SQEP 101

[00:00:00] Peter Spaulding: All right, so this is us. We, we're the content coordinator team at SupplyPike and the SupplierWiki team. Our goal is to create free accessible content for suppliers. Allie's our lead content content coordinator and I am content coordinating under her as well. Sweet. For today we're just going to kind of roll through some of the basics of SQEP. 
 
Hopefully some of this will be review for some of y'all. If maybe you're newer to being a a, a Walmart, Supplier, some of this might be pretty new as well. We're going to start with the kind of the highest level. What is SQEP? Then we'll go into kind of the rollout plan. How is, how is Walmart planning on kind of releasing this in its phases? 
 
How does it affect suppliers? How do you track your SQEP performance? And then kind of general questions and discussions followed with a bonus OTIF radar demo, for those of you that signed up for that as well. We have a few more answers in the chat here. One Cookie Monster, which I think is a great answer. 
 
Cookie Monster is another just kind of beloved Muppet character, and a Big Bird. And Elmo as well. Elmo is, my daughter is obsessed with Elmo. She loves all things Elmo. So that's another kind of iconic Muppet character as well. So here's a couple of frequently asked questions that we get that we wanted to answer for you kind of ahead of time. 
 
You will be getting a copy of this slide deck. And as I mentioned earlier, if for some reason our internet fails us We'll be able to get a recording of this to you as well. In terms of the chat and the Q&A section, there's two ways of really communicating with us and communicating with everyone else on the Zoom call. 
 
If you have a comment that's for everyone, that's for the chat. So that's where you would put some advice that you have, perhaps, or some personal experiences that you've had with SQEP that you think other people could benefit from. That's that, that'll go in the chat. If you have a more formal question for Ali or myself put that in the Q&A section and we will either answer it as we go on one of the slides or answer at the end during the during the official kind of Q&A section. 
 
All right, so we are employees of SupplyPike. And our main goal is to help CPGs and suppliers of major retailers maximize their cash flow, right? Our goal is to is to help rev loss prevention in as many ways as possible. The primary way that we've been doing that as a company is through helping helping CPGs fight deductions through our deductions navigator software, which hopefully some of you have heard of as well. 
 
And these are some of our partners listed here. As we always like to say, hopefully you see yourself there, and if you don't, we'd love to see you there. Someday soon. 
 
[00:03:24] Allie Truong: Awesome. Thank you so much for that, Peter. And like Peter said, if we do have any technical difficulties, we apologize. We are adjusting to our new office. Lots more space for us, but again, we'll be able to get you this information regardless if our internet cooperates with us or not. Perfect. So let's start talking about SQEP today. 
 
So the first place to start, we're going to do a little bit of a review in case you've just heard of this program or it's just kind of come to your attention. You're starting to see SQEP fines roll in. We're going to do a brief overview of what that program looks like at Walmart. So we fondly call the SQEP program SQEP to shorten it and say, instead of saying another long Walmart acronym, but essentially, SQEP, or SQEP, stands for the Supplier Quality Excellence Program, and it is one of the new, it's the new ish compliance program that Walmart has rolled out recently. 
 
So. Just to kind of frame up the different compliance or deduction programs that Walmart has, there's three main buckets that we focus on, and today we're going to focus on that last bucket being SQEP fines. So, the other two buckets that we're not going to cover today, but we've got plenty of content on, webinars, articles. 
 
Books, you name it, we probably have it is deductions and OTIF fines. And if you're curious about those, we can send you some more information, but I'm going to kind of blow past them as for today. We're focusing on the SQEP fines. So AP deductions at Walmart come off the check. So if you're a supplier, you receive a check and it's supposed to be 100 and you receive it and it's only 80. 
 
The case is probably that you've received an AP deduction. Deductions can be invalid, and they can be disputed in one with the right documentation, and that happens in a portal called APDP, which stands for Accounts Payable Dispute Portal, and that can be found in HighRadius. I'm sure Peter can work some magic in the background and send some. 
 
Of our, our content regarding APDP and AP deductions at Walmart. Today, we're going to be focusing on SQEP. The other bucket is OTIF fines and OTIF and SQEP can be compared as sister compliance programs or somehow related. They do have a lot of overlap in terms of, being both disputed in HighRadius, which is a third party platform outside of Retail Link, so not within the Walmart HighRadius platform, but a third party application. 
 
They're both on the newer side and they are not in regards to shortage deductions, and they're more based on compliance. They're also both AR charges, so whereas deductions are AP charges, OTIF fines and SQEP fines are considered AR charges. They're an additional fine not taken off the check on top of what you might need to pay Walmart in terms of other deductions. 
 
So, we'll focus on that last bucket. SQEP fines are invoices that will be deducted for each defect, so it's a fine on top of, what you would be paying Walmart. SQEP fines are going to be considered packaging compliance fines, and that can kind of stem off into several different areas and we'll get into those here in a second in the different phases. 
 
Another thing I'll be saying as a, like a broken record today is that multiple SQEP fines can stack on each other. So, we'll kind of get into the math of this just to break it down a little bit, but essentially, per defect, you're going to receive a fine, and it may be a flat fine with a multiplier on top of it for the amount of defects. 
 
