Hello, and thank you for joining. I am Melissa Travers, Director of Community here at BevNET & NOSH, and I am pleased to welcome you to The Nombase Podcast. Don't forget to check out nombase.com, BevNET's platform built for the CPG community.
It's where you can find episodes of this podcast and so much more. So before The Nombase Podcast existed in its current form, it began as a show called Community Call.
Community Call was an interactive series created to tackle the same exact challenges that The Nombase Podcast does today, always with the goal of helping brands grow efficiently and profitably.
So Community Call evolved into what is now called The Nombase Podcast, but not every episode made it into that transition.
While our team is away at BevNET Live, NOSH Live, and Brew Bound Live, and Marina Del Rey, this felt like the perfect moment to bring back one of these original conversations.
Today, we are sharing an episode that dives into a topic that continues to challenge brands of all sizes, and that is distributor deductions.
In this episode, you are going to get a clear breakdown of what distributor deductions are and why they appear in your checks before you can approve them, which deductions offer the highest chance of recovery, and exactly how to dispute them
successfully, and the operational practices that reduce deductions, prevent double fines, and keep your supply chain running smoothly. So I hope you enjoy it.
We're super excited to be here today talking about deductions with Jenna Gelgand and Greg Esslinger. So distributor deductions are one of the biggest challenges CPG brands have to navigate.
Today, we are thrilled to have Jenna Gelgand, CEO and founder of JAVE Insights, a company that offers full service deduction management.
Jenna's experience includes director of finance roles at Ramona and Malk Organics, as well as senior program manager at Whole Foods Market. Greg Esslinger also has expensive experience in deductions and deduction management.
After about a decade at UNFI, Greg went on to start Natural Food Ally, a deductions advisory business and is part of the founding team at Floret, a deduction management software to help deduction workflow more efficient.
Jenna and Greg, thanks so much for joining. How are you doing today?
Doing great. Thank you for having us. Super excited to be here.
Thanks for having us.
Such a pleasure.
This is a highly anticipated show. I mean, absolutely something that brands struggle with no matter what the size. We are here today to dig through deductions and find ways for brands to win.
2:45
Why don't we start off by giving an overview of distributor deductions? What are they? Who issues them?
How are they issued? Just a quick overview on exactly what we're looking at here. Greg, would you start off with this?
Sure.
Sure. Yeah. Deductions are basically charges that get passed on to the brand from the distributor.
It could be anything from promos that a brand has approved, something that's been passed on directly from the retailer. It could be charges that come directly from the distributor and one of the commitments you've made with them.
Excellent. What are some of the most common deductions that CPG brands see? Jenna, why don't you take this one?
Yeah.
I think deductions are often thought of as trade spend. A lot of folks use those terms simultaneously. Trade spend traditionally for me was anything that you agreed to with a retailer.
But there's all these other types of fees that you sign up for when you work with a distributor and potential fines along the way. When we look at the different types of deductions, we look at them as distributor fees.
We have about 33 different categories that we look at those contract related deductions, like an early payment discount, new item activation fees, things that you sign up for whenever you sign that contract with the distributor.
There's operational fees. So anything that is involved with moving your product from your warehouse to the distribution center, there is a lot of fees in there. Those are where you have often the most success of getting repaid.
Spoilage fees. So this is anything that spoils out at the distributor warehouse before it actually gets to a retailer. And then some miscellaneous fees.
Then you have the other types of deductions, which we consider our terminology. You're going to hear a lot of different terms today. Retailer spend.
So anything you've agreed to with a retailer as a charge to help reduce price on shelf or just get on the shelf, that they're going to pass through, as Greg mentioned earlier, they're going to pass through and have it charged back to you by the
distributor. So those are the different kinds that you're going to see along the way.
And how are those tracked by the distributor? How are they keeping track and how do they follow up? Greg, what do you think about that?
You know, their systems are built in a way that it allows them to, you know, whenever a PO is shorted or whenever, you know, whatever that deduction may be, it's very systemic and their systems basically track it all.
