Prepping for Walmart Audits

Prepping for Walmart Audits 
 

[00:00:00] Bekah Tatem: Today, we're going to be going over prepping for Walmart audits. My name is Bekah. I will be your host today. And then we also have Allie here and she'll be leading us through our content. So we're both a part of the supplier wiki team here at SupplyPike. if you've been on our website at all, you've probably seen our articles, our gated content, our, resources. 
 

And You're on a webinar right now, so we're really glad you're here just to get us started. We're going to go through some epic queues that normally pop up and then we will dive into the content. 1st, will you get a copy of this slide deck? Yes, normally in 3 to 4 business days, you can expect. 
 

Expect it and a recording in your inbox, and then just what's the best way to ask a question. We love any interaction that you want to partake in while you're here. So the Q and a tab is a great place for us to see your questions and I'll get them queued up for Allie and then. Always love your interaction in the chat. 
 

Welcome to share your experiences or anything else you want to share with the group there. And then just to get us into our agenda. 1st, we're going to start off talking about a recent announcement that Walmart made regarding their post audit process, then we'll just do an overview of post audits, break down the different types of post audit claims, talk about how to prevent them, and then how to do it. 
 

How to dispute them if they do happen. and then we'll wrap up with a Q and a at the end and then just to briefly touch on what is SupplyPike. So we are a platform that helps suppliers get paid and get better through deduction recovery. You'll see some of the suppliers that we work with on this slide. And if you're not 1 of them, we would love to change that. with that, I will turn it over to Ali to take us through the content. 
 

[00:01:56] Allie Truong: Awesome. Thank you, Bekah. Yeah, let's get into today's content. Like Bekah mentioned, the agenda is packed today, but please don't let that hold you back from asking questions, as we talk through the post audit world at Walmart. So I wanted to first call out this recent post audit change. This was posted just Last week, and I'll read through this a little bit to walk us through, because you may not have seen this announcement on retail link. 
 

essentially, starting, February 1st post audit firms will create coops in lieu of traditional post audit claims.less than 100 K will be approved by the internal post audit team instead of the merchant and like the historical post audit process, they will continue to be. A avenue for automatic collection, and we'll get into kind of the current process as we talk through today when co ops are left pending or when it is rejected without a valid reason for being provided. 
 

again, if you have questions about this is something that we're currently researching. Obviously, we haven't been through. This exact process, but supply bike does have a service that helps you dispute your post audit claims that leverages our platform and how we aggregate data. So if you have questions, you can always, we'll show our emails at the end to get you connected on that front. 
 

But if you have questions about the particular process change, we're researching that currently. You can also. Reach out to postauditqueriesatwalmart. com to get some, understanding on what's going on there. So let's just break down the changes because it's a lot of text. and we want to make sure that it is easy to understand. 
 

So this has gone into effect already. post audit claims. will primarily create co ops instead of traditional post audit claims. Anything under 100k will be approved by the internal post audit team and not the merchant. But the collection process is essentially similar and we're going to cover what that looks like today. 
 

So there still will be that avenue for automatic collection that will happen through AR building or accounts receivable billing if co ops are left pending, or if a co op is rejected without a valid reason. So merchants will only need to be contacted for further review if co ops are rejected without a valid reason. 
 

And why is this important? so it's just helpful to understand through these reviews that valid and, Valid reasons are provided with any rejections, and unsubstantiated rejections may require escalation to secure collection. the exception would only be traditional post audit claims. Those will still be issued for certain post audit processes. 
 

And like I said, we recommend what Walmart recommends. If you have further questions about this language and how it relates to your particular post audits or your business, reaching out to that Walmart email that's provided. All right. Awesome. So that is the one update and it's really interesting that Walmart put this out at this time because typically this is around the season where we start to see post audits coming out for suppliers. 
 

Typically these happen on a quarterly or bi quarterly basis. Cadence, depending on your business. So we wanted to cover what a post audit is because you may be receiving these shortly or have already received them, in this month. All right. Just to level the playing field on what post audits are when it comes to revenue loss at Walmart, there are a couple of different avenues and it's important to understand the context of which you can, have. 
 

and how that can filter into the post audit later. So we'll start with accounts payable deductions or AP deductions. This is when you get your invoice and you think it's going to be 1, 000, but it comes back and it's 800. Where did those 200 go? They were deducted off of your invoice because of some issue, related to a code with Walmart. 
 

All right. We have a lot of content on that as our bread and butter here on Supplier Wiki is talking through, Walmart deductions. So Bekah, I'm going to let you be dealer's choice and pick whatever resource makes the most sense. and you can actually dispute those and they're disputable in a Walmart portal in Retail Link called APDP or Accounts Payable Dispute Portal. 
 