So, You can have 70 POs and get three defects on each PO. You multiply that with the formula they have for fines, and that's a lot of money. As well as these compliance programs don't talk to each other. They're not related, and if you get a deduction, that still, you're still on the table to receive an OTIF fine or a SQEP fine if they're not in compliance with the rules that are outlined in both those compliance programs. 
 
So that's just another call out. And like I said earlier, SQEP fines are disputed in High Radius, and they're also paid for. So if it's a valid SQEP fine, you had incorrect packaging you would pay for your SQEP fine defects in High Radius, but if it was an invalid fine, let's say the packaging was not even yours or the manual audit was incorrect that's where you would go in and dispute those fines. 
 
All right, so let's get into what SQEP is. So the Supplier Quality Excellence Program was introduced pretty early, two years ago, and it was designed to drive a zero based mindset or a TQM, so Total Quality Management, and that's regarding the quality defects within the Walmart supply chain. SQEP kind of collects all the packaging defects and bundles them all together in a couple different phases and some of those include P.O. accuracy, barcode and labeling compliance, so being compliant to the standards that Walmart outlines, packaging compliance, load compliance, palette quality, So that's it. Bye. These are all different sections of SQEP that are on the table now. And then something that will be launched in the next year or so is phase four, which includes scheduling and transportation. 
 
All right, so why would Walmart be implementing SQEP? The goal for SQEP is for Walmart to receive 100 percent defect free orders. And this is really just driving EDLP, EDLC for the customer. So essentially trying to make sure that there's no extra, extra fees or issues in the supply chain that could create higher costs for customers to have to bear. 
 
And the goals of this would be to improve end to end accuracy and visibility, reduce handling costs, and expedite the shipping process. Drive continuous improvement towards perfection having the quality be hit on the first time. So they refer to that as implementing FTQ, first time quality, and then reduce operational costs. 
 
And like I said, all of these kind of filter down into making sure that they are delivering EDLP or EDLC every day to customers. And just to clarify, another Walmart acronym, EDLP, is Everyday Low Cost or Everyday Low Price. And if you've been working for Walmart for a long time, you know that's basically the hallmark of what Walmart stands for when they're facing, when they're working with their, for their customer. 
 
All right, so what suppliers does SQEP cover or apply to? This is a little bit difficult to tease out because you'll have to dig for it in retail accounts. And HighRadiuss Supplier Academy, but essentially the rule of thumb here is if it flows through an FC or a DC with Walmart, you're going to be compliant to these SQEP rules. 
 
So that's going to include, like I said, any Walmart owned distribution networks, DCs, or FCs, Fulfillment Centers. Walmart U. S., if you're shipping to Walmart U. S. stores and your Walmart U.S. e com networks. Other suppliers that are implemented into the SQEP program are direct import suppliers. You are still exempt from ASN requirements, but that may change, so we'll keep you updated if that has changed. 
 
DSDC suppliers are included, but exclusive to type 73 POs. Another thing that's mentioned on our, our webinars often is, is Walmart Canada involved in this, or is it different? So, as of checking retail link this week, Walmart Canada distribution networks are included in SQEP compliance programs. 
 
Although, if there are any differences, I would look to see specific. Walmart Canada documentation on SQEP, but it should be either very similar and if those, there are differences, they'll be called out in the Walmart Canada documentation for SQEP. All right, who would be exempt for, from SQEP? And again, we like to hold things loosely here in terms of what applies to what types of suppliers. 
 
So, this is where we're sitting today suppliers that are not, included in SQEP compliance, but it may be different, or there may be, similar or identical programs but they're just not under the SQEP name. So suppliers that are exempt from SQEP are SAMS Club suppliers. DSD suppliers, which makes sense because they're shipping direct to store. 
 
So you're not actually touching the Walmart DCs or FCs. And then if you're shipping to Walmart store or you're shipping e commerce, essentially the rules are if you're an internal apartment department, so the D99 and D96 do not apply here. If you're shipping directly to store or you're shipping from your warehouse or a non Walmart warehouse to your customer, you're not going to be in, you, you are exempt from SQEP.  
 
Supplier shipping to Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Alaska DCs, and then DSV suppliers. And again, like we said we hold things loosely, so if these change, we'll be updating our documentation. And actually this is a great time if Peter, you want to share our SQEP handbook? 
 
That's something that we update pretty regularly. If there's any changes on the SQEP compliance front, and that's the, essentially the Rosetta Stone SQEP and we try to keep that updated with the all, the collecting all of the most accurate and up to date information. Perfect. Now we're going to talk a little bit about the SQEP rollout plan. 
 
And Walmart initially talked about launching this I believe early 2020 and then launched it, in four different phases across a couple years. So the four phases that Walmart has introduced are, PO Accuracy, Phase 1. Phase 2, Barcode and Labeling Compliance. Phase 3, Packaging, Pallet and Load Compliance. 
 
And then Phase 4, Scheduling and Transportation. So Phases 1,2, and 3 are live and have been live. I'll show you the timeline here in a second for roughly two years on a whole. And then Phase 4, Scheduling and Transportation has not launched yet. Alright, so here's the timeline of the rollout of each one of these phases. 
 
So phase one is actually broken out into two sub phases, PO accuracy and ASN. And this was launched in early 2021. So this is fiscal year is how this is labeled. But early 2021, if we're talking about calendar year, and then Barcode and Labeling Compliance, that was launched early 2021 or late 2021, pardon me. 
 
