure that your item setups are correct in there, will help you avoid a lot of the deductions in the first place. Transmitting invoices with the retailer's item numbers. 
 

I, so that's basically to say instead of using your own internal item numbers, make sure that you're using the ones that are coming across on the P. O. whenever Walmart is submitting it to you. Again, a lot of the times those systems are automated and so if They're seeing anything that, doesn't match up one for one, it's going to automatically kick back a deduction your way, even if you do have a person actually on the other end of Walmart's desk submitting that deduction to you instead of a computer,people make mistakes and may just assume just Because the item number is different, that means you shipped the incorrect item. 
 

So try to make it, make that as easy as possible to go and refer back to.and then lastly, this is the overall, feedback. I feel like I've been repeating since the beginning of this slide, but just making sure your invoice and your PO match, that's going to be the easiest way to ensure that you're not getting any shortage deductions and other types of deductions as well. 
 

Or, Allowances, so making sure that your allowances that are on your purchase order are also on your invoice. You can prevent a lot of deductions that are related to allowances from happening if you just make sure that those documents are as similar as they can be. Packaging and labeling, avoid masterpacks. 
 

Do you think we can make that any more clear on this slide? love it, love the bold and the all caps. masterpacking is one of those things that is going to cause not only issues with your shortages, but just across the board. across your entire supply chain, so making sure that the units that you're putting in a pack you're shipping are separated out so it's very clear to define, okay, this item or this SKU is separate from the SKU over here, making sure that they're not having to open any, they're not going to open any cartons or anything like that at the DC whenever they're receiving it, so making sure that's all split out. 
 

Again, most of the time you're going to have a human at a, in a DC who's receiving all of these items, and they're not going to do a very close check of what they're receiving. They're going to be scanning it, they're dealing with hundreds, thousands of packages a day, they're looking at it, they're counting, they're saying, okay, I received three of the orange juice and none of the pomegranate juice and they're not going to go and cut open your box in order to make sure that there's actually only three orange juice and not any pomegranate. 
 

Not 3, pomegranate juice in that as well. making it as easy as possible for a, someone who is receiving those goods to easily identify it. If you guys have not had a chance to visit a DC, a Walmart DC, I don't know if they're allowing for suppliers. to go on tours anymore, but if you have a brokerage, they might be able to get you in. 
 

or if any contacts at a university, they will still allow for people to go through on DC tours. I've had a chance, I had a chance to do one before COVID. I know that our company was able to do one a few months ago. it is very enlightening to see the kind of conditions in a Walmart DC, and not to say that they're bad necessarily, but just all of the chaos that is happening, and because there are, there's so much, so many goods that are just passing through every day, you're trying to make it as easy as possible, again, on the receiving end, so that you can remove any of that, And then,the thinking behind making sure that your products are being received possibly correctly. 
 

Which I'll actually just go ahead and skip down to this bottom one of user using color coding and imagery. this is something that we have suggested for a long time and I know for a few suppliers that it works really well, especially smaller suppliers that don't have as robust a system. Maybe as a robust or as big of a supply chain, where we've actually seen where you, if you put a different colored sticker on the different types of items that you were shipping, so saying, again, using my like orange juice, grapefruit, pomegranate juice example, you're gonna use an orange sticker for the orange boxes,pink sticker for the grapefruit and a red sticker for the pomegranate. 
 

That's going to make it easier for the people who are receiving it to understand that, okay, this item is different than this item and I should be counting them differently. Now if your boxes look very similar, Again, that's going to be very difficult for the person at the DC who's receiving the goods to, to be able to quickly scan and count what they're needing. 
 

Now, again, I understand that if you have a much larger supply chain, if you're shipping a lot more goods, that may not be as useful as a tip for you. but we have seen doing this can actually help decrease the amount of invalid deductions that you're receiving. It's a handy tip that might be difficult to implement in practice. 
 

These middle two, so identify the PO number and the faculty numbers on the labels. again, just making it easy for the person who's receiving it to say, okay, yes, this is exactly the box that I should be getting for this purchase order. And then having all of your labels clearly applied, making sure that they're not damaged or covered up in any way. 
 

