Why You Should Dispute Walmart Allowance Deductions

Why You Should Dispute Walmart Allowance Deductions 
 

[00:00:00] Peter Spaulding: Today we're going to talk about allowance deductions. and our catchy little title here is why you should dispute Walmart allowance deductions. Basically, just we want to put this on everyone's radar that allowance deductions are disputable and it's not just this thing that Walmart is always right about. 
 

but yeah, we'll get into all of that later. 
 

This is us. We are on the, marketing team here at SupplyPike. And, specifically we're,here to educate suppliers in whatever areas, suppliers feel they need to be educated. so that's where,All of these webinars are coming from and on the next slide, we'll talk more about SupplierWiki. 
 

we have a lot of different channels for education and, you all know about the webinars because you're here already, but. we have a lot of other tools, resources that, can be helpful in different ways for training purposes or just education, on the side. but there's a lot that comes with being a supplier at a major retailer and our job is to just cover as many of those bases, as possible. 
 

especially the ones that are the most costly and time consuming for suppliers and that might not be on everyone's radar. So that's the goal that we have as a team. That's what we're here to do.so a little bit more about what that's going to look like today is we're going to do a high level introduction to allowances at Walmart. 
 

If you're new to a role or if you're new to allowances, it's not something that you've really been paying attention to. You've been just focused on shortages or something else like that. So we'll cover that at a kind of a higher level. Some of that should be applicable to other retailers as well. 
 

And then we're going to go into more kind of looking at what your particular allowances might look like before we talk about fighting invalid allowance claims through disputing. And then we're going to do our Q& A at the end, which more on that later. And we'll finish with a product preview. If anyone's interested in how you could do it a little bit more efficiently with SupplyPike. 
 

So a couple of questions we get pretty often. What's the difference between the chat and the Q& A? basically the chat is public. you can send, chat messages that's just for the hosts and panelists, if you'd like to do that. but we just like to let everyone know, we ask some questions for you guys that we would like for you to put in the chat so that you can have conversation with each other and, and share insights and stuff like that. 
 

But if you have a question, that, you would like to ask us, that's what the Q& A tab is for. so that's just the difference there. The Q& A tab, would, depending on the update that you have or not for Zoom, it might be under the more button. at the bottom of your page. So just look out for that too. 
 

And then, one question that we get fairly often, I think we've already got one in the chat, from Karen is, will there be a recording and will we be getting a copy of the slide deck? Yes, you will. You in three to four business days will be sending out a copy of the slide deck, along with the recording that we will upload to YouTube and that we will also host on our website. 
 

and so you can refer back to this later on, if you would like to as well. That email will be going out to whichever email signed up for the webinar. So if you're on this through a co worker's email, or if you're looking at, if there's a group of you in a room who are on a call, on this call with one particular, one particular email, just know that will be sent there. 
 

And a little bit more about SupplyPike, SupplierWiki is the team that we're on at SupplyPike, but we'll be talking a little bit more about what SupplyPike does at the end if anyone is interested in that. but basically our motto is, we want to help suppliers get paid and get better. 
 

Meaning there are, oh, there are, sorry about that. There are some,I can keep talking about supply. 
 

[00:04:02] Melodie Hays: Keep going Peter. I accidentally clicked the link. 
 

[00:04:07] Peter Spaulding: But first and foremost, what SupplyPike got started doing was helping suppliers fight invalid AP deductions, mostly shortages, because there's such a massive amount of shortages that we see in the business. And so that's what we mean by the get paid side is there's a lot of invalid. There are some fines that Walmart and other major retailers will send out to suppliers that suppliers may or may not have the time to validate or to check up on and they'll just have to pay them or accept the deduction from the paycheck. 
 

what we wanted to do was to automate that process, the validity process, through shipping document integrations that We can automatically see if someone has a case here for disputing these. And then we've also set up auto disputing, with a bunch of major retailers as well through that. 
 

