Selling to a retail chain is a different kind of business. The order arrives as a purchase order, the delivery is booked into a window, and the payment — when it comes, 30, 45 or 60 days later — is less than the invoice. Somewhere between the two, the chain has deducted for something.
Some deductions are fair: an agreed promotion, a genuine short delivery. Others are errors: a delivery marked short that was complete, a price difference on an item whose price was agreed, a promotion charged twice. In many brands, nobody has the time or the evidence to tell the two apart, so the payment is simply booked and the gap written off.
Common deduction types
| Deduction | Usually caused by | Evidence that settles it |
|---|---|---|
| Short supply | Quantity delivered below PO | Signed proof of delivery with quantities |
| Late delivery | Missed appointment window | Delivery time on the proof of delivery |
| Price difference | Invoice price ≠ PO price | The PO and your agreed price |
| Damages / expiry | Goods unsellable at receipt or later | Delivery photos, batch and expiry on the invoice |
| Promotion / price-off | Agreed scheme | The scheme agreement and period |
| Listing / display fees | Commercial terms | The terms of trade |
Why brands lose money on deductions
- Deductions arrive as a lump on a remittance, not per invoice.
- The evidence is scattered — the PO in an inbox, the signed challan in a file, the scheme in an email.
- By the time anyone looks, it is months later, and the chain's window to dispute has passed.
- Sales and finance each think it is the other's job.
A deduction recovery routine
- Split every remittance into deductions by invoice, with the chain's reason code.
- Match each to its PO, delivery and invoice.
- Classify: valid under terms, invalid, or unclear.
- Dispute invalid ones within the chain's window, with documents attached.
- Review by reason every month: repeated short-supply deductions point to a dispatch problem; repeated price differences to a master-data problem.
Prevention beats recovery
Most deductions are cheaper to prevent than to recover:
- Read POs into orders without retyping, so price and quantity match from the start — see modern trade purchase orders.
- Ship what the PO asked for, or tell the buyer before you ship short.
- Capture proof of delivery with quantities and a signature or photo at the distribution centre — see proof of delivery.
- Keep batch and expiry on the invoice for products with a shelf life — see batch and expiry tracking.
How Zaqnet supports deduction recovery
- The PO Inbox keeps the original PO email and file attached to the sales order it created.
- Deliveries are closed in GroundLink with who received the goods and a signature or photo.
- Orders, deliveries and invoices sit together in ControlRoom, so the evidence for any invoice is one search away.
- Claims — yours and your partners' — go through approvals, so who agreed to what is on record.
Every deduction is a question. The brands that recover money are the ones that can answer it with a document, not a memory.