And a lot of times it's just at the end of the month, they run through their processes and they shoot out the deductions at the end of the day. So it's not always as clear cut. I mean, it really depends on the deduction we're looking at.
But then there's the retailer deductions, which are really just received by the retailer. Sometimes it's just a pass-through. They use the distributors as a clearing house for them.
And whatever they receive from those retailers is what they're going to pass through. They're not actually looking at the backup. It's based on what the retailer is saying that they have already seen and agreed to with the brand.
So they're just passing those right through the system and putting them on the brand's plate. And then it's the brand's job at that point to figure out if it's legitimate or not.
Yeah, I'd like to add this, the accounting softwares that they have are pretty sophisticated. We have 38 brands that we do full service deduction management for. And already this year, into 2023, we've had 54,000 deductions come through.
So it's usually some sort of cryptic code too, that's like WDXRM and you're like, what the heck is that? Well, that's a reclamation charge from Winn-Dixie.
So they have decoder rings, for lack of a better term, to help for you all to understand what these deductions are.
But it's a pretty sophisticated software system that they have running in the background with all of your invoices and all the deductions that you as a brand have pending.
And just to jump in there, in addition to those systems, they also do employ audit companies that come in, they give those audit companies access to their system and to go in and try to find other ways to increase the deduction funds.
So they're also using outside help to get as much as they possibly can.
So if you just don't pay it, it's going to be a problem, of course.
Yeah. They'll find you. Don't hide.
Just deal with it upfront.
Well, I think that's the question that a lot of folks have, at least when we start out, like, well, we didn't approve that. You don't really get a chance to approve it before it hits your check.
So they're going to take the invoices that you have, for example, a $1,000 invoice. Let's say you have three deductions that total $400. They're going to pay you $600.
The net of that invoice minus the deductions that you have pending. So you're guilty until proven innocence. You don't get a first approve or pass on it.
No, you don't.
It would be great if that existed.
I do want to let everyone know again, if you have any questions about your own deductions, please throw them in the chat. Nothing's too specific here. We've got two of the foremost experts in deductions.
So if you have something you're working on or trying to figure out, please feel free to throw it in here and we'll try to get it answered for you.
8:18
Jenna, you walked through some of the, you walked through the buckets of deductions. Could we revisit those again in the most layman terms possible? And could you call out some of the most common deductions that you're seeing brands get?
And I guess I'm also wondering, is there, is it possible to dispute these? Are they typically erroneous charges or are they usually totally above board and that's just the way this business works?
Yeah, so I'm gonna share my screen here. We're gonna go through, we've aggregated all the data that we have for the majority of our clients into our dispute buckets and I'll walk through these.
We kind of laughed about this is the rabbit hole conversation before everyone joined. If I get too far in the rabbit hole, pull me back out, okay? So this aggregates everything that we've filed disputes on.
We typically don't file disputes unless we think that we have a pretty high chance of winning. A lot of times the fees are valid. So what I'm showing here is everything that we filed in the last 365 days.
What we've won, what we've lost, and what we still have open. The success rate is just based on one versus one and lost combined. So not including these open amounts.
So this first section here is our contracts related deductions that we look at. This is highly tailored to UNFI and CAHE. We've got your early payment discounts.
We don't have a huge success rate there. We've gotten a decent amount of money. So we do encourage you to file these just because it lets them know you're paying attention and they're pretty easy to file.
I'm going to ask for a further down the rabbit hole.
Would you just lay out what the early payment looks like?
Yeah, so it's usually a 2% 10 term, meaning that they're going to take a 2% discount on the gross value of the product on your invoice within 10 days of receiving the invoice or when the product was received into inventory.
A lot of folks have trouble with this one because that secondary date of received into inventory, it really does make sense for the distributor to wait until product is received before they pay your invoice and that's when that 10 day clock starts
ticking. They don't want to pay you a $50,000 invoice if they only got $1,000 of product. Obviously, that's an extreme example, but that's why they wait to make sure that the invoice matches up with what you said that you shipped.
Does that answer your question?
It sure does. Thanks so much. I saw Greg nodding his head as well.