I've had someone joke, okay, do I need to put one label on every single corner of the box in order to make sure that people are receiving it correctly? No, but making sure that it's easy to see on the palette can go a long way whenever it's actually in the DC. Okay. Refresher on pack sizes. I know I've mentioned pack sizes a lot and I appreciate this slide so much, but we have a vendor pack. 
 

So that is going to be the outer box that needs to be easy to scan. That's going to be what the individual in the DC is actually scanning. You have a warehouse pack, which is going to be the smaller grouping products inside of the vendor pack. So again, you do not want to have different types of, different types of SKUs in a vendor pack. 
 

You're going to want to make sure that a VendorPack includes all a single SKU. Do not MasterPack. And then lastly, Each WarehousePack should only hold one type of SKU. I'm sorry, I said that incorrectly. Each WarehousePack should only have one type of SKU. That is what MasterPacking is, not the VendorPack. 
 

Hopefully that helps. There we go. Look at this. So inside of your pallet, you're going to need to consider that your product, how your product needs to be packaged, how many products can fit on a pallet, and how your pallet is going to be parceled out from the warehouse DC store into the customer. So as I mentioned before, a lot of the Walmart DCs, not a lot, there's a I think two now, two of the DCs are making a lot of investments inside of tech to make it more automated. 
 

And so for those DCs, how this is set up is very important, because if you're not following the specifications just the machine is not going to catch it. The scanner is not going to catch it. So making sure that you're following the guidelines that Walmart has set forward. We do have those guidelines. 
 

Again, sorry, Peter. we have taken all of those packaging and labeling requirements and distilled it down to a little guide that might be helpful for you all. the original document, I think, is 200 pages long. Still check that out, make sure that you have all the specifications for your specific business, but we do have a guide that we've distilled down to. 
 

Kind of make it easier to consume. hopefully Peter can send that in the chat for you all. Okay, so that's talking about avoiding shortages. I know that is, again, easier said than done for a lot of these things, but is a helpful place to start. One of the things that we talk about at SupplyPike is trying to help suppliers get paid, so win money back, like disputing the shortages, as well as get better. 
 

It is a two way street. two part system. you can spend, all of your time going through and disputing, every shortage that comes your way since most of them are going to be invalid. But,that's a lot of labor and time that you're spending just trying to fight to get your money back. 
 

So if there's anything that you can do or any investments that you can make on the front end to again, just make it easier for the person who's receiving out of DC, it can go a long way and actually save you money in the long run. that imagery sticker, suggestion sound can sound like a big lift for a lot of companies, but making an investment, maybe next time that you're looking at redoing your boxes or your vendor packs can go a long way. 
 

All right, let's go and dispute.Before you dispute anything, the first thing that you need to do is make sure that you have your ASNs, your invoices, and you've stored those, someplace that is easier to go and find them later on. If you're collect, you're going to want to make sure that all of your carriers are signing the bill of lading or the BOL and store these documents. 
 

Same with the ASNs and invoices, somewhere easy for you to reference, have for years. and be able to find later on. With prepaid, you're going to want the proofs of delivery or the PODs. and you're going to want to also store those if your proof of delivery or your carrier does not store those indefinitely. 
 

The reason why I say this is One of the most difficult parts of actually going and disputing shortages is going to be having, disputing shortages successfully is going to be having this, these documentation so that you have the proof docs that you need that Walmart expects in order to actually win this money back. 
 

And we've seen for some carriers, they only hold on to documents for about 30 days. And so if you wait until you receive a deduction, which can happen, Two weeks later, a month later, you're already fighting against the clock to make sure that you can go and find that information.document management is a big part in being successful of winning shortages at scale. 
 

You're going to want to make sure you have all the necessary info such as the PO number, the ship to address, the item shipment info, and the signatures. If you're collect, you're going to want to avoid ship or load and count when possible. Retailers will always make mistakes and ship or load and count makes it very difficult to fight invalid shortages. 
 

And we Peter, sorry again, but we do have an article on this and it goes into the details of SLC and why it can be difficult for you to win your money back, especially in the case of shipper load and count. So what do you need in order to dispute a shortage deduction? Unfortunately, Walmart does not work like our justice system where you are actually guilty until you're proven innocent. 
 