So that's the get paid side. But as we started going through that process, we started to realize that, there's a bunch of other things that data can help suppliers with. in order to avoid fines in the first place, what are the steps that you could take to just reduce the number of shortage deductions that you get? 
 

and, thanks for the love, Jess,in the chat. and that's what the get better side is. How can we help you improve your compliance? Because compliance fines can't be won back at as, as steep a rate as you can for shortages or something like that. that's the two pronged approach that we have with SupplyPike. 
 

but the coolest thing in my opinion is that we just get to work with a really wide variety of suppliers from, some of the biggest out there to some of the smaller ones, people who are just just happy to be here in Walmart and, and want to stay there. that helps my job a lot because I get to hear from a lot of people. 
 

People's kind of perspectives on some of these things. And a part of that also means that we're in, all or almost all of the product categories. so that gives us quite a range into the supplier experience as well. So stay tuned for the end of the webinar. If you want to hear a little bit more about that specifically with allowance deductions, we'll talk about what our product does there. 
 

But with that, Melody. Takes away.  
 

[00:06:06] Melodie Hays: Perfect. I'm excited to talk to you guys today about Walmart allowances and how you can dispute them, what they are, all of that fun stuff. so let's just dive into it. Okay. So what is an allowance? Let me move my little video here.so Allowance codes, that's typically the language that we're going to be using for this, are used by Walmart to categorize different types of discounts or allowances. 
 

I know we're using the word in order to define the word, but, that's just typically what is used, that you are offering to Walmart, on behalf of a supplier. So it's going to help with tracking or application or management of any of the financial agreements that you have with Walmart and yourself as a supplier. 
 

And typically these codes are detailed in your supplier agreement. so we'll show you guys what that looks like here in a second. What is a supplier agreement? So this is actually the legal document. It's outlining everything that you've agreed to with Walmart on your supplier standards. So it's going to apply to anyone who is supplying a product to Walmart for resale or any agents that are used by suppliers. 
 

this means if you are doing business on behalf of a supplier, you're going to have agreement with Walmart that is detailing, again, all of those like we mentioned, tracking application and financial agreements that you have. Where can you find it? so you can actually find it, this is something that they updated in the past couple of years, but you can update it through this online supplier agreement. 
 

you just have to click on your profile icon, which is in the top right, and select my agreements, and then you select sign an agreement under whichever business unit you So that would be separating it out by SAMS, Walmart, or Walmart. com. And then finally, you can view slash edit in the browser or download it as a PDF, so you can view those just as they're changing because they do sometimes change as your agreement changed. 
 

so here are some areas that we suggest for you to actually go and review inside of the supplier agreement, page 10, or these, sorry, section 10, which is approximately on page 3, is going to tell you about your purchase costs and conditions, section 17 is going to talk about your remedies, which is usually around page 5, we say approximately because it's Everyone's supplier agreement may be different, or is probably different,something that is on page 3 for most suppliers might be on page 4 for you because you had an extra long section on, basically how you expect for returns to be or something like that. 
 

In the appendix, there is the allowance section, which is usually around page 10. And then there is also a grocery return policy, which is around page 11. So speaking of returns, it is in your supplier agreement. and we'll talk about that a little bit here today as well. So here's an example of an allowance section in the appendix. 
 

so you can see the different codes for the allowances, and this is going to be a little bit different than the deduction code, which we will get. to, and later in the presentation, this is the allowance code. So it's an abbreviation of the definition, which you can see just right there on the side. 
 

You can see your discount, you can see how it's paid and when it's paid, and it actually has a handy little definition or key here down at the bottom.lists all of that out for you. this is going to be your source of truth, and this is part of the documentation that you're actually going to be needing whenever you go, and if you decide to go and dispute any of these allowances. 
 

So let's dive in a little bit deeper.so let's talk about some tips. so if you want to find your discount recommendations, that's going to be located on under the online supplier agreement help. And then if you want to see a quick view of all of your allowances, you can actually go to the agreements, click to an active agreements, and then scroll down to review business terms. 
 

And then this is what it's going to look like. So this is the PDF. And the appendix, and this is what it actually looks like in the app. It will have the same information of is it off invoice, when is it paid quarterly, semi annually, what is the discount, and then the actual code. So you can see all of that in just this kind of quick view for the allowances. 
 

It's pretty cool. Typically we will see this each invoice for that payment method. Okay, so let's understand what your allowances are and what you might be actually offering. So there's two main categories of deductions, especially whenever it comes to Walmart. And usually when we're talking about deductions, we're talking about AP level deductions. 
 

