Retailers short‑pay
every invoice.
A quarter of it
is invalid.
We read your remittances, find the chargebacks and shortages that should never have been taken, file the disputes, and chase them all the way to cash. You pay a share of what comes back.
No retainer. No lock-in. If we recover nothing, you owe nothing.
Illustrative example. Figures are not a customer record and not a projection of your results.
Retailers and distributors we file against
The leak
Nobody on your team owns this line.
Deductions arrive buried inside remittance advice as a reason code and a dollar amount. AR clears them to keep the books tied out. The broker won't touch them. Finance sees one aggregate number at quarter close and files it under cost of doing business.
The remittance is unreadable
One retailer check can carry hundreds of line-level deductions across dozens of reason codes, split across invoices you shipped four months ago. Matching them back by hand takes days nobody has.
The window closes quietly
Most retailers allow 30–180 days to dispute, and the clock starts at deduction date — not at the date you noticed. Miss it and a perfectly valid claim becomes a permanent write-off with no appeal.
It disappears into trade spend
Invalid deductions get cleared against promo accruals to keep cash application balanced. The loss never appears as a loss, so your true margin per retailer is wrong and no one on the team knows it.
of gross retail revenue lost to deductions
of deductions are invalid, duplicated or expired
small brands dispute them systematically
Ranges commonly cited across CPG deduction-management literature and used here as planning estimates. Your real exposure depends on your retailer mix, order accuracy and compliance history — the free audit measures it against your own remittances.
The math
Find out what's sitting on the table.
Move the sliders to your own numbers. Defaults use the mid-point of the industry ranges — the free audit replaces every one of them with a figure pulled from your actual remittances.
Gross shipped dollars to retailers and distributors.
Share of gross taken back as deductions. Typical range 3–8%.
Duplicated, expired, mis-priced or already-settled claims.
Share of filed disputes that come back as cash or credit.
Plan
Estimated first year
Estimate only, generated from the assumptions you selected. It is not a projection, quote or guarantee of recovery. Actual results depend on your retailer agreements, documentation quality and dispute windows.
How it works
You send files once. We do the grinding.
No software to roll out, no integration project, no seat licences for a team that is already stretched. The work that recovers money here is patient, documented follow-up — so that is what we sell.
- 01Day 1
Send 90 days of remittances
PDF check detail, EDI 820/812 files, or a read-only export from NetSuite, QuickBooks, SPS Commerce or your 3PL portal. Roughly twenty minutes of work on your side, once.
- 02Days 2–7
We build the deduction ledger
Every deduction matched back to its invoice, PO, BOL and reason code. You see what was taken, by whom, under which code, and exactly how many days remain to dispute it.
- 03Weeks 2–12
We file and we chase
Documented disputes filed in each retailer's own portal with proof of delivery, signed BOLs and price files attached. Then the unglamorous part: following up every week until it resolves.
- 04Ongoing
Cash back, then root cause
Recoveries return as credits or checks against your account. We then show you which SKUs, DCs and reason codes keep generating deductions, so the leak narrows every quarter.
What we dispute
Twelve reason codes carry most of the money.
These are the deduction categories where documentation usually exists and the retailer usually pays it back. We work them in order of recoverable dollars per hour, not in the order they arrived.
Shortage & OS&D
Claimed short on a full pallet you have a signed BOL for.
Pricing discrepancies
Deducted against an old price file or a promo that already ended.
Unauthorized MCB
Off-invoice bill-backs taken with no matching agreement.
Duplicate deductions
The same claim taken twice, often months apart.
OTIF & compliance fines
Fines applied to orders the retailer itself rescheduled.
Freight & routing
Collect charges on prepaid terms, or the wrong routing guide.
Promo & co-op
Trade funds deducted after you already paid them by check.
Returns & RGA
Credit taken for product never returned or already credited.
Spoils & unsaleables
Allowances taken above the contracted rate.
Post-audit claims
Third-party auditors reaching back three years on stale data.
Expired windows
Deductions taken outside the retailer's own claim window.
New store & free fill
Free-fill quantities billed back a second time.