So Walmart can be issuing you fines. Left and right, and it is up to you to go and prove that I shipped this correctly. in general, you're going to need just the basic information about the claim, the invoice, the shipment, and then you're going to need that proof document that I mentioned before. 
 

The proof documentation is definitely going to be a lot more difficult for you to collect, especially later on. then this claim invoice and shipment information, which is typically stored in RetailLink and should be easy for you to access even years after. Easy.is RetailLink ever easy? who's to say? 
 

But, perfect. Okay, so what do you need, again, to dispute the deduction? Those shipping documents that I mentioned up in the beginning. So that signed bill of lading, that signed and stamped proof of delivery, that DropTrailerStamp, I know that those were especially common during COVID when there was just a surplus of goods. 
 

so these shipping documents are your proof documents for shortages. Now, for different types of deductions, such as allowance, you're not really going to need the shipping documents. You're going to need your supplier agreement or something like that. But in this case, your shipping documents are most likely going to be those proof documents that you need to attach. 
 

One of the things that we've seen, since Walmart actually rolled out their, APDP, so their portal for you to go and dispute. And they got rid of, the settlement program, which if you guys are not familiar with that, it was a way for suppliers to go and, dispute deductions in bulk. But they got rid of that program, walled out APDP, they have a mass dispute creation tool where you can go and dispute a hundred deductions At a time, we see that if you do not attach proof documents, which it doesn't allow for you to do in the mass dispute creation tool, your win rate can go on average from 80 percent to 8%. 
 

That is a drastic difference, from being able to win back the vast majority of the deductions that you're receiving to having to go and, either dispute again or just lose that money. And unfortunately for Walmart, you can actually only dispute a single deduction three times. And so if you use that mass dispute creation tool, you have lost one of your three chances to potentially win back that money, which can be a very scary, scary thing. 
 

So all of that to say, shipping documents are very important, especially with shortages. Make sure that you have those and that you're attaching them to any of the disputes that you're creating. This is an example of a BOL or a bill of lading. It should include the following, such as the destination, your purchase order number, your item information, your carrier signature. 
 

We have seen, unfortunately, we've caught errors that maybe a carrier has made where they are uploading different information, sending different information to their supplier or their customer than what is actually being sent to Walmart, which is really unfortunate. there is not an easy way to necessarily catch that, but, all of this to say, even if this information all lines up, sometimes, very rarely, we've actually seen where the retailer is receiving a different one, which is just really unfortunate. 
 

this is an example of a proof of delivery. It's a section of the P. O. L., so it will usually be like a stamp somewhere on this document, and it's going to be, filled out and signed whenever the trailer is unloaded, designates if the P. O. is received in full or if the quantity was overshort and damaged. 
 

This is a drop tailor stamp example, so it's a sticker, generally a sticker, on the BOL by the retailer and sent by the driver. it proves that the shipment was arrived at a retailer D. C. It does not prove the quantity that was received. And then the burden of proof is actually on the retailer if the dispute is denied. 
 

that can be a good or a bad thing. Okay, let's do a deep dive of shortages at Walmart. How am I doing on time? 30 minutes, good. Okay, so I talked about this up at the top. we'll get into a little bit deeper here. So a Code 22, that is going to be when the quantity of an item on the invoice does not match the quantity that the facility says that it has received. 
 

Again, this is going to be a really common code to the Code 24, but basically this is saying that the invoice doesn't match what the facility says that it has received.typically the BOL is going to be stamped and received at full at the facility, but then whenever the invoice was actually transmitted, the quantities at the, on the invoice is different than what was actually on the BOL. 
 

disputing for this is going to be To involve providing the invoice quantity actually matches the receive quantity. So you're gonna dispute this actually the same exact that you would dispute a 22, a 24 and a 25. you're gonna just wanna go and make sure that your BOL, your proof documentation, all of that stuff that I mentioned before, matches what is actually on the invoice. 
 

So you're gonna be uploading both of those documents. Now, here's a code 24. Again, it's going to 22.whenever you're receiving a shipment, at the facility would actually sign that BOL as short against the quantity that the shipment was said to contain. if you can hear that slight nuance there, this is where you're going to be Again, invoicing for what is more, for more than what the facility has claimed to receive, or what the shipment was said to contain. 
 