And then we also have Packaging Palette and Load Compliance Live. Scheduling and Transportation is not launched, however, we've heard from multiple credible sources that this is something that is going to be launched this quarter. So as you know, Walmart is not on the calendar year system. Their quarter ends in January or February, I believe. 
 
So we're seeing January, yes, we're seeing November, December, and January. We're kind of watching any of the SQEP, SQEP documentation to see if that's going to be accurate. And again, we will update you if you join our, our newsletter, or if you just keep checking our website. Again, we're going to be updating, Any of our documentation if this scheduling inter transportation phase launches here. 
 
If not, we'll be checking up again and seeing if it will launch in FY 2024. All right, so now we'll get into talking a little bit about each of the phases of the SQEP program, beginning with phase one, PO Accuracy, which Walmart has outlined kind of blurbs, and one of the one for SQEP, Phase one is right item and right invoice. 
 
So what does Walmart mean by PO accuracy? The definition provided by Walmart is fulfilling the PO complete as requested by Walmart. And again, this does not include PO revisions. Actually, PO revisions are permitted, but final PO must match items shipped, which makes sense. So, tip there, just make sure your invoices matches your PO that your invoice isn't sent until you have the correct and final PO. 
 
Check your MABD date and if you're making any edits in NOVA. Just make sure that you're outlining that with your buyer team if it's a significant change. And if you have any questions about NOVA, which is the PO Management System, we do have a webinar, two different webinars on NOVA. Go ahead and check those out if you're not familiar with that application and retail link. 
 
All right, and then in Phase 1 PO Accuracy, Walmart addresses defects in the Walmart DCs and FCs that occur in the receiving process. So either stopping any, any of the POs that are stopping the receiving process or driving inefficiencies are going to be dinged under the Phase 1 PO Accuracy SQEP defect fine. 
 
All right, now we're going to go on to phase two, the barcode and labeling compliance SQEP phase. The tagline here is making sure right item in right condition and Walmart defines barcode compliance as the ability to receive cases based on a scanned barcode and they've got different I'll show the document in a minute, but there's a huge document that outlines what the correct type of barcode that Walmart requests is. 
 
And then labeling compliance feels pretty similar to barcode compliance, but it To tease out that definition, it's adhering to Walmart's guidelines around the carton label, identification, and carton markings. And again, making sure that the barcode and the labeling match and are identical to each other in terms of the information that they're portraying. 
 
And then diving a little bit into the phase two, compliance, anything that is going to be labeled a defect would make, your Your carton, difficult to, or impossible to identify, label, or receive cases flowing through the network and we'll talk a little bit about the manual and automated ways that Walmart actually reviews the barcode and labeling compliance. 
 
All right, and then the third phase and final phase that is live as of today is the packaging palette and load compliance, and it's all about having the right condition. So making sure that the palette is intact, that it's not difficult or impossible for the product to flow efficiently by that meaning, Anyone working at the DC or FC is able to load and move your inventory easily without damage from suppliers, from the supplier to the store. 
 
And the definitions to tease out what packaging versus pallet versus load quality compliance means. Packaging compliance is going to be the carton's ability to endure handling, the handling and processing throughout the supply chain. Pallet compliance is going to be adherence. to pallet labeling, securement, and the required quality standards that are outlined in Walmart's documentation. 
 
And then lastly, load quality is adherence to load stability and segregation standards. And we'll kind of get into what those mean when we walk through the face a little bit deeper. So here is the Walmart secondary packaging supply chain standards. Just a screenshot of the first page. It is a lovely 200 and something page document. 
 
We like to joke that it is super fun nighttime reading if you want to go to bed quickly. So it actually outlines everything that suppliers need to know in terms of packaging. And I just have a screenshot here. This is a Great page for barcode compliance. It's page 206, I believe the PDF is a little bit off, but it's 206, in the page numbers listed, and this gives all the information needed for general case markings, what is allowed, what's not, how your labels should look and they give a pretty great outline. 
 
So if you're having conversations with your Teams, or whoever's working on your labels. This is a great place to start to make sure that everyone understands the expectation. So if you don't have access to this document, it's actually searchable on Google. If you type in Walmart secondary packaging supply chain standards, look for the most updated version. 
 
So if it says 2019 just look to see when it was edited. And I'm pretty sure Peter can find that on the internet, or we probably have it saved if he wants to share that in the chat. or if someone else has easy access to that. It's a very helpful document in terms of understanding and avoiding fines, for phases one through three. 
 
All right, so how does SQEP actually affect suppliers? We've talked a little bit about defects, we've talked a little bit about fines, but what do those charges look like and how are they calculated? SQEP fines are essentially going to be called defects in the SQEP scorecard and are es are defined as non compliance to Walmart's published standards like the secondary packaging that we outlined here. 
 
And SQEP fines, again, are incremental to OTIF and AP deduction fines. So if you do have a valid SQEP fine that causes OTIF problems, so on time or in full problems, or because the labeling was incorrect and created a shortage, you can get a SQEP fine, an OTIF fine, and an AP deduction. So we're going to talk a little bit about how to avoid those and what those fines look like in terms of SQEP to avoid those if at all possible. 
 
All right, so there's two steps to the SQEP defect. So there's going to be the calculation of the scorecard and then translating that into what your finds look like. So the SQEP scorecard is a measurement kind of like when you were in school getting a report card. It lets you know how you're doing in terms of the supply chain standards that SQEP outlines. 
 