On the other side of that is essentially another silo of how suppliers can lose money to Walmart is the accounts receivable deductions or chargebacks. We typically call them fines or chargebacks. And that's a fine to a supplier. So it's not going to necessarily come off your invoice, but we'll come through the high radius portal and you owe 200 to Walmart for a supply chain issue or an OTIF fine, the on time in full compliance program. 
 

So there are also a slew of codes and reasons that you can get fined. Again, I'll let Bekah send some of those resources because we won't have time to get into accounts receivable or AR deductions and chargebacks or accounts payable. Accounts payable deductions or AP deductions today, but these are essentially ways that you can receive these fines and as a supplier, you can dispute them, they can get approved, you can pay them off and you would think out of sight, out of mind. 
 

Not necessarily with post audits. That's Walmart reviewing transactions up to two calendar years back to recover funds. And those can be in a couple of different buckets. They can be on invoices that you never received a deduction on that their team has gone back and said, Hey, we missed this. We want to recover this. 
 

It can be a deduction that you disputed and got approved and the team reviewing. This is saying actually. This is invalid. We're going to go ahead and charge you again for this, or it could even be something that got rejected or partially approved, and they're re disputing it for either more money or the full amount. 
 

it really, anything is on the table, and it's, I'll say this again, throughout today's presentation. Our important strategy is to make sure, if you are disputing anything with Walmart or any retailer, to keep those files on hand for the period amount that A retailer can go back and then find you again for those transactions. 
 

So really important to have all the things that you're disputing, whether you're not disputing them, or they are approved or rejected saved so that we can get into some of that prevention and disputing for post audits. The other really important call out with post audits is they do not have a portal to dispute in. 
 

like AP deductions, unlike AP deductions and AR deductions, there is no portal. It's all done through emails. and there is not a place that you can go in and see where your status is. And we'll get into that as we talk about who and what the auditing team does. So what is the frustrations with auditing past what we have already talked about? 
 

While it's not possible to pull hard numbers on post audits from RetailLink, the research we've done with the suppliers we've worked with show that there are serious consequences. Like I said, you can get, we see audits coming at, 2 to 4 times a year, but really the average post audit per year can be 8 times because of the way that they're bucketed, and I'll talk through how those are bucketed, but it comes out to about 8 times on average. 
 

The average cost of an audit is 33, 000, so you do the math. 33, 000 times eight, really stacks up and 33, 000 is nothing to snuff at. And most suppliers, especially our large, larger ones, your medium or your enterprise suppliers can reach to the seven figures. So that is a huge cost center for your business. 
 

it can be really difficult to allocate resources to, Even with large numbers like that, and like I said, nothing is off the table with post audits. A P. O. or a series of P. O. S. can fall into a couple of different scenarios. like I said, never deducted. And then 2 years later, it's brought up in a post audit or claims that have been filed disputed approved. 
 

Can also be included in a post audit. So again, very important to have your information on your invoices, your PO's and any disputes saved in a file and then deleted after that kind of 2 year period where it's not no longer necessary to hold on to the 1st thing with post audits. now that you have all that context on how serious it is for your business, and some of the other contexts about what is included, it's important to know if you have one. 
 

So the current process is either email or, direct mail. snail mail where an auditor will send the supplier contact listed on your online supplier. if you're unsure how you're going to be contacted, go into retail link, go to your OSA, your online supplier agreement, and you can actually see who the supplier contact is and if it's an email or address, it will be sent that way and the audit process The audit package, which we'll go through a sample of that, will outline the claims with the type in amount, and typically, unless it's just a huge PO, there's going to be multiple POs per claim, and they will batch the similar and persistent claims under the same type and give a total amount for those, that set of claims. 
 

how does one distinguish a post audit from a regular deduction? audits are deducted on a check using that Store 9000. And that's a question we get pretty often with suppliers, is, hey, I've got this Store 9000, I don't know what is going on. That's typically the code used for post audits. And post audits are going to show up on that 9 digit claim number in APIS. 
 

You can actually go and search that, especially if you've been auto deducted, you can see that. Just to break that down, the first digit is going to correspond with the auditing firm. The second and third digits in APIS are going to be the year of the audit, and then the last six numbers are going to be the claim numbers. 
 

helpful additional information if you're wanting to understand who you're talking to, the year, so you can go and search more of your documentation or documentation in Retail Link, and then the last six are those claim numbers, so helpful for searching, or talking about that with the auditing firm. 
 

What is the timeline for post audits? So when I'm talking about this, I'm talking about both the interval where you can receive those post audits and how far back can a supplier actually, have claims that are included in a post audit. So there's not necessarily set intervals when you can expect to receive post audits. 
 