So that's saying that whenever the facility has received it, they're saying that what I've received is different than what is on the purchase order or what I've been told that I should be receiving. So slight nuance, I've seen these be used interchangeably, but if we go back to the slide, A few slides ago, you could see that it's the code 22 that is actually used much more often than this code 24. 
 

And again, you're going to just read this exactly the same way. You're going to provide that invoice quantity versus the received quantity. 
 

Okay, code 25, this is going to be the one that is slightly different. Again, I mentioned it above the top, but this is whenever Walmart is claiming that they haven't received any merchandise for the invoice transmitted. so that code 25 is always going to be for the Full amount of the invoice. So you're just going to dispute by saying, Hey, I sent the items again. 
 

You're going to want to say I submitted the full amount of items, not partial, and usually can win money back for them.so this is what is on invoice versus Walmart sees in their system. Look at that little pomegranate juice.invalid 25s,I mentioned it again up at the top, but, this is usually a timing issue. 
 

you're usually going to want to go and look into your EDI. a few years ago, I don't want to date myself, but years ago, working with a very small new supplier to Walmart, I actually saw that these Code 25s were impacting their business by 50 percent of what they were sending to Walmart was coming back in the form of a deduction on this Code 25, and it was incorrect. 
 

The only reason that this was happening was their,invoice was arriving about seven days before the shipment actually would arrive there. And fortunately we were able to win all that money back for the customer. but it's very easy, again, in quotation marks, to, make changes to when this document is actually sent, when your invoice is actually sent, and then prevent these from happening in the first place. 
 

So usually you're going to want to schedule your invoice to be sent on the must arrive by date, which is typically information that is provided in RetailLink in the first place. So making sure that it's sent on that date so that it should be arriving, the invoice should be arriving right whenever the goods are actually arriving. 
 

You are not going to want to re invoice once those goods are delivered. so I've seen that in the past as well where a supplier would first invoice whenever they sent the goods or, even before they sent the goods in order to get paid back sooner. and then they would receive a code 25. And then they would actually send an invoice again once the goods were delivered, just to say yeah, here's the document, and they would get a code 30. 
 

so they were getting hit by all sorts of deductions, which a code 30 is for a duplicate invoice. You're going to just want to send one invoice. Whenever it arrives, it's not going to impact how quickly you get paid. You get paid for that shipment and it's going to prevent you from having to do a lot of manual work in order to actually go and dispute those deductions and get paid in the first place. 
 

And now we have a live Q& A.and if you guys are curious on how to actually go and dispute these deductions, I know we covered very high level on shortages and what documents you need, but we have an entire webinar, which maybe whenever Peter starts answering the Q& A, I can pull up that webinar. I'll do the heavy lifting. 
 

I'll send that to you guys and it walks through step by step how to actually dispute everything in APTP. 
 

[00:34:48] Peter Spaulding: Okay, great. We got some really good questions today,two of them in particular, but if you have any questions that are burning or at the top of your mind, try to get them in. 
 

here in a little bit so we can get to those. First one is, from the chat, how can we get a proof of delivery from the consolidation DC for disputes? And what information needs to be on the POD for small parcel shipments? 
 

[00:35:18] Melodie Hays: Sorry, I was muted. do you actually have insight into this? Because the proof of delivery, I guess before I start, Peter, do you have any insight into this?  
 

[00:35:28] Peter Spaulding: no, I don't think so. The, I haven't been, I haven't been thinking about it a lot. It seems like there's a, not a loophole or something, but, I don't know anything about consolidation DCs generally, what that POD process would look like. 
 

so yeah, no, I don't. what information needs to be on the, POD for Small Parcel Shipments got nothing.but I know we have some places we can go to find those answers.  
 

[00:35:59] Melodie Hays: Yeah, maybe we reach out to the rest of the team and see. I know consolidation DCs can be very difficult, not only in getting the documentation that you need, but also they are probably the worst offenders for when goods are going to go missing and you're going to receive a lot of those shortages. 
 

if we can reach out to our team, Peter, I think that'd be beneficial. I just don't want to misspeak on the subject.  
 