So that's the account payable deductions. We're not necessarily talking about chargebacks. or OTIF fines, those would be handled separately with a different process. These are AP level deductions. We have a lot of content on common AP deductions, like shortages, that you can go and view on SupplierWiki, especially with Walmart. 
 

And then we also do a very deep dive into OTIF as well as SQEP fines. So OTIF is on time in full and SQEP or S Q E P. QEP, Supplier Quality Excellence Program. we have a lot of content on all of those different types of ways that Walmart might be fining you. But today we're going to talk about claims deductions versus earned deductions and what that kind of means in terms of allowances. 
 

claims deductions, this is whenever a retailer is going to assert that your invoice is incorrect. So this is a claim that Walmart or your retailer is filing against you, versus an earned deduction. So this is similar to an order allowance, but Where you, as a supplier, is actually giving the retailer a discount in order to benefit your business, hopefully mutually, in some sort of way. 
 

So it's a strategic business decision. So there's claims, which is,I'm fining you, or I'm taking some money because you've done something wrong, versus, A earned deduction, meaning, hey, this is valid, we both agreed to this, so therefore I'm deducting from your check. Here are some of the common allowance codes, so you can see that in here, and again, these are the allowance codes. 
 

They're going to be slightly different than what you will actually see coming through on your check in terms of, the deduction that might be paid. be being taken. So the deductions are usually taken in a number format. These allowance codes are taken in this alphanumeric format. So we have SA, which is line level news store discount. 
 

OL, which is news store discount. I actually, before, before I kind of dive into all of this, don't feel like you have to take a screenshot. Don't feel like you have to write all of this down. Mike. Peter said at the top, we will be sending out both the recording of this session as well as the slide deck. 
 

don't feel like you have to write all of this down. I won't go through all of it. just these are some of the allowance codes that you might be receiving. Swell allowance, I'll just say, swell allowance is one of the most common ones and probably the one that's going to be impacting you the most, but, Let's talk about each of these a little bit deeper. 
 

So there's the new store discounts, which is both that SA and OL, which we talked about in the last slide. Why is this happening? So it's supporting Walmart's investment in new stores, which may help suppliers grow their market share. This is an initiative that Walmart's been doing over the past, I want to say decade, maybe a little bit less than that, but Walmart has been investing into new stores or upgrading their stores. 
 

And the idea there is that, We're allowing for suppliers to get into new stores and the idea is that it allows for you to grow in your market share. So typically this discount is 10 percent or greater. there's 5 to 10 percent is based on Walmart recommended numbers. the OL, the discount is usually 1 to 5%, which is the discount is also mentioned at 0.1 to 0. 5%. 
 

Let's talk about warehouse discounts. So there's two different codes very similar to the last one that we talked about. There's the warehouse allowance and the warehouse distribution. The explanation for this is that eliminates the work and the expense required for DSD shipments. The execution, this usually is a percentage that's applied to your total amount for all of your 33, 83, and 93 POs. 
 

It's negotiated through the warehouse, and it may require a separate supplier number in this sequence, especially if the allowance is for specific item numbers. So again, this is just Walmart kind of taking, money or, not necessarily taking money, but expecting a discount on their overall PO, to reconcile the cost that is required for DSD shipments. 
 

Let's talk about a new warehouse allowance. So this is to cover any of the initial stocking orders of you or a supplier getting any new distribution inside of a new warehouse. And so typically this is a percentage that is applying to lead each line item for each new warehouse. So it's again to just cover that initial stocking order. 
 

It is Walmart, asking for a discount because there's going to be an additional work on their side of the business in order to make sure that you as a supplier are set up in order to be shipping out of a new DC. 
 

Swell, Defective Goods Allowance. So these are two of the most common allowances that we will see, and two of the most common allowances that people will actually go and try to recover money from. so this is negotiated, it's, typically, again, going to be on most of your supplier agreements. to help defray the cost involved in handling defective goods or maybe stolen goods. 
 

The percentage needs to be adequate in order to cover all of the defective good markdowns or additional claims would be filed. So basically this is Walmart saying, hey, I'm going to take a certain percentage out of all of your Invoices out of all of your checks in order to cover any of the handling or the cost of me not being able to sell some of the goods, or any markdowns that might be coming. 
 