It seems to be at the cadence of the auditing firms. but. We do typically see them around that quarter end or year end, and that's why it's really pertinent to talk about this today. Like I said earlier, post audits can be backdated up to two calendar years from when the claim is posted. Now the language here is really important to understand, and I'll talk through this example, because this means a claim posted, let's say 23 can be brought back in a post audit in January 25. 
 

We are in February 25 today. as you can see, you can go all the way back to February 23 for post audit claims. if you're expecting or you have one on your desk, a post audit, I would definitely go back and look and see what documentation you can pull up at this point to help prepare for some of the proof documentation to dispute the post audit claim that may be coming your way. 
 

And I want to call out here, these factors, especially if you're not aware of them and don't have a prevention plan in place, make it difficult to respond effectively. to post audit claims. But we're going to give you some tips and tricks if you have nothing in place or you have a kind of an outline of a process in place so you can dispute these post audits. 
 

What's really important to understand is who the auditor is. So Walmart, and you can see it in the document, the documentation that we talked about earlier, refers to internal auditing teams in that documentation and external auditing teams. internal, not necessarily a loose word, but from previous audits, Walmart has used Apex Analytics who perform those internal audits for their team. 
 

And that's pretty common for Walmart and a company of their size to use teams that are maybe tooa layman external, but use them internally and are dedicated to just working on Walmart audits from what we've seen, unless it's changed in the last year, haven't heard anything about that. Walmart does not seem to have a truly internal team that hands the handles these audits, but they mainly go to the apex analytics team and then for, Excess audits that they're working on, and we've got these listed in order of the auditors that the Walmart team works with, Apex Analytics, makes sense, Connelly, PGRX, and Auditech are some of the auditing teams that have worked on these before. And again, these are those external ones. Important thing to call out with these audit firms, and I know this for the external auditing teams, I can't confirm for the internal auditing teams, but essentially, these audit firms do earn a commission based on how much money they can extract from, for Walmart, from suppliers. 
 

So it's really important to be on your A game because These auditors are on their a game as well. They're wanting to find anything for Walmart. That could be something that they should have been owed and they're motivated to do that and incentivize and suppliers should be aware of that. And also understand that any dollar that. 
 

the external auditors are finding is going out of the supplier's pocket and to Walmart. Some of those are valid and fair enough, paying those is really important, but some of them are invalid and suppliers should be, prepared to and incentivized to keep the money that is, rightfully theirs rather than an invalid fine. 
 

All right, let's get into a breakdown of claims. So we'll go through the details of the claim packet. We'll also talk about the code and the types and some of the ways that you can dispute those. So here's a sample of what an audit packet might look like. You can see we'll go through some of these details. 
 

Very official. Some details at the top. You've got your claim types, areas of responsibility, amount pending, and we'll go through all of these together. So first is the supplier information. You can see the date. You can see who it would be to, important if. You're looking at your, OSA, making sure that is under the correct nine digit, supplier number. 
 

You can see claim number and as well as supplier number as well. And you can also use that claim number to look up, details in APIS if you've already been auto deducted. Alright, now here is the brief details at the top. You've got your claim type code. And these can be split. specific to each auditor and claim type. 
 

you've got the area of responsibility, which is essentially just an internal auditing grouping, which denotes the claim types and how they fall into their scope of expertise. So not necessarily super helpful for the supplier. Then the claim explanation. So it is the definition of whatever that claim is. 
 

you can see in this first one, it's accepted. Excessive defective merchandise. and then you'll see that. That total here that is tied to each of those claims, and that's the anticipated amount for each claim and the total cost of the post audit here. This is additional auditor information, which helps you understand who's auditing you and how you can get in contact with him, which is later in the packet. 
 

So this is additional information. This is again, as you go through the packet, there's more stuff. So you have your. Supplier number, name, number. It breaks down more of the type of claim, that claim total. It provides the same, claim explanation. It shows you the date. And time and some of the support supporting details that may be included. 
 

So really helpful to start building your case and understand how the case has been built to get you against you in that audit. You also have contact information for your auditor, and it's really important to be proactive in communicating with this team. And we'll talk about that in our prevention as well and disputing. 
 

Again, as you go through the packet, this is essentially just a sample. You'll have breakdowns of more of the claim information. again, you have your important claim number, supplier info, but you have things like the BOL number, the invoice date, UPC, item number, so you really can get some of those details that will help you go research your claim, and understand. 
 

At a line level, what's going on versus some of those high level informations at the beginning. But these are just some of the columns that may be included in your post audit. Okay, let's get into the types of post audits and how you can prevent them. This is Walmart's advice for post audit claims. So I'm going to read it verbatim just so it's easier to understand Walmart's language. 
 

