Use this guide to connect your remittance history, promotion agreements and dispute outcomes. Start with your own records to establish deduction exposure, review coverage and cash actually recovered.
Start with one record of what happened
A promotion can appear in a sales plan, a distributor backup file and a later payment. If those records stay separate, finance sees an unexplained short pay while sales sees a promotion that looks on budget. Connect the retailer, SKU, promotion dates, agreed rate, actual units, deduction number and payment reference.
Revya connects those records so a charge can be reviewed against its evidence and traced back to the plan that created it.
Separate three decisions
- Was the payment matched? Tie the remittance to the invoice and bank receipt. Keep unexplained balances open for investigation. A matched payment does not prove that every deduction is valid.
- Was the charge valid? Compare the deducted amount with the agreement, delivery evidence or fee calculation. Separate missing backup from evidence that supports a dispute.
- Was the promotion worth repeating? Once actual charges are known, compare the result with the planned spend and the account margin target.
The first step is cash application and short-pay matching. The last is trade planning using actual spend. Recovery connects them.
Build a baseline you can defend
Choose a consistent period and keep count-based measures separate from dollar-based measures. Record total deduction value, value reviewed, value supported for dispute, claims submitted, credits approved and cash or credits actually received. Keep open claims out of the recovery total.
Group results by distributor, retailer, reason code and promotion. Compare closed cohorts with similar age and documentation coverage. A newly submitted claim and an old resolved claim are not comparable recovery outcomes.
Review the right evidence for each charge
- Shortages: purchase order, invoice, case-pack conversion, receiving record and signed delivery evidence.
- Promotional deductions: approved deal, eligible products, dates, rate and billed or scanned units.
- Slotting and free fills: retailer authorization, eligible locations and previous charges for the same event.
- Cash discounts: signed payment terms, the contractual start date and the payment event specified by those terms.
- Compliance fees: current supplier policy, supporting notice, transaction logs and the calculation behind the fee.
Use actual trade spend in the next plan
A deal sheet is a commitment, not a final expense. Reconcile posted deductions to each promotion, identify pending charges and show unresolved disputes separately. Removing a disputed amount from reported spend before repayment can make a promotion look more profitable than it is.
Use the promotion validation checklist to find rate and volume differences. Then set the next promotion's spend, margin and timing guardrails using the reconciled result.
Make a deadline register
Keep a policy link or saved policy version beside every deadline. Record the triggering event, calendar or business days, required documents, submission channel and next owner. Initial receiving responses and later repayment disputes can have different deadlines. Check the current supplier agreement before relying on a date from an article.
A result with a documented customer
Revya recovered $47.3K for Obvi, including a slotting claim that required 17 follow-ups. Read the Obvi case study for that specific result. It is customer evidence, not a forecast for every brand.