And two ways that it does this is through PO line accuracy and then defects per million or DPM. And the first one, PO line accuracy, essentially just takes the number of defects occurred over the total PO lines ordered, and defects per million takes that PO line accuracy number and multiplies it by a million. 
 
And what that defects per million tells you is more of a temperature check. So I'll show some examples in a second here, but Walmart has a essentially a stoplight system. There's a red and then a number for defects per million, which is, means essentially you're, you're not in a good position with your supply chain. 
 
There's yellow, which means more of a warning and there's green, which is, hey, we understand. We're trying 100 percent defect free, but this is not, you know, the serious issue that a red would be. When I'm referring to these red, green, yellow, that can be found in HighRadius. You go to Supplier Academy, and you click on the SQEP Learning page. 
 
It outlines Walmart standards for that. So it kind of gives you a temperature checked. Again, Walmart expects 100 percent defect free, but we'll kind of get into some of those calculations to show you what, which ones are deemed more serious than others. So here is an example of a phase one charge with the SQEP scorecard calculations. 
 
So if a PO line had 70 lines and three defects it would be 95.7 percent. So if you're thinking about OTIF, I would challenge you not to. OTIF standards are saying 98 percent is where they, where Walmart expects suppliers to be, understanding that there's going to be issues in the supply chain. For the script scorecard from Walmart's information, they do not deem 95.7 as a passing grade. 
 
It's more of a hundred percent or you fail. So it's again, not as serious as not passing a class, but it is saying, Hey, there's something in your supply chain that is causing error and you need to address it. So it's more of a warning sign. And then you go down to defects per million, and this is 43,000. 
 
So the green light or the. Denotation from Walmart is that Anything under around 6,000 DPM is still an issue, but it is not a serious issue. Other than that, if your DPM is over 6,000 for any of the SQEP phases, that's something you want to look into pretty immediately to see if it's first invalid or valid, but also checking to see if if that's something that you should be disputing. 
 
All right, Phase 1 SQEP charges. So we're not going to go down the line, but we did want to show this slide just to outline the details and how each one of these defect descriptions can, come out into a charge. So if we just take a look at the second one, an overage, so that's going to be a PO line that is shipped that exceeds the quality ordered, is going to be in the bucket of a flat fee plus a multiplier per impacted case. 
 
And I'll show, I'll break out, An example here in a second as well. I did want to call out, there's an overage one there and that issue would also translate into a AP deduction. So if you're seeing these, a tip for overages in the SQEP one face charge, check APIS and check APDP to make sure these POs, if invalid, are also being disputed because these compliance Programs don't talk to each other. So that's just one call out there. 
 
But if we're getting into the nitty gritty of what those defect charges come out to be, there's, if you can see in this example, it's pretty standard for most of the phases to have a flat fee, which usually is about 200 per defect, plus some kind of multiplier, like a 1 As we get through some of the other phases, there's going to be the 200 flat fee per defect that also adds on the multiplier, which can get up to 4. 
 
I believe there's one that's a little bit higher than that, but just just to call out that. not all of the charges are equal in terms of what they come out to be depending on the phase or what the description of the defect is. All right, so here's a charge example. Let's say that you incurred an overage charge from the SQEP compliance program. 
 
You get your 200 flat fine for every defect and a charge multiplied by the cases affected. So it's going to come out to 203, which doesn't feel like a huge charge, but there can be multiple defects per PO. So 200 can become a larger sum very quickly. All right, and then the SQEP Phase 2 charges are a little bit different, and again these are outlined in some of the SQEP documentation, but they are utilizing two different data sources in case compliance. 
 
So there's the inspection data, which is random manual edit audits. You may have seen this if you're using the FixIt app which is going to be screenshots from different DCs or FCs that outline that you have an issue. And we've got some content on Fixit in SQEP Phase 2 and Phase 3 Deep Dive. 
 
You can find the on demand webinar. But essentially, the other piece to inspection data is automation data, which is accumulated from Vision Technology where available. Now again, we talk to lots of suppliers. We want to share information, make sure that this is something that's helpful for you. We've heard a lot of buzz that these charges are ramping up, and they're going to continue to ramp up because Walmart is implementing this automation data, vision technology for scanning barcode and labeling to every DC. 
 
So I'm making more of a speculation from the information that we've heard. I believe inspection data will either continue to be used less, but as automation data increases, we're going to see a lot more accuracy. Some of the inspection data has not been as Accurate. We've seen with people using Fixit, they get on to Fixit, look at the barcode and realize, you know, Hey, I sell baseballs and this is iPhone cases. 
 
So that's one call out. Make sure that you're disputing anything in Fixit that you can, especially if it's just. Obviously not your product. But with the automation data, again, you know, just, just making sure you really review the barcode and labeling compliance at this automation, automation data and vision technology is used more in the next year. 
 
And then again, the SQEP phase two charges are pretty similar. So I won't spend too much time here, but again, a flat fee with a multiplier per cases affected, and then there can be multiple defects. per PO and it can add up to a larger sum than just 203. 
 
All right, and then this is an automation example, so this is based, again, on that Vision technology. If 200 cases, so two items, 100 cases each, were inspected and had 100 defects, this is going to create a huge DPM, take a big hit to your scorecard, and your scorecard is going to be something that helps you. 
 