So typically this apply just to the total amount of all of the POs that are generated. So there are also promotional and ad allowances, or called co ops typically, and especially in other organi other retailers. So these are going to be AA, TR, DA, and PA. so AA is an advertising allowance, a TR is a TV and radio media allowance, DA is just Display or an INCAP allowance, and a PA is a promotional allowance. 
 

So a lot of these are pretty self explanatory, TV helps with TV and radio, display helps with the display of the product actually in the stores, promotion, is used for certain products for a specific period of time,seasons, or if you're going to be in a catalog, that's typically whenever there's going to be something like the promotional allowance. 
 

so why? because there's additional cost again on Walmart's side that they are asking for you as a supplier if you want to reap the benefits of getting this promotion on their end. they are asking for a discount on the total amount of all of the POs that are generated. And that's actually how the execution is actually handled, is it's just a percentage that's applied to the total amount for all of the POs. 
 

for that certain time frame, versus a swell allowance is typically going to be on all of your POs until you negotiate different terms. A promotional allowance is usually going to be in a specific time frame. There are different cost and budgeting allowances. So there's early buy, there's business development fund or handling allowance. 
 

There's volume discount and there's freight allowance. So the early buy is negotiated in return for giving, supplier budgeting advantages. The business development fund or the handling allowance is, anytime the almirot is actually helping develop the product, that, That is then sold. A volume discount is ordered to compensate for large quantities of volume, so if they are doing like a seasonal buy and they want to purchase, triple, quadruple, 10x of what you typically sell, they may ask for a discount right here. 
 

Rate allowance, this is going to be for transportation costs, so think collect, Why would you do this? It helps pay for any of the additional help again with the logistics, the volume, the development, and the budgeting. So really, just to reiterate, allowances are the way that the agreements that you're coming to with your merchant or with your warehouse or replenishment manager is It is the way that Walmart makes sure that it is in a contract that you can reference later on so you know exactly the amount, that you have negotiated with each of those parties to take off of your invoice, that they will take off of your invoice and therefore deduct of your check. 
 

The execution for all of these costs and budgeting allowances is actually a percentage, again, applied to the total amount for all POs generated. So you can tell that the last couple, that we've done, that is typically how the allowance is taken, but there are some of the earlier ones that we covered that have different types of execution depending on both the number, I'm sorry, the code as well as, really what you're negotiating or, what is happening inside of the business. 
 

Okay. So you're like, Melody, I get it. We have a lot of allowances. It was negotiated. They're beneficial to me because I have negotiated something with my merchant or negotiated something with a Walmart party, but what happens if they get it wrong? And I will say that we sometimes They get it wrong. 
 

Sometimes you've negotiated your terms something different than what they actually have in the system, and therefore you could be receiving a lot of allowance deductions and a lot of fines, a lot of money taken off of your invoices and therefore your checks that, could be impacting your business and you actually do not owe Walmart. 
 

And so let's go through the process of what you would need to do in order to fight those invalid allowance claims. So this means that even though, going back to the earlier section that we had inside of the deck, even though they are earned deductions, sometimes there could be invalid earned deductions. 
 

Meaning that even though you had agreed specific terms, something happened or something went wrong and therefore they're invalid. So you know how I was saying that there's numbers that go along with those letters? These are the numbers. So this is actually how you will see those deduction codes come across on your check. 
 

So a code 10 is going to be a price different, Difference than as documented or an allowance difference, just a kind of general, hey, we agreed on certain allowances and, I'm not actually saying it on the invoice that you sent me. Code 50 is an advertising allowance, 51 promotional allowance, 52 volume allowance, and, it just goes on and on. 
 

this one, the code 151, it's fun. It just skips right over the, all of the other 50s and goes straight into the hundreds. gotta love the system. Same with the code 10.so there are a few codes that are, disputable for allowances, through APTP, not all of them.so that is, it's going to be the majority of them. 
 

So it's gonna be the 10, the fifties through the sixties, 80 and 1 51. So even though these disputes can be technically submitted in A-T-P-A-P-D-P, which is the accounts payable dispute portal, Walmart has actually indicated that they're unlikely to be approved in A PDP. and what we've seen is that is very much the tr the truth. 
 