Yeah.
Greg, chime in here. I don't want to.
The only thing I'd clarify is it's the later of those two dates when the invoice is received versus that.
If they receive in that inventory and you haven't sent an invoice yet, and the invoice lands a week later, it's going to be the later of those two dates and then vice versa. Make sure you get those invoices in as quickly as possible.
Absolutely. Excellent point. We've got the Connect BI allowance.
This is also formally known as the Marketing Fee with KEYHE. It's 2%. That is a mandatory fee compared to Clearview, which is an optional fee with UNFI.
These are data resources that are available. New items set at fees. These vary greatly.
But basically, it's a fee per SKU, per DC. It's charged on every DC you open for every product. So if you're launching your brand and you've got 15 SKUs, that is going to be a hefty charge right out of the gate.
So really having good SKU rationalization is a key to keeping this cost down. Ad programs, they want you to sign up for advertising agreements. Data packages, if you don't have Clearview.
Pricing differences between what's on the PO and what's on your invoice. And then Overpull, one of the most confusing types of deductions, which is where the distributors say, yes, we bought, I'm sticking with 1,000 here.
We bought 1,000 cases on promotion, but we sold 1,500. We need the discount amount for that Delta. So 1,500 less 1,000, maybe 15% off those 500 cases.
It's a very simple explanation for pretty complicated type of deduction to analyze and fight. So these are all contractual obligations that you sign up for in advance.
The new item set up fee, I think is a really important point. And skew rationalization is a really important point. There are so many reasons why it makes sense to go to market with a tight skew set in many cases.
And I think that's such a good point here as well. Just another reason to think about that carefully. The ad programs that you've listed out, how can brands understand which are required and which are optional?
I know that that's not necessarily deductions. If you have any thoughts on that.
I'm going to let Greg take this one actually.
Is it optional? Yes, technically, it's optional, right? But when you do have relationships with these distributors, it's kind of the cost of doing business if you want to be on their good side.
And it does pay to be on their good side. If you need a favor down the road and you don't have an ad agreement, you're not getting a seat at the table, you're not going to get an answer back.
And if you're asking for help, whereas it's kind of the lowest level of a partnership with these distributors to have an ad agreement.
So I would say that, yeah, you don't have to, but I would certainly think about least doing the lowest level agreement just so you're in good graces.
That makes perfect sense. We've got a few questions here. Joe Walls has a question.
Hey, Joe, if you want to turn on your video and audio.
So we've actually spoken to UNIFON many times and it's escalating aggressively. They're taking the 2% discount after 10 days. It's after they've received product and invoice, like the latter of the two.
They're still taking it. I spoke to them and they were like, well, our system actually automatically generates that 2% discount no matter what, even if it's paid after that date. I don't know.
That was very revealing that their processes were just that way. That's one. Then two, their deductions, we're submitting everything and they're paying us a year or later.
They're approving 97 percent of them. We've had to hire a full-time person just for UNFI management.
I'd love to hear about your services because the people that I'm talking to, you got to pay a monthly fee for the service and then 25 percent for them actually going after those funds.
Great questions.
As far as the 2 percent, you can certainly continue to dispute those. The fact that they're still taking 2 percent above and beyond that 10 days, I have seen it where they continue to take it.
If you've got a large negative balance, they'll take it and you're not necessarily in a positive balance. Sometimes brands get upset about the fact that they take terms because they're in a negative balance and they still take those terms.
But if that isn't the case in this situation, you should still obviously be disputing those times that they're taking it. I don't want to jump into our services, but just we offer Floret as a deductions management software.
We do help with the flow of it and bring in the deduction backup, and it's really more an organizational tool. We do offer dispute resolution as well, and I'm sure Jenna can plug hers as well.
Yeah, the negative balancing is a real key point that folks forget. If you didn't have charge backs, the bills sitting there, they would have paid you on time, the distributor would have paid you on time.
We get frustrated with the distributors, but I do see their point in this one. If you were in a positive balance, they would have paid you on time and gotten the terms, so they're going to continue to take that discount.