And your Walmart team understand what's going on with your supply chain standards at Walmart. So again, this is not necessarily where your fines are going to be incurred, but it can help you understand where they are or where there's an issue that you're getting invalid fines. So this would be considered in the red zone of DPM or a huge issue. 
 
And then this is for the, Automation example. So there's no flat fine for automation but you will see a charge multiplied by the number of cases affected. And then again, there can be multiple defects for per PO. So just watching out if you have one error, it's probably going to happen in other, in other cases. 
 
Clicked too fast. And then Phase 3 SQEP charges, like we mentioned before, case compliance, pallet compliance, and load compliance. As you can see with case compliance, there's only one defect under that. But be sure to review these pretty regularly because Walmart may add additional defects underneath. 
 
That's the Beauty and kind of the scary part of SQEP is it can be added on to in in terms of adding different defects into the supply chain, depending on Walmart standards and as they're updated, just to call out there. But you can see these are pretty similar, except for, in terms of charges, except for that multiplier per case impacted. 
 
For case compliance, it's 1 per case impacted. For pallet compliance, it gets a little bit, more with the 4. per pallet impacted on the multiplier. And then for load compliance it makes sense because it's going to be a larger issue. It's 20 for the multiplier per load impacted. So again, we've kind of talked through this with pallet compliance. 
 
This would be more for your DPM. If you're seeing this on your SQEP scorecard, this would be another issue that would come up. I believe it would be under the yellow. So it would be more of a warning so addressing red, the larger issues as a priority and then yellow as second priority. And then here is a, this one would be an example for, let's go back, palette compliance, just want to check, Three pallets and three impacted POs for 200 if three POs were impacted, and then for the multiplier, since there was three pallets impacted, it's going to be 4, so the total comes out to 612, but again, we could add more POs here and the number would just go up, so. 
 
Just one thing to be aware of there. All right, we're going to get a look into how to SQEP, how to track SQEP performance for yourself as a supplier. So I mentioned this previously, SQEP portal or called the SQEP dashboard in HighRadius can be found in HighRadius under apps. If you want to access SQEP dashboard or any other app, Just go ahead and star it when you're in the apps portion of HighRadius, and that will pull up to your main screen every time. 
 
So here's an example of what the SQEP dashboard looks like. And as you can see, they have their DPMs listed here, defects per million. So if I was logging on, and again, this is just an example. I would look at case compliance first to say, wow, this is the bigger issue and kind of, you can click into each one of these cards and the the graphs down here will update in terms of that. 
 
If you want to learn a little bit more how to use this, we do have a great video on our YouTube page. It's called the SQEP Workshop with one of our partners, Ken, who works at GNC. He did a great job walking through this. He's a seasoned supplier, so that would be my recommendation for SQEP dashboard training. 
 
Or go on to HighRadius under Supplier Academy and go to the SQEP Learning page. And then there's another page that's labeled SQEP as well. Those have videos as well as just documentation on the SQEP program. All right, and then the SQEP invoicing schedule. This is important to highlight just to understand when different information will come out and how to have a regular dispute calendar, especially if you're doing this manually. 
 
So on the 21st, 21st of the month prior month's data for SQEP will be locked the 22nd and 27th, again these are kind of estimates, usually Walmart stays in this time zone, is the business review period which means essentially the internal team is, Looking at this and understanding if there's any other SQEP compliance fines they want to issue. 
 
The 28th will start the financial processing where the billing is generated for these defects and then the amounts due based on billing will be deducted scheduling the next outgoing payment. One thing to note here, Marking your calendars with these dates, especially if you're doing it manual, is a lot easier than checking pretty regularly. 
 
So I would, I would mark these in your calendars and if you haven't downloaded an FY24 calendar yet Peter can go ahead and share our FY24 Walmart calendar so you can start marking these for next year. All right, and then the The other helpful app in HighRadius is the Fixit Portal. Like it says above go to HighRadius, click into apps, type in Fixit. 
 
If you're searching on your search bar, please type it in, capital F I X, lowercase i t. That search bar is pretty finicky and can cause issues, so that's the easiest way to search it. Or you don't have access and let your RetailAdmin, your HighRadius Admin know that you don't have access. And again, this, This app is helpful for understanding the tickets under barcode and labeling compliance. 
 
And you can actually click into these and get ideas of what the actual issues are. They come with pictures and sometimes some descriptions. And again, if you want to know how to use FixItLikeAPro. I would recommend going to our YouTube page and clicking onto the SQEP Fines Workshop with Ken. He did a great job outlining what needs to be done in order to have corrective action, have these FixIt tickets disappear, especially if they're invalid, which means you won't be charged for them, but also understanding the root cause of some of the valid fines for these Phase 2 SQEP issues and addressing those properly. 
 
All right, and then for Fixit, here's some of the the corrective statuses. So again, I just wanted to include these in the PowerPoint so we had them, but they give a definition and the assigned group of what action needs to be done by either. Supplier. And for Walmart, it says NA, but they are doing something in the background and Ken has lots of tips to make sure they're helpful in terms of addressing if Walmart's not responding. 
 
All right, and like I said before, the FixIt portal is for only phase two and phase three defects, and it's going to detail images that are captured during the inspection process, and they're made visible in the FixIt app and if it says, Awaiting corrective action that is for the supplier and it's asking, Hey, please view this. 
 