So it's really important to understand exactly what the retailer is saying. So it's always easier for merchants and suppliers to properly handle agreements as close to the transaction as possible before the issue is reviewed by the post audit payment. So essentially what's being said there in that first paragraph is communicate early. 
 

Make sure that you are talking to your merchant. Make sure that you are reaching out to the auditor to understand. Hey, I got this post audit claim, reaching out to your auditor for this, like here's what's happening and making sure that your merchant is aware as well. By the time that the post payment audit is reviewing the situation is very possible or that the buyer or supplier contact has changed. 
 

And those in chair at the time of that review may not recall the details of the scenario. So properly addressing agreements from the beginning is beneficial to all parties involved. Let me break this down for. Everyone essentially what's happening here is seats change. It happens, especially on a 2 year cadence. 
 

It's pretty regular for people to get promotions or have lateral moves or just not being the same situation as before. So what's being said here is 1st. Make sure that if you are emailing about really big changes that could have effect in a post audit claim, that you're documenting that you're calling it out ahead of time, and that you're saving that documentation. 
 

Same with any of your disputing claims, any documentation that you're collecting, put it in a shared Dropbox with your full team where everyone has access. even if someone were to leave the team or not have the same, access to that documentation anymore, so that you're prepared in the beginning and you're not lagging on communicating those, that documentation to the, post audit team, as well as making sure that you have access to the documentation. 
 

not a, huge deduction coming through that you are owed to Walmart, half a million dollars, 33, 000 dollars, et cetera. So that is, I think some of the best advice, of prevention. Ahead of time, but we'll get into what that looks like. If, prevention is a shorter timeline rather than you are preventing some of these post audit claims 2 years ago as well as how you can just in the here and now prepare for an audit. 
 

Even if there wasn't a prevention plan in place. Okay, so before we get into all of the prevention planning, I think it's important context to talk about the types of post audit claims. and this is going to feel really similar to any of our deduction content that you've seen because They're basically built off of the small different codes that you're getting as a supplier. 
 

If you're getting code 20 fours, it may be a collection of those codes and they're bucketed under these types of post audit claim numbers. So we'll start with the pricing post audit. Those are typically gonna occur where there's a discrepancy between what Walmart expected to pay the supplier and what was eventually paid to the supplier. 
 

A couple examples is. If it's been agreed that an item is price protected but not all units were captured when calculated. Again, if you see this type of issue, it's great to correct it, communicate it to your manager, or communicate it to your merchant, and collect that information and save it in case a post audit comes up in the future. 
 

Another example is a supplier approving a rollback with Walmart, but then they were charged for the full amount. again, Similar process of maybe you've, solved it in the here and now, but make sure you're doing the due diligence to document that in case post audit claim comes back and says, hey, you didn't pay that even though you did and you have that documentation just makes it a lot easier for everyone involved. 
 

We'll roll back to preventing. So we've talked about some of those disputing mechanisms, but if you're wanting to prevent these again, use clear verbiage when negotiating pricing claims with the buyer, if you're having an in person or zoom meeting, sending follow up notes afterwards of, hey, this is what we talked about and making sure that other people are, emailing back. 
 

Yes, that's correct. And suppliers should know in the email body that if there's an offer. Okay. And until an email between a supplier and a buyer confirms those pricing updates, capturing that in your documentation is super important too, because it, you need to make sure that buyer has like verbal written confirmation, not just verbal. 
 

All right. The allowance post audits, these are going to be. allowances that are off invoice, not given at the time of invoice. So Walmart is coming back and saying, Hey, I'm actually owed this percentage because it's part of your allowance plan. And that can come in the form of cash discounts, defective allowances, defective being, Hey, X percent of my inventory, just cut that off because it's probably going to be defective as well as quantity allowances. 
 

So how do you prevent that? Check allowances in your vendor agreement, that OSA that I mentioned. Again, you can find that in retail link under your profile, and then it will show, online supplier agreements, and you can click and review that to check those really regularly, especially if you someone on your team is the one that is sending POs to make sure that allowances are attached to the correct POs. 
 

And then, second off, make sure these claims, when the allowance is not in the proper segment in the EDI raw data, where Wal Mart states it should be, or SAMS, because SAMS can be included in this as well. And if EDI is an accurate An acronym that you're not familiar with, or you're not sure about what that process would look like to make sure that the allowance data is on your EDI. 
 

We've got content on that as well. And that's an issue. We see suppliers deal with a lot. It's just not having the correct information when it comes to transmitting data through EDI. And preventing this, just ensure that you're pulling all of the segments of that ordered raw data before invoicing. And if you catch it and you've already sent the invoice, work with your merchant to send the best process typically. 
 