It is a blanket discount that their systems, like I said, sophisticated accounting software, a lot of stuff is automated. It is going to be applied every single time, so that is what I've seen too.
And they're also going to always hold, if you have one deduction, they're going to hold one invoice.
We've seen in really extreme cases where someone is getting discontinued from every single retailer, there's mountains of products, they're going to hold your invoices and not pay you until they see all those chargebacks coming in.
I mean, you would do the same thing if you were in their shoes. Again, I don't want to make it seem like I'm raw distributors. They do provide a great service, though.
And a lot of times it does make sense what they're doing by holding an invoice and paying it late if there's chargebacks coming.
I want to be clear that UNFI, like the other ones, take it. But UNFI is like multitude, like 20 or 30 times worse. And at this point, I'm not sure what actions I can take.
Like, have you guys reported them back to, let's say, Whole Foods, their ethical committee?
I don't know. I worked at Whole Foods for six years. I don't think there's an ethics committee there.
There should be, though.
I mean, I looked it up. There is one. OK.
Thank you so much.
To that point, who is the best person to check in with the distributor? Would it be your supplier manager? Who's the best person to reach out for help when you're not seeing any movement?
Yeah, when you don't see movement, you definitely want to go to your supplier manager.
If you're not getting the right response there, you can elevate it up above them. But really, they should be the person that's helping you get that taken care of.
Thank you so much for the question. Really appreciate it. I know it's so frustrating.
We have another question from Rachel. Do you have any advice for disputing double-dipping chargebacks? For example, if a case is cut, you're getting charged for the short shipping and the shorting the PO.
What do you think about that?
Yeah, that's a really great segue into this next segment of charges. One quick little caveat before we move off the contracts-related stuff, the ad programs like Greg was describing, they actually do help reduce your new item set-up fees.
With UNFI specifically, if you have the lowest tier ad program, your new item set-up fees are $400 per DC. If you don't have an ad program, it's $1,100.
If you're launching new products, make sure you have an ad program in place, especially if it's a lot of products nationally. Going to Rachel's question, this is where, as you can see, I'm sure you're going to take a minute to digest this data.
19:04
This is where we spend the most time disputing and where folks really have the least amount of insight that these could happen as they get into the food CPG space. So these are operational related charges.
The first one, this is a holding bucket for us, but short ships, so you have three quantity amounts. I want to make sure this is really clear.
You have the PO quantity, you have the invoice quantity, which should match up with what you shipped and then you have the received quantity. So what the distributor said they received, what you said you shipped and what they ordered.
The short ship is between what you invoiced and what they say they received. So you could still short a PO, but you're only getting fine for the short ship. At least that's how we're defining it here.
This is where we get the most money back and we have the highest success rate. So let's definitely come back to how you fight these. But this is a huge thing.
There are 111 charges. It's going to be your invoice number with a deduction right below. When they pay your invoice, they're pretty easy to spot on your check remittances.
So definitely, if you're only doing one thing with deductions, look at the short-ship deductions and fight these. There's a freight allowance. There's tons of ways you can set up freight.
One is you get billed back for the freight. That's what this category is for. They're usually pretty accurate.
Every now and then we do get some money back. Freight audits, as Greg mentioned before, there's an audit company. They're called SAS, Strategic Audit Solutions, I think.
These are your SAS, SAS IF charges on your deductions. Basically, if you're FOB, UNFI is going to pre-pay for freight. So they're saying, okay, you get five pallets on this truck.
We're going to come to your warehouse. We're going to pick it up.
If you only have four pallets, they have no way to make up their freight charge or their freight costs because they don't have the product to sell by tacking on the freight cost and adding a margin to it.
So they're going to ding you for that one pallet that's missing in this freight audit charge. You can fight these as well. They're linked to the short ship deductions.
Jenna, can I ask you, what kind of documentation does a brand need to have in order to sort of prove?
I mean, I've heard of people taking photos at their loading dock. What kind of documentation would a brand need to have set up so they can accurately dispute these?
It depends on your delivery type. If you deliver product from your warehouse to a DC, you need a proof of delivery, preferably with a UNFI stamp on it, saying they received the product and signed for it.