We want to know how you're going to address this. And this is a great time to either say, Hey, this is not my inventory. I don't sell phone cases. Or get with your team, understand, Oh, okay. We're not compliance to the barcode requirements for Walmart. How can we change our barcodes? And then addressing this in the action tickets. 
 
One call out, corrective actions in Fix It are not disputing, and they are not waiving a fine if you do a corrective action. It's more of an accountability, letting Walmart's team know, hey, these are the issues we're seeing, and the supplier responding saying, hey, this is how we're going to fix them. 
 
All right, and then the action status just wanted to outline this here for, what the end result is. Again, we'll kind of skip through this because It's really just reading this, but wanted to include it for the Fix It tickets so that you're aware of the different status meanings. All right. 
 
Lastly, we're going to address disputing SQEP fines. Again, SQEP fines are disputed not in retail link apps, not in the SQEP dashboard, not in Fixit, but only in HighRadius. If you don't have access to HighRadius, you can create an account. I believe you just go to HighRadius slash walmart dot com. But if not, please ask your HighRadius Admin, or contact the EBS the Executive Business I believe is the email and the phone number if you have any questions about this. 
 
But essentially, what's needed to dispute in High Radius, the third party application for disputing SQEP fines and OTIF fines, But specifically for disputing SQEP fines, you're going to need your PO number, you're going to need the defect type, the distribution center, and the impacted cases. And then any backup documentation that can be found through a retail link on the SQEP dashboard. 
 
Walmart usually prefers, using Walmart data to dispute. So if you can find it on the FIXIT dashboard, you can find it on the SQEP dashboard, do the research first before you go disputing, see what you can find in Walmart's data, and then you can find most of this on the SQEP dashboard or FIXIT. So opening those first before disputing in High Radius is best practice. 
 
All right, so here's how you're going to dispute in High Radius. First things first, if you're seeing open and closed bills, that does not denote which ones you can dispute. Bills that have not been paid off or matched are, with the transactions, are open bills, and then after matching those bills, they're marked as closed, and both can be disputed. 
 
So you can go into each one of those tabs and collect Select that check mark that you're seeing under assignment ID to just start disputing any of, any of those, whether they're under open or closed bills. All right, and then it's pretty simple filling up the information such as dispute reason amount to be disputed, comments, so it's really rich if you're going in to fix it and you're looking at any of the details there, or you're clicking into the SQEP dashboard anything that you can find there. 
 
Putting that in the comments and then any attachments you're finding from that, like a fix it image or any of the other documentation that may be helpful in this case. And then if you're going to follow up and edit any of the disputes you made, they're going to be in your disputes tab. So that's kind of near open and closed bills, and you can click into that. 
 
So if you've disputed it, it should be in there. And then before we go to Q&A, I wanted to see if I had included this slide. There's always going to be a button here at the very bottom that says save. So if you're filing a dispute, go ahead and fill out that information and then save it, and then it will populate into the dispute section. 
 
If you're not doing that, You're not saving the dispute and it will not be going through. So that's just a one call out there that, that save button's kind of hidden. And I wanted to make sure we called that out. But with that, let's get into the live Q&A about SQEP compliance. Peter do we have any questions? 
 
[00:44:54] Peter Spaulding: We do have a few questions here. First of all, we'll start with a kind of a pretty general one. What if I don't have the SQEP app on my retail link? 
 
[00:45:05] Allie Truong: Okay, perfect. I am making assumptions that it's the SQEP dashboard and not the Fixit portal. Both of those can be found on HighRadius and you can request access to those through your HighRadius admin. 
 
Sorry, HighRadius, your Retail Link Admin and if you don't have access to your Retail Link Admin, you can actually find that in the apps portion, I believe or just type in search Retail Link Admin, and that should get you to either their email or a, a phone number that can help you. So, just requesting access for those, those two apps. 
 
[00:45:45] Peter Spaulding: Okay, great. We got one more or two more questions here, that I believe we can answer live. First one, I've heard that suppliers have some success disputing overage charges. Do you have best practices for disputing them? 
 
[00:46:01] Allie Truong: Yes. So it depends on the overage charge that you're talking about. This is the crux of a lot of issues that suppliers have, because if you're disputing them in a, in an AP deduction, so you're getting an overage charge or a shortage charge in an AP deduction context, there's going to be different best practices for a SQEP overage charge. 
 
So I would tease out the differences there first, and I'll, I'll focus kind of on. SQEP. So first, make sure it's a valid charge, a valid or an invalid charge. So if it's valid, you're probably having issues with your labeling. You're probably having issues with packing at your manufacturer or however your system works. 
 
So checking to see if it's a valid or invalid issue and addressing that. If it is invalid I would say it would be coming from Fixit. So, you're labeling not matching, or an invoice not matching labeling. That would be va that would be a valid reason, so you would have to accept that charge. An invalid would be, you know, those labels, being scanned incorrectly, or you're being charged for someone else's Overage. 
 
So checking Fixit, making sure that, you know, it's your box that there's a picture of, it's your label that there's a picture of, and for that, that would be my recommendations for SQEP. For overages, for AP deductions, I'm just gonna say join us on Thursday. We're doing a shortages, 201, which does cover overages in the title. 
 