It would be through Nova, just making an edit to the PO to include that and then saving that documentation again so that when you have post audit, you're not digging for that two years later. All right, this one is on freight and handling charges on returns. And if you remember the post audit sample that I showed you before, we had two claims. 
 

There was one on defective merchandise, and then there was one on freight. and this is one that typically will go with other claims that you're seeing. sometimes you'll see two of these post audits go together where claims that are in one bucket also trigger another type of post audit claim. And this is one that typically will go with other claims that you're seeing. 
 

So the freight and handling charge is when the auditors are going to calculate the cost of delivering cargo on a damaged product, and then they will create an audit to recover the freight charges on that item. So Walmart accounting calculates for about a 10 percent handling charge on all damaged products, and so if that is over the amount, they will tack on a freight and handling charge for returns. 
 

How do you prevent these? So this is one of the ones that is really hard to prevent. It's really hard, to dispute unless it is just completely invalid. And it's hard because a lot of suppliers don't have control over how or why a product is damaged. It could happen at several different areas of the supply chain. 
 

I think this is really basic advice, but it's worth mentioning. Just ensure that the parts that you own That you're able to confirm that your product has not been damaged, whether it's leaving your dock and you have a picture of it and you're saving that and your warehouse is taking those regularly, or. 
 

If you're working with your, a 3PL team that there's the correct checks and balances in terms of responsibility. If something is continuously getting damaged and it becomes a chronic issue, making sure that you can have some kind of relationship to where you're not stuck with a post audit every time someone else is taking on the responsibility of your freight and damaging it. 
 

The other 1, Also, basic, but worth mentioning is ensuring proper packaging and palletization of your items to ensure arrives safely. And we've got lots of information on that. We just did a webinar on packaging 101 or we're going to be doing it. So really excited, to share that content as well. If you were seeing a lot of SQEP charges, that'd be worthwhile checking out. 
 

All right, T O N U or Trucks Ordered Not Used. This occurs anytime a supplier doesn't use a truck because it costs money, and Walmart or the supplier must reroute the driver. So suppliers may see this claim when they cancel a collect order, and if they're doing that consistently, they will show up. 
 

In the form of a post audit and a important call out to collect suppliers. You might see this claim if you're canceling an order. So again, maybe you're not using that truck for prepaid. It would also be if you're canceling an order as well. How do you prevent this 1? So this is the most common error that we see when we are helping suppliers. 
 

Dispute audits is load constraints aren't set up correctly in item setup. Yeah, it goes all the way back to item setup in Supplier 1 and can cause loads to build incorrectly, which then makes you not able to ship all the product, which then, affects your. OTIF score and can show up in the form of fines because you and deductions because you're not sending all the product that is needed on that truck for that order and it goes all the way downstream to post audits. 
 

really important to lean on prevention and it's a little bit harder to dispute these, T, N, T, O, and U's.just because, is in that item set up. it's better to have, offense rather than defense on this particular claim type. Another is failure to combine loads. This happens anytime a purchase order is removed from a truck in the logistics. 
 

The logistics company dispatches a new truck to cover that load, and this may also occur if there is a large shortage. So it will just depend on how your claim packet is built out and the details included. Again, this wouldn't just affect collect suppliers, but, or prepaid suppliers, but also collect suppliers. 
 

You might see this claim if you're not utilizing those loads properly. All right, when it comes to preventing failure to combine loads, again, some more basic advice, but you say it and I'm sure you're saying it to your teams or your teams are talking about it, but things happen in practice. Sometimes it just Details are missed. 
 

Double check with your logistics provider that you're utilizing the entire truck when you're assigning a load. and suppliers may have to go back to Walmart and ask the retail, the retailer to rebuild the truck with the pos on it as requested. building loads properly is just as much a supplier's responsibility as it is Walmart's, and it's a great initiative, especially, if you have a post audit, you're learning from this. 
 

A great action item is to make sure that you're building those trucks properly and showing that initiative with the Walmart team. All right, here is the post audits checklist. These are the high level best things to just look at your post audit process and make sure you're doing. And if you're not, start today because you're going to really thank yourself in 2027 when you have claims from February 2025 that you're getting back in the form of post audits. 
 

So I'll be repeating myself here, but I think it's worthwhile. Always document every call meeting with an email and save it in a shared folder with your teammates in case someone or yourself moves to a different team. Know your supplier agreement, like the back of your hand. This is going to be. The, it's the shared document, the legal binding document between you and Walmart. 
 