What we will not dispute
Filing junk disputes burns the relationship with your buyer and your retailer's AP team, and that relationship is worth more than any single claim. We leave these alone and tell you why.
- Shortages where you genuinely under-shipped.
- Allowances written into your signed trade agreement.
- Compliance fines your own late shipments earned.
- Anything past the retailer's dispute window with no documented exception.
Pricing
We get paid out of money you had written off.
No implementation fee, no annual contract, thirty days' notice to cancel. If a quarter goes by with nothing recovered, the contingency line is zero.
Founding clients pay 10% of what we recover, with no monthly fee, for their first twelve months — instead of the rates below. 10 of 10 places remain.
Deduction Audit
Any brand that wants the number.
- 90 days of remittances reconciled
- Line-level deduction ledger by retailer and reason code
- Recoverable estimate with dispute windows flagged
- Written findings call — 30 minutes
- No obligation, no card, your data deleted on request
Recovery Only
Brands under roughly $5M through retail.
- Disputes drafted, documented and filed in retailer portals
- Weekly follow-up until each claim resolves
- Monthly recovery statement
- No monthly fee — we are paid only out of recovered dollars
Full Desk
Brands from $5M to $50M through retail.
- Everything in Recovery Only, at a lower contingency rate
- Root-cause reporting by SKU, DC and reason code
- Dispute-window monitoring so nothing expires unfiled
- Retailer scorecards for your quarterly business reviews
- Prevention playbook — the deductions that stop recurring
- Named analyst and a shared Slack channel
Over $50M through retail?
Multi-entity consolidation, post-audit defence, EDI 820/812 ingestion and a dedicated analyst pod. Priced per retailer relationship rather than as a flat contingency.
Questions
The ones finance always asks.
Something not covered here? Put it in the form below and you will get a real answer, not a calendar link.
How is this different from hiring a deduction analyst?
A competent deduction analyst costs $75–95k fully loaded and takes months to learn each retailer's portal, evidence requirements and escalation path. You carry that cost whether they recover anything or not. We are a variable cost priced against recovered dollars, and the portal experience is already in the room on day one.
Do you need access to our ERP?
No. Remittance PDFs, EDI 820/812 files, or a CSV export of open deductions is enough to run the audit and start filing. If you later want us working directly inside NetSuite, SPS Commerce or Vendor Central, we take a read-only role scoped to AR — never write access to your ledger.
Will disputing deductions damage our buyer relationship?
Disputes are handled by accounts-payable and deduction teams, not by merchandising. Your buyer generally never sees them. It matters that claims are documented and correct, which is why we decline the ones we would lose — a pattern of junk filings is what actually strains the relationship.
How far back can you go?
It depends entirely on the retailer. Some windows close in 30 days, others accept claims 12 to 24 months back, and post-audit claims against you can reach further still. The audit shows you which of your open deductions are still inside their window and which are already lost.
What happens if you recover nothing?
You owe nothing on the contingency line, and the audit was free regardless. On Full Desk you would still have paid the monthly platform fee, so if the audit suggests thin recoverable volume we will put you on Recovery Only or tell you plainly not to bother.
How long before we see cash?
First disputes are usually filed within two weeks of receiving your files. Retailer resolution runs anywhere from 30 to 120 days depending on the retailer, the reason code and how clean the supporting documents are. Deductions are not a fast-money product; they are a compounding one.
What size brand is this built for?
Roughly $2M to $75M shipped through retail. Below about $2M the deduction volume rarely covers the fee and we will say so after the audit. Above $75M you likely want the enterprise desk rather than the standard plans.
Are you a law firm, a factor, or a collections agency?
None of the three. We do not buy your receivables, we do not lend against them, and nothing here is legal advice. We prepare and pursue commercial disputes under your existing vendor agreements, as your agent.
Free deduction audit
Find out what you're owed.
It costs you nothing.
Send us ninety days of remittance detail. Within a week you get a line-level ledger of every deduction taken against you, what we believe is recoverable, and how many days are left on each dispute window. Then you decide whether to use us.
- About twenty minutes of work on your side
- No card, no contract, no obligation to continue
- Your files are deleted on request, at any time
- You get the ledger whether or not you hire us