So I would stay, I would tune in on Thursday. I forget the time that we're doing that. I believe it's 11. But join us then if you want to learn about AAP deductions, cause they're a little bit different and I don't want to confuse the two. 
 
[00:47:59] Peter Spaulding: Yeah. And just to kind of reiterate that point, there's. Sometimes the same the same issue will be will be dinged for three separate, compliance, I, I suppose Walmart teams and programs. So, there's, sometimes there's quite a bit of overlap. One more question or maybe a few more. It looks like we've got some more coming in in the chat, but, first of all, this is a little bit more technical and this is one that we may have to answer over emails after we do a little bit of research on our own. 
 
Do you know what type means within the palette PTI label? Is that something you know off the top of your head? 
 
[00:48:42] Allie Truong: I know where you would find it. I don't know definitively the answer, but look in the secondary packaging, and I'm not sure if you shared that in the chat, Peter but perfect. I would check there Command Find. 
 
I use a MacBook. So that's, that's the keyboard shortcut there, but Command Find and type in some of the keywords that you're looking for, for that particular, so you don't have to look through the table of contents on that document, or look through page numbers, just look for keywords. And that, that would be the first place I would check. 
 
And if not the EBS line is really helpful, but that phone number and email. 
 
[00:49:27] Peter Spaulding: Okay. We got a few more here if we have time for it. I think we do. How do you download POs for ASN issues all at one time, as opposed to clicking each dollar amount? Is it something that, you know, off the top of your head? 
 
[00:49:43] Allie Truong: I guess my first thing, PSO, PO, ASNs in the SQEP dashboard, I'm guessing. Are they talking about high radius? 
 
[00:49:56] Peter Spaulding: Not sure. 
 
[00:49:58] Allie Truong: I'm not sure either. I would say whatever application you're talking about, going to the help bar to see if there is something. And usually if there's a support, like in NOVA, if you're pulling the PO data in NOVA or another application. I know NOVA has different videos on like how things work for each OneWeb has those as well. So if it's in the scrub dashboard, I would watch those videos first. If not, please email us and we can get you in contact with someone who's a, a wiz at these applications and can be a mentor in that area. So I, I wanna,  
 
[00:50:34] Peter Spaulding: sure. Yeah, she, for the web dashboard, sorry. 
 
[00:50:37] Allie Truong: Okay, perfect. Yeah, I would go in and watch the YouTube video from Ken on our website or check the, they have a couple videos on Supplier Academy for SQEP. I don't want to give a definitive answer because I don't work in the SQEP dashboard on a daily basis, but those are the places I would look first, because If we can do anything to reduce clicks, that's something we talk about a lot. 
 
Hopefully that's, that is not a manual process having to click each one of those, but I would check there. Sorry, I don't have a definitive answer.  
 
[00:51:13] Peter Spaulding: Okay, great. We got one more here. We are having trouble with barcode compliance. What happens when they ding us for that, for an item, but in NOVA I show they received the line slash item in full? 
 
And a kind of a follow up question. Could I use the receiving report to dispute? 
 
[00:51:35] Allie Truong: So I'll answer the second question first. Using the receiving report to dispute may not work. I would go ahead and try it because there's not a one and done rule. So go ahead and dispute it and see if you can come back to dispute it if it doesn't go through with that. 
 
But it really depends on the root issue of barcode compliance. I would see if you have a corrective action in Fixit to see if there's more details. You can actually ask for more details. So let's say they didn't include a picture and they said barcode wrong. You can put in the chat, Hey, I don't understand. 
 
Why the barcode was wrong, can you give me more information? And that will probably help you get to a better conclusion, whether it being, hey, it wasn't full, I sent all the thing, all of the inventory that you required, but the barcode didn't actually say that, or the barcode was correct in all the information it provided, but it was the incorrect format. 
 
So, manual. process didn't know how to process it, got dinged, or an automated process dinged it because it didn't know how to read it. So that, that would be where I would kind of start, but again, try and dispute things. You can kind of throw things at the wall with Walmart's compliance programs more than other retailers like Amazon and go ahead and dispute things backdated as well. 
 
You never know. They say one thing, but then we see suppliers who just do something a year later and it gets approved and you're paid for it. You're paid back what you were fined. So, that would be my recommendation. 
 
[00:53:15] Peter Spaulding: And for a little bit more on using the Fixit chat function, the SQEP workshop video that I posted a little bit farther back, in that video, Ken gives some pretty good advice for how to navigate that interesting kind of world of communicating with Walmart. So that might be helpful for that question too. As well as we have another another webinar coming up on, phases two and three, which will dive a little bit deeper into barcode compliance as well. So stay tuned for that if you have any more questions about that. 
 
But yeah, I believe that's all of the questions that we have for now, if you would like to, move us along. 
 
[00:53:58] Allie Truong: Sweet. Yeah. I'll go ahead and talk about the focus group that we have coming up. So SupplierWiki, again, loves to talk to suppliers like you. And we're hosting two different opportunities to talk to us about what kind of content you want to see whether that's the type of content, if you would like a webinar, a webinar versus an article versus something else, or if you want us to focus on Walmart Canada next year, getting more resources for that, or more resources on SQEP, whatever you're interested in in the world of retail and revenue loss, we'd love to talk to you about it. 
 