So know what you've agreed to and know what you haven't agreed to. Both are really helpful when starting your dispute and preventing anything when it comes to fines, chargebacks, deductions, and post audits. Check your accounting scorecard and investigate any EDI or invoice accuracy issues. even, pinpointing back to item setup, making sure that everything is squared away there, and your issues aren't deriving from something really early on in your supply chain process. 
 

Review the Supplier Quality Excellence Program. Or scrap this, we like to call it for proper packaging requirements and Walmart has a whole PDF on all of their packaging requirements. Follow that to a T and if you haven't really been working in the program, it is newer. It started in 2021. it's really worthwhile to understand the documentation there, because you may be getting fines from that program that you're not aware of. 
 

Or you're not sure how to solve for, and I guarantee that if they didn't get everything in the first round with SQEP, they will throw it into a post audit as well. Ensure all your items are set up correctly, because that is the building block to how your trucks are built, how things are picked up, how things are packaged, and can con Can cause shortages and other issues if you're not doing that correctly. 
 

And then use precise and unambiguous language in all email correspondence to prevent misunderstandings. Specify your exact time frames. Don't leave gray areas for things to be misinterpreted. One tip is if you have an internal AI system or can anonymize some of the language and use chat GPT, it's a great way to just check. 
 

Hey, is anything ambiguous here? How can I make this email more clear? This communication before you send it. But again, chat GPT is great. Make sure you're not sending or sharing any private information in chat GPT. That is a no for most companies. Alright, let's talk about, we've talked about prevention, we've talked about the types of claims, we've talked about who may be creating these post audit claims, we've talked about some of those other details and context, but we want to get into the nitty gritty of how we actually dispute these and how we win them. 
 

this is the post audit workflow, the post audit workflow, and this is something that we've built out here at Supplier Wiki to help suppliers. Understand the best ways and the shortest timeframes to make sure you're not getting charged or auto deducted all of the money from a claim to make sure that you're fighting those fines and post audits intelligently so that you're able to get. 
 

back the most amount of money possible. And this is the process that we use or think of if you are interested in supply pike, disputing those claims for you. So first stop is to review your post audit package and respond to the auditor. information on your packet. Why is this important? So frequent communication with the auditor does allow for an extension of time. 
 

like I said, you may get your amount auto deducted from your account and the amount and timeliness of post audits does At least for me. Make it feel like you have to take action immediately. The best thing to do is flip to the back, find the auditor information, contact them and say, hey, I just got the packet reviewing now and give yourself time to, look through it intentionally and maybe ask some questions as you are reaching out to that auditor. 
 

This email also serves as proof that you and your supplier team are capable of solving the post audit and builds a relationship with them. We have a team member who has done tons of audits and she recommends reaching out to them because you're establishing that relationship and there are suppliers who don't reach out because they're either researching or they're not aware and they will auto deduct and it's a lot harder to work with the team if you're not showing that. 
 

No, that proactiveness. So you've done that and you're going to start your research. You'll read through the claim document, take notes, have your supplier agreement pulled up as well. Take notes and make sure that, things are matching up accordingly. If you have an allowance claim that they're citing your allowance. 
 

agreement with Walmart correctly, that's the correct percentage, all the details are lining up. And then depending on your claim, review what data may be available in RetailLink or any internal information. So those are those emails, maybe going to SupplierOne, going to Nova for PO data, and any PO edits or cancellations. 
 

And going into Luminate or Scintilla to get additional information as well. Now, I don't have a particular report for Scintilla to pull for audit information, but if someone has a recipe that they'd like to share in the chat, that they've used, go for it. Okay, you've done that research and wanted to stop here. 
 

I know I've covered a little bit, but we do have some slides on the supplier agreement. What is it? It is a legal document. It's your agreement with Walmart and Walmart's agreement with you as a supplier, to adhere to each other's standards and in that agreement, you are, it's going to apply to anyone who is supplying product to Walmart for resale and any agents used by suppliers. 
 

So that's why it's really important to have that understanding that context, especially when it comes to some of the logistics side. If you're not owning that, what is your responsibility and how do you hold that? If it's. It's one of your partners that's actually taking that action that, is the catalyst for the post audit claim. 
 

And like I said, I have a wonderful screenshot. If you are an OG supplier, you've been doing this for a while, it's no longer in a OSA or GSM app. You just go to the top of retail link. Click this profile, go to my agreements and you should have access. if you're not seeing access to a particular agreement, whether it's under a different business unit or different 9 digit supplier number, et cetera, you need to reach out to your admin team, but you can actually view and edit on the browser PF. 
 

So that's where you would have signed it with Walmart if you're renewing it or your 1st time, et cetera. So just important context to make sure you know where that is. Okay, we've done our research. We reached out to the post audit team. Now, what's the second step? You need to understand the type of claim you're facing and what your options are based on what bucket they fall into. 
 