If your pickup, meaning UNFI comes to your warehouse to pick up freight, then you need a signed BOL, a bill of lading or packing slip or some sort of documentation where the driver signs that they picked up that amount of products.
Really encourage you to use the same unit of measure on your packing lists as what's on the POs that you get, you have a UNFI or a carrier signature line with a date on it. All products listed out total pallet counts.
Greg, am I missing anything that should be on there?
No, that all sounds good.
I mean, I would reiterate even what Melissa said about if you can get your co-packer to take pictures, and if you need to definitely make sure that on all those pallets, you're putting the PO number and the destination warehouse that they're going
to, not just the PO number, because when these shippers are looking at them, they have no idea what the PO numbers really mean, but if they see that something's going to Atlanta and it's supposed to be going to Moreno Valley or wherever it is, common
Yeah, and like, oh, if it's a three-pallet order, right?
One of three, two of three, three of three. Yeah, I'd say that really covers it.
And then we get into Rachel's question of a lot of these, well, I guess these two late delivery fees and ready date non-compliance, these are largely CAHE that charges them or seeing more great deductions with UNFI.
But this is them just saying you didn't show up on time. So make sure you have enough products. It's ready to go.
Your orders arrive on time. Give yourself plenty of time. Appointments at the warehouses fill up fast if you're doing logistics yourself.
And they're operating a multi-billion dollar organization, right? They need product in, they need it moved. They, that's how they make their money.
And they're going to find you if you're not meeting the standards of the industry. Lumper fees, this is really an unloading fee, cut case fees. This pertains to certain groups.
Could you explain the lumber fee?
Sorry to cut you off.
Greg, do you want this one?
Sure, sure. Basically, when you deliver the POs, you know, there's, there's a chance that they're going to need to cut down the, the pallets and sort and segregate them. How, how they need them and they'll charge a fee for that.
You have to have a, I think, Jenna, correct me if I'm wrong, you have to have a account with, gosh, some, some comp, there's some account that you have to have and then you pay for that on the side too.
Yeah. And a lot of times these are billed back through your carrier. These only pertain to you if you self-deliver products.
So they're pretty infrequent. But it is a signal when you receive them, right? Like, hey, I should look at that because normally I get billed by my carrier.
Or wait a minute, I don't deliver products. I shouldn't get a lumper fee.
And stuff like that does happen where it's just out of the blue and doesn't make any sense for you as a brand. So you definitely need to still keep an eye out for stuff like that. That just doesn't make, you know, doesn't pass the sniff test, right?
Joe Wells, thanks for your comment here.
So Joe's lowered his lumper fees by 75 percent just by packing them in the truck correctly. And that sort of speaks to what I've heard you both say about how to avoid some of these deductions with operational excellence.
Absolutely. I know, I know we're getting kind of tight on time. I thought we'd go down.
Okay. So this to Rachel's question, you're going to have other stuff over ship fees. If you ship more products than they order, they're going to charge you 35 percent in the value of that product.
They don't have warehouse space for it. They're going to find you for shipping more. They didn't plan for that warehouse space is a better way to say it.
Service level fines, guess what? Whole Foods, Sprouts, everyone's dinging UNIFI and KE for not having their service levels up to snuff. So they're passing that on to you.
You got to have ample inventory and fill the POs. I know folks are going to probably say, but they ordered five times what they normally did on that OI. I didn't have the products.
Those, as you scale, those do scale back too because overordering on a million dollar brand could be an extra pallet of product. Ordering on a 20 million dollar brand is an extra 20 pallets of product.
They don't have that kind of space in their warehouse. So I'm probably making some people mad with that one. It's a whole separate topic.
Short during a promo, they're going to charge you for 15 percent for any products that they ordered during a promotional period that you didn't deliver. So prioritize these distributors, UNFI and KE specifically, if you can.
Jenna, if you're on promo and you see an order come in and you know you're not going to be able to fulfill it, you just don't have the manufacturing capacity, is there anything you can do to head it off or sort of dispute it before it becomes more of
Yeah.