So you can either join us in person this Friday if you're in the Northwest Arkansas area, or you can join us online December 16th, and may or may not have some GIFs for those who join and you can sign up for those on the SupplierWiki webinars page, or you can find them on any of our social media pages. So. 
 
[00:54:58] Peter Spaulding: Allie I've got one more quick question for you here, if that's okay, before we move on. Yes, related. Yes, SQEP related, yeah. Do we have do we receive the Fix It tickets before receiving the SQEP charges? Is that a question that we can answer here too? 
 
[00:55:15] Allie Truong: Yeah, that's a question we can answer. You should receive those before, but that's not always the case. 
 
So, those are supposed to be helpful in either understanding why something was valid or invalid. So I would say they, they are supposed to come before if they're not. being received before, ask for additional context. You can, there's another chat feature within Fixit, but those should be coming up before a SQEP charge, but it's not always cut and dry. 
 
So I'm sorry. 
 
Thanks. Yeah, no worries. All right. Well, Peter, I'm gonna let you take it away while I get set up for our bonus demo. 
 
[00:56:08] Peter Spaulding: Yeah, so if there's any kind of residual questions or issues that you guys have, please email us. Our, our emails are up there. You can reach out to us via email is probably the best way to get in touch with us. 
 
If you're interested in hosting a webinar with us or if you, if you like what we do, please sign up for the SupplierWiki newsletter or get in touch with us and, that way as well. But we're here to be a free resource to all of you guys. We're here to be as helpful to Walmart suppliers and retailer suppliers as possible. 
 
And, and we want to really expand that beyond just deductions and compliance programs as well. So whatever it is that you need, we'd love to, we'd love to help you with. So please let us know. All right, Allie, are you . Set to go. 
 
[00:57:03] Allie Truong: Let me know if you can see my screen here in a second. And again, if you're unable to stay on for the demo, we totally understand. 
 
So if this is where we say goodbye, we say goodbye now. But we'll go ahead and get into the demo now. Can you see my screen? Yep. That is the phrase of 2021, so I'm not trying to bring it back. All right. Thanks for everyone staying on for the OTIF radar demo. So here's a quick overview. We're going to dive into the OTIF dashboard from a prepaid perspective. 
 
And again, this, this product is for Walmart. And it actually is really cool because you don't have to open SQEP dashboard, fix it high radius as often, because you can actually see. a lot of your OTIF data here and you can also dispute directly from the OTIF radar dashboard. Perfect. So we'll just kind of scroll through this. 
 
This is the dashboard page. So this is where you'll land if you log on and you can see some of the Compliance trends through the time. You can also click to finds over time and get an idea of what the prepaid you. So here you're getting more prepaid fines versus in full. And then you can kind of just scroll down and see some insights in terms of your prepaid on time and your info. 
 
Full charges it shows you your supplier score, your supplier cases, the expected fines, and then possible invalid fines. So we actually have business insights baked in that help you understand which ones are invalid and which ones you can fight back. And again, this is a demo account, so these numbers aren't real. 
 
They're really just dummy numbers, but you can see that this is impactful, especially if you are noticing that you're having a lot of invalid fines. Yeah. So then you have just. Other information in terms of all of your, your cases and PO accountability, but I really want to spend most of my time here in the analysis. 
 
And again, you can kind of click into your carriers, origins different departments. Destinations for improving OTIF different segments that you, for your OTIF scorecard. You can dive into vendor numbers for OTIF. So it really slices and dices and makes things a lot easier instead of opening three retail link apps and high radius and going in and looking at this. 
 
So we're going to jump into the Carrier section here. And this is helpful just to understand, so we're talking in the prepaid context, we also have this application for collect lanes, but for prepaid, this is really interesting to see, you know, let's say you're looking at central refrigerated and it is 0 percent on time, they are not performing. 
 
So it's really interesting to see if hurricane trucking, they find that they're expected to understand the accountability and actually Pass some of those finds on to your three, your 3PLs. So I find that super interesting. You can click in here and see, you know, compliance trends for this particular this particular carrier, and you can go into orders as well and just see each PO and understand the compliance issues at the PO level. 
 
Click into this. look through the different purchase order lines, download all of the information here. And again, this is your Walmart data that we can pull in. And if you're interested in setting up a, a free trial, we do free trials where you can actually dispute an app. And we'll go into the dispute section here. 
 
It gives you a overview of the different disputes, what's accepted, and again, dummy numbers, so these can be a lot larger and the dispute win rate for this particular dummy retailer, and then clicking in here, you can actually see that all of this is populated for disputing an OTIF fine, And the dispute files are actually auto populated. 
 
So we pull those in for you. There's no uploading, having to upload. You can upload additional things here if you, you've wanted to, but actually dispute in app, which is pretty cool. So with that. Peter I'm just gonna say thank you to everyone who jumped on. If you're interested in setting up a demo or time to talk about OTIF Radar or other product deductions, Navigator or Document Explorer, we've got lots of products around retail revenue loss, and we would love to set up that time so you can start disputing free for standards about two weeks. 
 
So with that, I'll say Thank you to everyone who joined. Thank you, Peter, for teeing up those questions perfectly. And hopefully we'll see you for the rest of the week's webinars.  
 
[01:02:18] Peter Spaulding: Thank you all.  
 
[01:02:19] Allie Truong: Thank you. Take care. Bye.