And it's really important to call out that it is the supplier's responsibility to research these. Post audits promptly and dispute if needed. Your merchant is not going to be someone that is researching with you. Again, if they are a resource, that's great. That's not necessarily their main priority, but leverage that relationship to the extent of. 
 

What that relationship is, if you've been working with that merchant for a really long time and you have a great relationship, they may be able to support that and even share documentation that they have. if you're missing an email or etcetera. So there's 2 types of, Deductions, there's correspondence based and supplier agreement based. 
 

one would be a violation of your supplier agreement. like I said, you were supposed to have a 5 percent allowance, but you really used 8. It's going against what your supplier agreement says or correspondence based, which is just all of other miscellaneous, etc. So you can sort them into those groups, and think about them from that viewpoint to then build your research and build your case. 
 

Correspondence based post audits also have another workflow within them. So if you're seeing one that's 500 to 100, 000, Walmart's probably going to auto deduct that claim from a check. and an auditor will email a supplier, or, send it in the mail if they don't have the email to the, supplier. 
 

They'll send that claim packet. That's where APIS or APIS comes in, handy because you can actually look up that claim, see some of the details as well, and then go disputing from there. If it's even one cent above 100, 000, or it goes to a million dollars or more, the auditor will email the supplier the claim packet and the supplier has roughly 15 days to respond until the auditor escalates and not responding to the auditor will continuously escalate the claim and you may see an auto deduction of a certain percentage, but essentially, the claim. 
 

You owe Walmart money, and so they're going to continue contacting you, and that may hinder your relationship with Walmart continuing to do business with them.just to back up, we have two of these. This is the different workflows and triggers that will happen. We went through correspondence based. 
 

Again, that's going to be based on a dollar amount value. Now. We have the supplier agreement based post audits. So typically how we see this happening is if a supplier has a history of going against their supplier agreement versus if they don't. if you're a supplier that has been having history of claims, Walmart will probably auto deduct those claims, no matter the amount that's. 
 

if you are continuing to not adhere to the legal document that you agreed to with Walmart, they will be less compliant to hold back that auto deduction. If the supplier doesn't have a history of claims, the auditor will follow similar to when we saw the 100, 000 and above for correspondence based claims. 
 

for your patience. Email the packet have 15 days to respond until it's escalated and not responding. We'll continue to escalate the claim. and I don't know. I don't know the direct or if there's a process, but that may go to your buyer or there may be legal action as well. All right. You've emailed the auditing team, you've figured out what kind of claim it is, you're starting to do research, what do you do next? 
 

You keep doing research on the back end, making sure that you're building your case, finding out if the claim, how much of the claim is valid versus invalid, and the proof that you have on your side as the supplier to prove that, and continue to email the auditor the research that you've compiled. Being proactive and prompt is going to yield the best results. 
 

Now, from our research, from the suppliers that we've worked with. Most post audits are partially invalid. So there's always something that you can get back from these. Don't take them as face value. 100 percent of this is correct. Again, my comment earlier of, the audit teams are incentivized to dig up anything and. 
 

They may, throw something at the wall and see if it lands and they don't have the full story either. So they're piecing this together. It's your responsibility as the supplier to make sure that you're providing the full picture and showing that the claim is invalid. So we'd like to bucket it into 2 different sides. 
 

So let's say we're starting with the invalid claims. You're looking through your. Post audit claim packet, and you're seeing that, hey, this isn't lining up to my documentation that I found. This is invalid. Make sure that you're getting repaid save that proof documentation, or you've already got it saved and you're just reviewing it. 
 

Don't delete it. as soon as you use that for the post document in. It may be still helpful to use later and then communicate those learnings to your team. Make sure that your team is aware of the things that they're doing every day, how it can impact to the dollar amount or to the severity of a post audit and just learning and changing processes with that. 
 

And then most claims do most post audits do have a validity. So just be prepared to write that off a percentage of that. will probably be a cost to you review proof documentation. Again, you want to make sure if anything looks valid, you can confirm that it shouldn't be in that invalid claims side. and again, it's the same whether it's valid or invalid. 
 

Communicate those learnings to your teams. Hey, we did this wrong. We didn't, use our allowances correctly, or we had a lot of defective merchandise. Here's how we're planning to fix this in the future. How can we collaborate with other teams to ensure this? And just apply those learnings to your processes to avoid these types of claims in future audits. 
 

All right, this is the post audit disputing process timeline. Again, this is More of a rough estimate and would be based on if you are not, if you don't have a history of claims or if it's 100, 000 or more, make sure that you're contacting the auditor as soon as you can in the 15 days from when the claim was sent. 
 