[00:36:22] Peter Spaulding: Yeah, I'm thinking about for,the small parcel shipments. There's a lot of stuff in the secondary packaging guide that will probably be relevant to that. That will be more about like, how do you actually do small parcel shipping, but it may have some information there too about What that dispute process would look like, but yeah, we'll have to pass that one along. 
 

our next question, we also have, one, another one in the chat. for collect, if you don't invoice until it's received, won't that impact your terms? Shouldn't your terms start when picked up? 
 

[00:37:04] Melodie Hays: Yeah, so the insight that I was giving earlier on around when you should be invoicing, if you are not receiving any of those code 25s in your collect, then I wouldn't go and change anything around your invoicing. if it, one of those things, if it isn't broke, don't fix it. But shouldn't your term start when picked up? 
 

I think that's going to be dependent on your supplier agreement, which I'm trying to think of the easiest way to go and find that in RetailLink. do you know off the top of your head, Peter, is it going to be in the profile or is it its own app now?  
 

[00:37:41] Peter Spaulding: the, I think it's in the profile, but, that's dated information from potentially a year ago. 
 

So there may have been changes around that, that I missed, but. I think it's pretty easy to find there on the profile.  
 

[00:37:56] Melodie Hays: I would go and look at your supplier agreement and see whenever your terms start, especially for Collect suppliers, but, the instance, the best practices that I was suggesting for your MABD, I know that is definitely relevant to prepaid suppliers. 
 

I'm not as familiar with Collect. I would go and look at your terms and go from there. 
 

[00:38:18] Peter Spaulding: Okay, we have another one in the, Q& A that is,pretty detailed.I'll try to, leave some specific information out here. There is a, Transportation 3PL mentioned by name that I won't say my name just in case. 
 

But we received a Code 25 chargeback for the whole invoice worth quite a bit of money. POD slash no merchandise received for invoice. That's the description on the code there. we've disputed with the PO.invoice received report, BOL and the tracking jpeg for the, three pl. it is now in supplier action status asking for POD other than the BOL, what are they looking for? 
 

I love this question. I feel like there's a lot of different angles or layers to it, but, what are your thoughts there?  
 

[00:39:09] Melodie Hays: You want your first born,no. They, there should be a note, whenever it comes through as supplier action. oh, asking for, oh, they do say that. Asking for the PODthat is a great question. Why are they asking for the POD if you are BOL? You sent the BOL. Hunt, JBHunt, oh sorry I said the name, TrackingJPEG. 
 

[00:39:33] Peter Spaulding: I'm wondering if there's a miscommunication around,this smells like an SLC situation where it seems like Walmart has a different idea of what, of what kind of shipping you're on than there actually is, or than maybe. 
 

What the case might actually be. So this could be a supplier agreement situation where, for whatever reason, Walmart is expecting a POD for something that is not prepaid, right? But yeah, it's given the size, given the sheer amount of this deduction, it seems pretty concerning. What I would do is I would definitely look into, are there any other, code 25s that, where there's a similar sort of thing that's going on. 
 

[00:40:26] **Melodie Hays:**If this is the only one, then that's fine. Really bizarre. but yeah, I think you almost send the BOL again. I would look into the shipper loan account as Peter mentioned, read that article. but yeah, I would almost send it again. I guess see if there's any other documentation in J. B. Hunt, but it looks like you've covered all of your bases. you even have that inventory received report, which unfortunately. Most of the time, Walmart doesn't accept that, they really want to have those shipping documents, but I would send it back, with the BOL, communicating back and forth with Walmart isn't going to take one of your chances. 
 

However, I have seen Walmart actually, or, the individuals on Walmart's end who are working these accounts for the disputes, cancel or reject the shipping documents. Disputes if it goes back and forth between them and the supplier too often, which would use one of those chances. Peter, do you have the ticketing system that replaced EBS? 
 

That might be another good place to go and look. 
 

[00:41:27] Peter Spaulding: I bookmarked that a long time ago. 
 

[00:41:32] Melodie Hays: Yeah,JBS and EBS have gone away. we've been told very clearly by Walmart to stop suggesting that. there is a new ticketing system, I would also suggest actually going to the Walmart supplier support group if you feel comfortable. 
 

there's an individual on Walmart's end called, Kristen. Do you remember her last name, Peter? 
 