I mean, the lines of communication are really important. These are your key partners, right? So definitely let them know in advance.
That actually helps you fight freight audit charges too. Getting a revised PO, if possible, saying, you know, you ordered a thousand cases, I can fulfill 500, but I'm not going to hit the full thousand. Letting them know in advance.
Oftentimes what I've seen in these short-during promo charges is even if you get a revised PO, they say, well, we still wanted the product, so we're still going to charge you.
But it does help in other areas to not have as much double-dipping as Rachel was referring to. But yeah, if you're not operating to extremely high standards, there is double and triple fines that they can get you with.
I would also just add that if this is an OIPO where they're just ford buying, then you could definitely also try to push the PO back until you do have enough inventory, because it might be a situation where they've got plenty of inventory and they're
just looking to take advantage of it. And if you can push that PO back, then you're not going to get those same fees, the short ships and all the different fees that go along with shorting.
That's a great point. And would that be another conversation to have with your supplier manager?
Your buyer, you could probably have that with them.
And when you say buyer, you're talking retail buyer or you're-
Oh, sorry. No, your distributor buyer. Usually you have a separate supplier manager and the person who's cutting the POs.
Is there any help that a retailer can give you in some of these issues, or is it totally separate in your issues with your distributor or just that?
You can definitely bring the retailers into the fold if you think it's a big enough issue to warrant that.
I certainly wouldn't be bringing them in on every nitpicky little thing, but if there was a large, a really large deduction that you felt, you weren't getting the response that you needed.
And maybe you're primarily a Whole Foods brand or a Adlerton's brand or whoever the sensitive customer is for that distributor, there are times where it makes sense to bring them into the fold and try to get some help in a response that you're
looking for. So not saying it's going to be guaranteed and not saying it's not going to annoy the retailer, so pick and choose your battles.
There's a lot of relational aspects to bringing retailers in.
29:33
Spoilage Deductions and Other Charges
Is it okay to move on to spoils? Again, this is all spoils fired product before it even leaves the distributor's warehouse. We've got dismal success here, honestly.
We've gotten $40,000 back in what we've disputed across 188. Basically, this industry is a consignment industry. Kind of piggybacks on what we were just talking about.
If you receive some crazy POs and you're like, I just don't know where that product's gonna go, trust your gut and talk to your buyer. Who's pulling this product? What do you need it for?
Because if it expires before it hits a retailer, and really it's 30 days before it even ships, they have to give the retailer enough shelf life on the product.
So they'll pull it 30 days before it expires, sometimes longer, you're gonna be buying that product back. So Greg, do you wanna expand on that?
Yeah, I was just gonna say, it's really important to communicate that whenever you see a situation like that come up, because they might still want the product and they might still demand it and say, this is what the system's telling us to order, so
you're gonna have to ship it. And I would still ship it, but at that point, you at least have a leg to stand on once it does go out of code, because you verbalized your issue and you can easily elevate that up the chain and say, look, I shouldn't be
getting charged back $20,000 for this. I told you, you shouldn't buy it, you overbought. It is hard to get, you know, spoilage back, as Jenna said, but there are situations where if you did over communicate and that you do have a leg to stand on.
That's a really good point. We've got a bunch of miscellaneous fees down here. This is another type of SAS audit that we see a lot.
Really the one I want to focus on here is pack change fees, not because of a dispute success rate thing, but because just if you change your pack size, there's a lot of downstream effects to that, right?
Pallet setups, ordering, catalogs, retraining, all kinds of stuff. If you go from a six units per case to eight units per case or down, or you switch UPC code, anything, you're going to be charged basically new item setup fees.
If you think you have a cute packaging change idea, it could cost you a lot of money. Just remember these pack change fees, okay?
Do they charge those by warehouse?
Yeah. It's per product per warehouse.
It adds up quick if you're national with a big retailer.
Yeah, for sure. Really think through it before you launch products.
Another good reason to, I mean, we hear it all the time, but another good reason to start small and really figure out your product market fit and figure out all the parameters before you launch widescale.