We do have some benchmark numbers on your win. Likely win rate with different codes and the codes 50 through 59 and 151, it's likely that you're not going to be winning that money back.there are different AP or retailing apps that will be very helpful for you whenever you are going through this journey of deciding, hey, I'm going to go and fight some invalid fines. 
 

That's going to be your accounting scorecard. That's going to be the, Accounts Payable Inquiry System, or APIS, and then that's going to be APDP, so that Accounts Payable Dispute Portal. So the accounting scorecard is your temperature check of all of your invoices. It's going to measure how your invoice accuracy is. 
 

or what is actually being sent to Walmart matches through the EDI or the Electronic Data Interchange. EDI is typically how, you're receiving or you're receiving purchase orders or you're sending invoices to Walmart. there's typically paid options, such as SBS Commerce, or there could be free options depending on the size of your business called Web EDI, which is actually provided through RetailLink itself. 
 

the accounting scorecard, that's just making sure, again, that what is being transmitted through EDI is actually what Walmart is receiving and everything is correct on that end. For APIS, or the Accounts Payable Inquiry System, this is where you're going to see all of your invoices and your claims, as well as your check information. 
 

So you can pull payment, invoice, check, and claim information from APIS. It gives you the complete. Visual of what is happening from invoice to payment, to your business. So you can see all of that data in there. And then lastly, A PDP is where you're actually going to be executing on, filing a dispute for any of the deductions that you might be res you're receiving. 
 

So this is the actual dispute portal for deductions. If any of you guys have been in this game for. While or, in the past, over the past five years or so, APDP is actually the internal app that replaced direct commerce, which was something that they had, five years ago. So they moved that internally. 
 

Okay. There is another, scenario where you actually might submit a dispute through APDP, where they're actually rejecting like a deduction or dispute, and you can actually request a repayment from your buyer. So let's talk through some of the different tips when approaching buyer development. 
 

one of the first things we want to note whenever you're talking to your buyer, especially whenever it comes to disputing, is that you really need to consider what your relationship with your buyer is and what is the social capital or the goodwill cost of approaching them asking for payback. If you're in poor standing with your buyer, this is a relatively low impact on your business. 
 

I would suggest approaching with caution whenever you're going to your merchant or going to your buyer and asking for some sort of payback. They're very busy people. We're located in Northwest Arkansas. We know quite a few merchants and people in the buyer world personally. And,their day to day can be pretty hectic. 
 

And so again, just consider that social That capital, that goodwill, whenever you're going to them with a certain fine that you're wanting to get payback for. If you are request, oh, only a request for, payback on deductions that you know are invalid, again, considering that goodwill, that social capital, you don't want to go and make a ruckus with your buyer and then it turns out that the deduction is actually valid or the allowance code that you're going into disputing is actually valid. 
 

And then you've done. all of this work and put some extra work potentially on your buyer's plate, that ends up going nowhere. It would be helpful in order to make sure that you're providing your buyer with all the correct information that they need in order to make a decision one way or another of complying all the proof documentation on why deductions are valid, such as that online supplier agreement and, invoices or the purchase orders that you're receiving. 
 

And then you're going to want to bundle all of your similar deductions together. And present them all at once to your buyer for approval instead of addressing them one by one. just think about it when you're like at a restaurant and, your waitress come over, comes over and she asks you if you want anything. 
 

You're like a waterer and she goes and she gets you a water and she brings you the water and you're like, Hey, can I also get ranch? She gets you ranch. And then you say, Hey, can I also get, whatever you want to minimize the, number of asks. That you are, you're asking from your buyer again for just that kind of courtesy and thinking about that social capital or that goodwill cost. 
 

get the biggest bang of your buck, bundle it together and make it very easy for them to say yes. Okay. Return center and disputes. this is one of the common ones that we actually go and. You'll see people going and disputing whenever it comes to allowances. So these are returns that are originating from Walmart's Return Center, the location listed there. 
 

So it's 9462. they are not disputed through APDP, they have a separate process, which, Walmart outlines here. And again, you're going to get the deck, so you can actually click on that, to dispute these deductions. Download and review the backup details and documentation from APIS, the Accounts Payable Inquiry System, and then download that form, so the Detective Merchandise Handling Fee and RTV Freight Claim Form. 
 