[00:41:52] Peter Spaulding: It's a very long last name that I don't want to try to remember and pronounce at the same time. But it starts with a W. I think it's Wingenbach or something like that. I did it. I tried to pronounce it, but, yeah, she's, she has all the answers all the time. 
 

[00:42:06] Melodie Hays: Yeah, I would almost, you can leave in the Walmart Supplier Support Group, it's a Facebook group if you guys are not familiar with it, and it has over 14, 000 individuals who are in it. It's a private Facebook group, but I would go search for that, join that if you're not in it. You can leave an anonymous,question, and if it's typically around deductions, she can, she'll go and answer. 
 

I've seen people, honestly, get faster responses utilizing that than utilizing the ticketing system that, Heder sent in the chat. But the ticketing system is the correct process, so I would Submit it in that, send back the BOL, maybe put a comment in the Walmart Supplier Support Group, and, see where that gets you. 
 

Just, I wouldn't normally suggest doing all three, but with the amount that deduction is,I don't think it would hurt to, pull on all of those threads. 
 

[00:42:59] Peter Spaulding: Yeah, follow up comment from that question is just clarifying that they are collect, right? So there's no, it's the,the asking for a POD is really bizarre and it seems weird. 
 

I, I think that the Walmart Supplier Support Group, will be the best route. Yeah, you have a real Walmart employees in there who usually have very helpful advice to give. but more importantly, I think too, there are a lot of other people who, maybe have experienced the same thing. If there is an error on Walmart's part, on Walmart's part, then there's going to be a pattern and there's going to be other people who will speak to that with their experiences. 
 

So that could be super helpful as well. 
 

[00:43:40] Melodie Hays: And it truly might be as simple as just resubmitting the BOL and just the person who is working on that case.  
 

[00:43:47] Peter Spaulding: Yeah.  
 

[00:43:48] Melodie Hays: All of the other documents that you sent missed it. Now, if you're, if the BOL that you have is hidden, so what I've seen before is people will submitthey get it from their carriers or something like that, where it's like, All of the PDFs combined in one have multiple purchase orders in it. 
 

And just submitting that entire document that may have a hundred pages, a Walmart employee is not going to be looking through that document. They're going to quickly scan it. If they don't find it, they're just going to move on. And so if you can go and identify that individual document that is referencing that very specific PO and separate it out, that might be a place to start. 
 

But, Yeah, I would submit a ticket, go on Walmart Supplier Support Group, resubmit the BOL, and see where that gets you.  
 

[00:44:37] Peter Spaulding: Yeah, whenever it comes to things that are that size, Walmart may have a very specific and time consuming and inefficient official policy for dealing with it that you might have to just Yeah, as Melody is suggesting, try every available avenue because it's an obscene amount of money and it's, it seems just like a mistake on Walmart's side. 
 

we have another question in the chat. so any suggestions for a code 22? Valid POD submitted and Walmart comes back with quote, There is no record of receiving a request for repayment prior to the date. The 12 month liability to file a carrier claim had expired prior to notification from your office. 
 

Request repayment is denied.  
 

[00:45:24] Melodie Hays: Yeah, I'm guessing we have the time windows for that. In one of the presentations, there are different carrier windows depending on the carrier, especially if I'm guessing you're Colect. I might be misspeaking, but you mentioned a POD. there are certain windows where you can actually, your repayment period is much shorter. 
 

[00:45:47] Peter Spaulding: what is that? 
 

[00:45:49] Melodie Hays: Yeah. Do you remember the, yeah, sorry, I'm really making you search today. 
 

[00:45:55] Peter Spaulding: I remember hearing a lot about this,something about a particular window, just, it not lining up, or it lining up perfectly from, from Walmart's perspective to avoid all of these repayments, but it's not coming to me. 
 

[00:46:10] Melodie Hays: Yeah. I'm wondering if it's in the obstacles to getting paid deck, sorry for me just searching on this webinar. but there are certain carriers, that your repayment period is going to be much shorter. And, unfortunately that's just, that's part of the policy. Um,do you remember the deck that we have that? 
 

I really wish that we could show, send a link to that. 
 

[00:46:38] Peter Spaulding: Oh, perfect. I've sent a link to it. and I think it might be the right one. 
 