I have a question here from John Landis who wants to know if consumer demand ever has any influence on deduction. If your product is selling out, is the distributor more lenient on disputes or do they not care at all?
I'm seeing you shake your head, Greg.
I've never seen it make a difference. In fact, I've seen it be the opposite where when I was at a distributor and worked there that the higher demand brands were just getting just hammered because they couldn't keep up with the PO.
I mean, there are situations where if it's really extreme and you get on the phone with the right people, you can say, look, we don't want to get hit with these deductions two years down the road because what you get hit with are the huge audits in
these situations. If you really over-communicate and you can get somebody to commit to not charging you down the road and you keep that email stream, then you've got a way to re-keep those funds.
Because it will be, like I said before, that's either going to be systemic from their systems, going to just end up automatically charging you those audits.
Or if it's SAS, they're going to find it and they're going to charge you and they're not going to have any of the email trail or anything like that, or know that they're not supposed to charge you for it. So I would say just keep your records.
If you get any agreements ahead of time, otherwise, you won't have a leg to stand on. But if you do keep it, then you could get it back. So yeah, just over communicate and hold on to records.
Thanks for the question, John.
33:57
We are basically at time. I think we probably need a part two for this discussion. But really quickly, in terms of disputes, are there a few top pieces of advice in how you're seeing brands when it disputes?
Jenna, do you want to take this first?
Yeah. I think all of what we just went through is really where you're going to have the most success. We didn't get into all of these retailer related fees.
This is what this last category is. But we don't dispute a lot here because you do have to bring your retailer in and there's a lot of relationship aspects to it. So really just focus on those short ships.
And the best way to get a deduction back is to not have the deduction in the first place is what I was trying to say there. So just be really, really smart business operators as best you can.
You've got this huge community that was willing to help you and learn from their mistakes to really just not have the deductions from the get-go. But short ships, if you're going to do anything, short ship deductions.
Short ships is where it's at?
That's where it's at. That's where you're going to get the most back for sure. I would also just say, just read your contracts so you know what you're getting yourself into.
Make sure everybody on your team is on the same page on that. So everybody knows the ramifications of their decisions. Follow me on LinkedIn for tips every week.
I'll help you on there and just absolutely read those contracts. That's probably the most important piece of advice. I would say, go back to the policies and go through and see what, there's no way you know what's going to come at you.
So just get on there and read those contracts.
And is there a decoder ring? Jenna, you mentioned a decoder ring. Greg, I saw you not as well.
How do you figure out what the deductions are? And that's my last question, I promise, for today.
I was just going to say there is a key, at least UNFI has a key, and you can find it on the UNFI Zendesk. I'm not sure about Cahee. I'll let Jenna you take that.
Yeah, so I linked the Zendesk Supplier Deduction Key and Deduction Dispute Form for UNFI.
Cahee Connect is the portal that you want to get everything for with Cahee, and they don't have the same sort of outline of what the different deduction types are, but they're pretty standard.
Once you get in there and look at a couple, you'll start to recognize, okay, CS is Customer Spoils Allowance, CN is a different type of Customer Spoils Allowance, SW is Safeway Albertson's deduction.
Anything with an IA on the end of the invoice, that has to do with a pricing or a quantity issue with that invoice. So I think you'll find it pretty repetitive actually over time.
There's your decoder ring, folks. Thank you both so much. Jenna Gelgand and Greg Esslinger, thank you so much for hopping on this.
And I think we probably should do a follow-up call to cover everything else. But for now, I'm sure the folks who are watching have some questions and may want to get in touch for some support.
Greg, what's the best way for folks to get in touch with you?
Yeah, now you can get to me on LinkedIn or greg at tryfloret.com.
Thank you so much. Jenna, how about you?
My email is definitely the best. I'm going to put that here in the chat here. It's jenna at javeinsights.
We actually are at capacity at the moment. I promised my team I would say that. But we always are looking for creative solutions to help folks out and big reason we wanted to do this is to share the knowledge.
So reach out with your questions. We're happy to help.
Thank you so much.