So download that, and make sure that you are, adding all of that documentation and backup details that you need. So you're going to fill out all of your, the information that it requests. So that's going to be the detected merchandise, handling fee, the RTV freight claim form, with your claim number, invoice date, the amount that you're disputing, and the reason for the dispute. 
 

So it's actually very similar information if you're going and disputing something in APDP, it just has a different form. Again, include all your backup details and documentation for each of the claims. And then you're actually going to create a case through or with partner support and selecting this is the actual links that you'll be selecting.  
 
So returns, returns to chargebacks, and then that long name that I'm, I won't say again for you guys, but you're again going to want to include all of your documentation and the forms to make sure that your claim is reviewed. So that's how you do a return center dispute. Let's talk about preventing allowance deductions. 
 

so you're going to want to review your supplier agreement and compare it to the PO. You're going to want to make sure that you're checking with your EDI provider on the executed allowance. So your supplier agreement may state that allowance is supposed to be given off invoice, but maybe your EDI provider actually has the allowance given off line item. 
 

That's going to result in an allowance deduction. deduction for you. So you will actually see a charge from Walmart for that and that's pretty common that we'll see that. So just make sure that you're checking in with your EDI provider and what is actually being sent to Walmart is what needs to be in order for these allowances to be, to be invalid. 
 

You're going to want to review your method of payment for PO allowances. So did you pay off invoice, that credit memo, or check? Again, we covered kind of the areas either in the PDF or actually in the application that you can go and check that. this is when you would actually go into dispute with your buyer and you would show that you as a supplier have actually already withheld the correct information to overturn any deductions. 
 

And then let's talk about off invoice allowances versus allowance deductions. So some suppliers will actually opt to have the retailer enforce all of their allowances in the form of deductions that they are then written off. So that's going to be those deduction codes that are actually coming through. 
 

We recommend that you actually take allowances off of your own invoices so you can better monitor your own deductions for validity. So instead of getting a whole bunch of codes that are all coming in the form of deductions, you're just taking it off of your own invoices so you can actually see the deductions that are coming through that, that, may be invalid outside of allowances. 
 

Okay. That was a lot of information, you guys. I got through it pretty quickly. do we, I don't see any questions in the QA or in the chat.  
 

[00:30:26] Peter Spaulding: No questions in the QA or the chat. So go ahead and get those in. now if you have any. we just want to shout out some of our other resources that,and mostly in, in the other retailers that we've covered so far, but we've also got some stuff on SQEP, OTIF, and, just regular kind of deductions, at Walmart. 
 

So definitely go check those out, if you feel like you could benefit. From that, these are all just eBooks, but as I mentioned earlier, we have a lot of articles on, on a much wider variety of topics as well. So our eBooks are more kind of revenue loss focused. but yeah, there's lots of articles on a variety of subjects. 
 

And then we have our emails up here that we'll put too. If you wanted to just get this down now, if you think you don't have a question right now, but you might have one later, then, feel free to, to reach out to us and contact us, by email. And you can do it that way. And then I think that we will transition. 
 

Oh, wait, we may be getting some questions now.we got one question. is there a dollar minimum for code 59 allowances through high radius is the question.  
 

[00:31:34] Melodie Hays: I do not know. Do you know? 
 

[00:31:36] Peter Spaulding: No, I think I might know where  
 

[00:31:39] Melodie Hays: or actually being able to dispute it or were it actually coming through. 
 

[00:31:48] Peter Spaulding: I think that, I'm not sure if that's, if the idea is that you would dispute that in high radius, I don't think that you could dispute that in high radius, 
 

[00:32:03] Melodie Hays: You actually can just, I have to save up several within a month before disputing. I can't remember the dispute amount if that. 
 

Maybe could you send that over to our team and see if they've, they have any, anything on that? 
 

[00:32:20] Peter Spaulding: Yeah, I bet Hudson would be good to ask for that. Okay. Yeah. Sorry, we won't. Um,we'll just reach out to you, with a response to that via email, Jess, if that's, alright with you, but great. And then,  
 

[00:32:43] Melodie Hays: So you can dispute a code. I'm sorry, just going through Jenny's question. Can you dispute a code 11 through APDP, or do you have to contact the buyers? 
 