[00:46:42] Melodie Hays: Okay, perfect. Yeah. Deanna, I would go and look into that document. there, It should have some of the time windows for the different carriers. And unfortunately, that's just the name of the game with Walmart. 
 

that's probably something that we should mention at the top of our webinars moving forward. Moving forward, Peter, is just that time window being different with the different carriers. 
 

[00:47:05] Melodie Hays: I think FedEx is on there. there's some common big carriers that the, your time window is just shorter and it's not going to apply to everyone. 
 

I think it applies to only a subset. I believe with collect suppliers. 
 

[00:47:20] Peter Spaulding: Okay. let's,we didn't do a super helpful, job with that one, but that's because the quality of the questions was so great. and sometimes it's. Yeah, what we're really doing is we're just trying to pinpoint the exact area of miscommunication between the retailer and the supplier. 
 

So I think that's a lot of those are, are very clearly an issue of that trying to focus in on that. So oftentimes a supplier agreement will be helpful. but how you actually communicate that information to Walmart, all of that. is really difficult as well. But great questions, great engagement all around. 
 

I think we'll pivot to our product preview now, so if you are not interested in seeing that, then thank you so much for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you again. if you'd like to see a little bit about what, what we're doing with these shipping documents that we're talking about, how we try to assimilate everything into a, a single source of truth, and automated process, then stick around, for that. 
 

[00:48:30] Melodie Hays: One thing I do want to make note of, if, hopefully a few of you are staying on with us, if you do have additional questions, please feel free to reach out to Peter and myself, and even if we can't answer them, we'll connect you to someone on our team who can help. And so these are our actual emails. 
 

feel free to go there or you can go to SupplyPike. com. There's a link up at the top where it's like book a time or schedule a demo. there's a chat functionality too inside of SupplierWiki. Feel free to submit your questions in that and we usually can track down and answer and try to help you. 
 

Okay, perfect. let's dive into our deductions product. So I'm going to be showing a, demo for you guys. So this is a demo account, and usually if this is not a demo account, you're going to see a lot more on this page, but we use it every day, so it's been narrowed down. but what I'm showing here is our deduction list, and so this is a list All of your deductions that you are receiving for Walmart. 
 

Now, one of the things that Peter did note at the top was that we have solutions for Walmart, Kroger, Target, Amazon, Home Depot, CVS. We're even coming out with a few additional retailers here very soon. So very closely trying to get all of your most important Retailers, most of the most important customers in the system. 
 

And we help with all different forms of revenue loss. So today I'm going to be covering deductions, but we also have an overages solution. We help with post audits, on time in full or OTIF, as well as SQEP inside of Walmart. And then we help with things like Amazon co ops and target contract deductions. 
 

So really, The major ways that you might be losing money to these retailers, we try to help out with and automate the process so you can recover more money or, as we like to say, get paid or get better. So here I have a list of all of the deductions. We do this handy little filtering where we'll determine any of the urgent ones, the ones that you should probably take action on. 
 

this one Needs action today. You need to be working on it today because, you only have a certain number of days to respond before the dispute will actually close, before you cannot go and dispute it anymore. You can see any of the new deductions that are coming through, any of the ones that you need to actually go and follow up on. 
 

So this one's in SupplierAction. Any of the ones that are waiting on, Walmart to get back to you, so you can go and check in on that. And then any of the resolved ones. Now the reason why I'm going through all of this is because, as you guys may know, it's difficult to go and find, especially with other retailers, where each of your disputes may be or what you need to be taking action on. 
 

So we tried to make the UI of this so easy that you can just jump in and know exactly what you need to accomplish for that day.one other thing minute before I dive into the detail list. I'll show you guys here is we have different filters even here at the top that speak to the readiness of a deduction. 
 

So we use a Insights across all of the years that we've been doing this and all the customers that we have to actually go and determine the validity of a deduction, pulling in, apps and data from multiple different places in retailing to actually tell you if we think that a deduction is invalid or not. 
 

And so we have validity judgment for all of these different codes. we talk about how we actually can get all of that information in our very helpful help center, but we will determine the validity of deductions. So usually what I suggest for suppliers to do is click in here. They'll want to go and look at any of the invalid ones or the likely invalid or the validity and clear. 
 