Um.and, with a post audit claim, once it's determined valid or invalid, make sure that you're communicating to your team. So there's learnings, and, working to absolve any issues that are still lingering from that post audit. All right, here's a couple tips, that I've already covered. Make sure that your online supplier agreement has the correct address and contact information. 
 

If not You may have to work with the auditing team for that timeline, as well as making sure that you're not auto deducted. Respond to the auditor as promptly as possible. And just like any dispute process provide as much documentation as needed and spell it out. Make sure it's clear and not ambiguous. 
 

Same as you would do for any of your communication with your teams. And then if you do not receive a response from your auditor, make sure that you are being proactive that and. Ring the alarm bells that you are working on your post audit that you are compliant to understanding what's going on and you are working on making sure you're proving validity of all the claims. 
 

So here are some of the contacts that you can reach out to vendor call center. Again. You can email that email address, which I can go back to from the beginning. The post audits queries at walmart. com. We'll include that in this slide next time. And you can reach out to the microfilm department. I know that's a little. 
 

Old school, but that's still listed in the processes for Walmart. so you can re request a copy from that department as well. Last thing, and this should be a last case situation, you can loop in your buyer to influence the auditor if that's a relationship that you feel like has that capacity, as well as if you feel really solid that you've done your own research and you can prove, that some of those claims are invalid. 
 

All right. We are at the end and we've got time to spare for the questions. So I think Bekah's on and she will ask those questions while I get a drink of water. 
 

[00:48:51] Bekah Tatem: Yeah, thank you. Allie. That was a lot of content. So thanks for taking us through that. Super insightful. we did have 1 question come through that I'll go ahead and queue up for you. 
 

So this one's regarding Trex order not used. The question is, do you know how a vendor gets specific details associated with a truck's order not used claim? Not just the load ID or PO number, but details on what they claim happened in the situation. 
 

[00:49:22] Allie Truong: I'm thinking of a couple different resources. First being supplier one has a lot of the ASPEN data. So I'm wondering if there's some of that in there as well. I think that if you're getting the truck's order not used. You're probably Collect, so I'd check Aspen for sure, and if there's any additional portal for Collect suppliers that I can think of, I think it's all in Aspen. 
 

Someone tell me if there's a different portal for, logistics information. I would say Nova too, because if you can tie those claims to the PO specifically, which you would be able to, that would be worthwhile. To pull and then cross reference with any of the data that's on the, sheet. I'd also say, if you're a customer, reach out to your CSM and they can get you in connection with our, audit team. 
 

And they can help you with that. If you're not, we can share our emails here in a second, too. but those are the two places I Would start if you haven't looked there.

[00:50:37] Bekah Tatem: Great. Thank you. Allie. And then in the chat, Megan shared. It looks like a support email for it's to and you support at Walmart. So that seems like another resource. 
 

That would be great. Thank you. Megan for that 1 more question. Allie for unsalesable. Ooh, that's hard to say unsalesable. Is there any way to verify these? how do you tell for duplicates? 
 

[00:51:03] Allie Truong: How do you tell if unsalables are duplicates? For unsalables, I'm 99 percent sure you can pull that in Luminate. I think, I'm pretty sure that's a metric. 
 

So I would look there. I don't know particularly how to know if they're duplicates unless you're looking at either the item level or the PO level. I would use Nova for that. The claim information and trying to think maybe the return data on supplier one as well. I don't think it goes down to item level, though, or P. O. level. I think it's like more of an aggregate actually. I do think it is. So I would check that as well. A lot of data has moved over to supplier one. It's not as helpful as maybe it was in D.S. to find it and build those reports easily. 
 

But I would check. Those 2 places, Luminate, Scintilla and Supplier 1 and maybe Nova as well. I think that's, I think that's my final answer. But if other people have resources that they would share as well, I'd be curious to know. 
 

[00:52:26] Bekah Tatem: Great. Thank you, Allie. I think that's it on questions for us.

So just wanted to highlight, we do have lots of other resources. We've got some great ebooks and cheat sheets covering many different suppliers, or I'm sorry, many different retailers. So you can find all those on our website 
 

if you want to check those out and then also to email either of us. If you have any burning questions that come up later, we'd be happy to share resources we have on your questions. Or anything else like that. So we appreciate your time with us today. You can see our emails on this slide. so if you want to grab that and let us know if you have any other inquiries, that would be great. 
 

[00:53:09] Allie Truong: Awesome. Thank you all for joining. Thank you, Bekah, for hosting and sending resources in the chat. And we hope to see you guys at another webinar. Take care, y'all.