So you can dispute it through APDP for store claims, but it recommends that we talk to your buyer if you've received a code 11 from another source. I'm sorry, I'm talking away from the microphone, but I do have a helpful article on that, Jenny, that kind of goes into it. For more in more detail and even talks about what you need to actually go and dispute that and even some root cause analysis of why you might be receiving code 11s. 
 

So hopefully that's helpful for you. And then Karen had a question on SPS changes. requests, how it plays introductions. so Karen, if you're, mentioning our recent, acquisition by SPS Commerce, so SupplyPike was acquired, by SPS Commerce in, August. currently today,we, there's been no changes to our customers or applications. 
 

we're moving, we're. operating business as normal. if you have any, if you're a current, SupplyPike customer and you have any questions on, any potential long term impact, which I don't think that there, there will be any, if any, it'd be very minimal, please feel free to contact your customer success manager. 
 

but if you are a new,looking at SupplyPike, looking at purchasing SupplyPike, please feel free to reach out to us, but your, again, your overall experience, shouldn't be impacted in any meaningful way.  
 

[00:34:19] Peter Spaulding: Great. Okay, so we'll transition over to showing you guys a little bit about, what allowances in Walmart looks like here. 
 

[00:34:29] Melodie Hays: Perfect. Okay. I'm going to just show you our normal, deductions. So if you guys are not familiar with our application,we solve for what Peter mentioned up at the top for Walmart, Kroger, Target, Amazon, Home Depot, CVS. We have a few additional retailers coming down the pipeline in order to support us. 
 

And this is our Walmart solution. So inside of our Walmart solution, I do have this lovely dashboard that you can see your deduction management health with, as well as the ROI that you're receiving with SupplyPike. we like to say that we help suppliers get paid and get better. sometimes it makes the decision a little bit easier to go with us because there is such a massive get paid, you are going to make your ROI, but there is also that kind of get better aspect of doing some of that root cause analysis, to help you guys. 
 

And I'll show you guys what that looks like actually down here. So we have, root cause, causes inside of the application. so this is something that we released, about a year ago where you can see what root causes might be impacting your business. Both in the amount and the count. 
 

and then once we get over to the filter view, you can actually see, some of the details on why you might be receiving a certain deduction and what you can actually go and do about it. this is just a high level view of seeing it in one place of what could be impacting your business. We have a lot of Other insightful reporting, that you guys might be able to drill into, again, to provide this maybe to someone in another department or in your executive team, as well as help you get to the bottom of what might be impacting your bottom line. 
 

So I'm going to move over to deductions.and we are in a demo account,it defaulted to urgent. The urgent tab, you can see that there's nothing here, again, because we're just in a demo account, but say you did have, a hundred deductions that are about to either, become expired with Walmart, so you can only dispute back to two years. 
 

Or if it's waiting, some of your action, that's, there's something that you need to do. This would be the bucket that you can actually go to and see all of that information. And you can actually sort it by the amount of time left before that can expire. 
 

Burn my cough. I'm getting over a little bit of a cold, but, this, if you don't have nothing in urgent, you've worked through all your tasks. here you can actually see all of the deductions that are not urgent, but you're probably want to work through next.here we have a whole lot of code 22s, but say that I actually want to look at my allowances. 
 

So that code 11 that we talked about. And again, we're in a demo account,I'm not actually seeing any of those. Allowance deductions here. But, let's look at just some of the shortages. So we have a code 22, Merchandise billed not shipped. this one is not disputed. So I'm going to click on this. 
 

We have all the information that you need to actually go and dispute this order. And again, here's that root cause information that will actually drill down into your data, stitching across multiple different applications inside of Walmart. And it will tell you not only what it is, But, it will also tell you what actions that you should consider in order to prevent this from happening. 
 

One of the other things I want to highlight here is that we will actually, especially for shortage deductions, we will actually connect to your warehouse, your 3PL, your carrier, and we will pull all of the shipping related documents that you need in order to go and dispute this. so we automatically stitch all of that together rather than you having to go into the separate portals, pull it all together, And then Dispute, we do all of that work for you. 
 

So all you have to do whenever you come to here is hit Submit Dispute, and it will go and submit that to APDP. So if you're like, Melody, that was really quick, but I want it to be quicker, you're in luck because I can do it even faster. we have a couple other filters up here that could be really helpful for this. 
 