And then we would just go and select this proof documentation ready. So what that would allow for us to do is take this huge list of Again, 12 records. I'm kidding. Usually this is going to be thousands of records for a lot of suppliers and narrow it down to the ones that I can actually start working on today. 
 

Now you can go and dispute a deduction inside of the system with what we call one click. So we pull all of those insights that we talked about in the webinar of Your shipping information, your item information, all of that, we will go and actually get all of your shipping documents. So we go into the carriers, we go into the 3PLs, we go into your warehouses, we pull all of that information, stitch it together, and put it into this single page. 
 

So you can see right here that you have everything that you need to actually go and submit this dispute. So to submit a dispute to Walmart, that's going to increase your likelihood of actually getting paid back. Remember that 81 percent versus an 80%. 
 

You can do all of that in a single click. Now, one of the things that I like to say is if a single click isn't fast enough for you, if you want to move even faster, you're like, Melody, I have so many deductions. I don't have time. we also have, where you can actually just bulk dispute. So you can actually go and dispute 100 deductions in two clicks. 
 

Now again, utilizing this kind of readiness score, where you can actually go and see those proof documents. And this is a smart filter. So those proof document filter, it's not going to say, hey, if I have a code, 10, which is like an allowance, and I have a POD that this is ready for me to actually go and dispute it. 
 

It's going to determine based off of the type of code what documents you actually need to successfully dispute that code. Again, using all of that information that we've collected over hundreds of different suppliers and working with them. With 100 different suppliers to determine what is the most likely, outcome, what are the documents that you need to have the most likely outcome to be positive for you? 
 

you can go in here and say proof documentation ready, validity, Invalid, likely invalid. I'm going to multi select this and submit disputes. Now, if you're like, Melody, that is still not fast enough. I want to dispute more than 100 at a time. I actually don't even want to come into your system. I want you guys to handle all of it. 
 

you are in luck because we actually have auto disputing. So what you can do is you can enable this for a variety of different codes. we do it for all of the shortage codes where you can actually turn this on. So that as soon as we have the proof documents, it will actually go and submit disputes for you. 
 

So you do not even have to touch it. So you can come in here and say, hey, I want you to dispute any of the codes 22s, As soon as it's ready, you can set minimums and maximums. So say, hey, I don't want to touch anything under 200 bucks, but anything over 2, 000 I want to have a look at, you can set that all up in here. 
 

So it makes it really easy for you to work through your backlog of deductions without having to do any of that manual work or that researching or that heavy lifting of collecting documents and storing them in one place. Now that is a lot of the place that we'll see, people who are actually going disputing, utilizing for deductions, but we do also have a handy dashboard that will show you or your business partner, everything that SupplyPike is doing for you, how much money you've actually been able to win back with us, or win back with SupplyPike through the SQEP. 
 

approved, what percentage of deductions have been invoiced, what percentage of deductions have been cleared, all that handy information. And then it gets really down into the nuts and the bolts of, what are even the root causes that you might be experiencing. so we have this really amazing,thinking back to that get paid, get better, this is part of that get better piece. 
 

So we will dive into the different root causes for different types of deductions and identify that for you so that you can go and better understand what can I be doing to prevent these deductions from happening and it's all based on your data. So in this Example, this demo, the most common root cause is that invalid deduction allowance not found, and so there's information on how you can actually go and fix that problem. 
 

Same with this ASN, all of that information right at your fingertips without you having to do any of that heavy lifting. I'm going to just pause there. There's more charts and things that I can show you, but hopefully that was enough to inform you guys on the deduction piece of our application. 
 

Again, we help with all different forms of revenue loss with a whole variety of retailers. So if this is curious to you at all, we also offer free trials. so Please feel free to utilize that. you can come in, you can submit a few disputes, and we'll even provide a business case analysis for you to say, hey, this is how much our software is going to cost versus this is how much money we think that you're going to win back. 
 

and we'll even identify in that business case analysis, maybe some opportunities that we can help for you to get better, and not only get paid. So please, if you're curious, feel free to reach out to us or visit our website. I'm happy to get you in the door. 
 

[00:57:32] Peter Spaulding: Great. Thank you so much, Melody. thank you all for joining us. we'll see you next time. 
 

[00:57:37] Melodie Hays: Bye guys. It was great seeing you.