So we have a Readiness. We will actually determine the validity of a deduction, and we do a variety of different codes. So we do that code 11, that pricing overage that we talked about. We will do that code 59, that we also talked about here today. We will do validity judgment for this. So again, we're stitching in data for multiple different applications, and then we are determining how valid or invalid we think that might be. 
 

So again, going back to the presentation we talked about earlier today, this is really helpful for if you're actually disputing through APDP. Or if you're disputing with your buyer, you can go and say, Hey, I want to look at all of the codes that are invalid or likely invalid. And those are the ones that I'm going to want to categorize and either send to my buyer or actually go and dispute. 
 

And again, with that proof documentation, that's always very important. If you are actually going to be going and disputing something, you can go ahead and here. And not only select the validity that you're wanting to look at, but also look at if the proof documentation is ready as well and select that. 
 

So you can hit ready, and then you can see all of the deductions that are ready for you actually to go and dispute. So here today I have, I have. Three, in this demo account that are ready, they, we've determined that they're invalid or likely invalid, and the proof documentation is ready. So if I want to just go ahead and submit all of these deductions, the disputes for these, I can click up here, select all of them, and submit disputes. 
 

So this would again, submit all of that documentation that you need over to Walmart, everything that you need in order to dispute successfully, with just two clicks of a button and you can actually do 100 deductions at one time, which is just pretty amazing. One of the things on proof documentation I just want to make sure that I highlight, again, we have a really great shortage webinar, which the statistics I'm about to share with you are around shortages, but if you actually submit, a dispute without proof documentation, we've seen on average your win rate being about eight percent. 
 

So eight percent is typically your win rate if you're submitting doc you're submitting a dispute without documentation. If you submit it with documentation, it jumps up to 82%. Now with Walmart, you only get three tries before they say you can no longer submit a dispute, for a specific deduction. And so it's really important to make sure that you have every single chance that you can in order to make sure that you are getting your money back, especially if it's invalid. 
 

So highly suggest utilizing this tool, in order to work through your deductions quickly and, win back as much money as you're owed. I will say that we are more than happy to do a demo for any of you all, a personalized demo, put together a business case. we do offer free trials as well where you can go and dispute a couple deductions yourself with your actual data. 
 

Um,really suggest it. Our team's very nice too,they can always help you answer any of the lingering questions that you might have. And I think that's it. Is there anything that I missed, Peter?  
 

[00:41:38] Peter Spaulding: I don't think so. No, that was pretty detailed. normally I just skim through. I go straight to auto disputing and then I'm like, all right, that's it. 
 

[00:41:46] Melodie Hays: Thank you. 
 

[00:41:48] Peter Spaulding: Oh, yeah. Auto disputing.  
 

[00:41:51] Melodie Hays: And don't tell me that, Peter! Just go straight to audits. You're no longer allowed to do demos. You're like, oh no.no, thank you for saying auto disputing. I did miss that. So we do also have auto disputing. So if you're like, Melody, Bulk disputing, one click disputing, it's not fast enough, I never want to see your application. 
 

I actually never want to see it. we do have auto disputing, which means that you can enable this, where it will actually go and submit disputes on your behalf. And you can actually say, hey, I only want to go after the ones that are a certain amount of validity. And you can turn it on for a certain amount of codes, and it is actually going to dispute this whenever we have all of the recommended proof documentation on a daily basis. 
 

you can also set a minimum and a maximum for any of those auto disputes. so again, you could potentially never go through this. to the SAP buffer. Again, you can just set it up and say, Hey, I want you to auto dispute for all of these codes. As soon as you have the proof documentation, send it away and we can do that for you. 
 

So thank you, Peter. I did forget something. Oh, Karen said, come on, Peter. Yeah. Come on, Peter.  
 

[00:43:03] Peter Spaulding: I also wanted to repost,Jess sent to the hosts and panelists a, a way of escalating after three responses from APDB that don't make sense through the Walmart Enterprise Business Services tab. So I'm just going to send this now into the chat. 
 

Very helpful, link to keep, favorited in your browser for when that happens, which unfortunately does. But I think that's it from us. thank you for joining us today and we'll see you next time.  
 

[00:43:34] Melodie Hays: Thank you everyone. Great seeing everyone.