Matches the governing term
The deduction is consistent with the clause in force on that date, at that cost, on that PO.
Valid — accept it
Close it quickly and stop it consuming review capacity.
Retailer Agreement Compliance
Is this deduction valid, or is it just taken?
A governed workflow that turns agreements, PO-level deductions and post-audit claims into ranked, clause-backed recovery actions — routed to deductions, account and finance teams.
What the workflow runs on
Feeds you already have
AgreementsPOsInvoicesRemittancesPost-audit claims
Governed decision logic
Effective-dated termsExpected vs. actualFour-tier bandingConfidence
What reaches the team
Health scoreClause evidenceDollar size
The challenge
The terms and the deductions never meet
Every retailer relationship runs on a stack of contracted terms — cost, payment terms, allowances, markdown money and trade funding — committed long before the retailer ever deducts against them. Retailers deduct continuously, and post-audit claims surface years later. On a remittance a valid deduction and an invalid one look identical, yet they call for opposite responses.
No consolidated system for contracts
Governing cost, allowance and markdown provisions live in signed PDFs, scans and emailed amendments that no engine reads.
Non-compliance is never reconciled
What was agreed, what was invoiced and what was deducted are never matched against one another, so the gaps between them go unmeasured.
Validity has no yardstick
Deductions are absorbed or challenged by hand, long after the fact, and never tested against the contract as they are remitted.
Recovery is reactive
Money owed is pursued only when an audit forces it — yet timing decides how much comes back, and whether the same invalid deduction recurs next quarter.
So the supplier assembles the picture only after the money is gone, or after the recovery window has already closed.
The leadership question
One question, asked in every review
“Can we tell, when a deduction is just taken, whether it matches what’s in the agreement — and put the right effort behind recovering what we’re owed?”
The split
Valid and invalid look identical
They call for opposite responses, and the cost of confusing them runs both ways: absorbing an invalid claim gives away margin, and disputing a valid one burns the relationship and the team’s time. The governing clause is what separates them.
Departs from the governing term
Expected and actual diverge, and the clause in force says so.
Invalid — recover it
Dispute with the clause attached, while the window is still open.
How the two axes resolve
Validity against the recovery window
Validity alone does not tell you where to spend the team’s effort. An invalid claim about to age out is worth more attention today than a larger one with months left to run.
Validity →
Expiring · InvalidWork it now
Recoverable and about to age out. This is where effort earns most.
Open · InvalidRecover
Recoverable with room to run. Queue it by dollar size.
Expiring · ValidAccept
Consistent with the clause. Close it and move on.
Open · ValidAccept and pattern-check
Valid, but worth watching if the same code keeps recurring.
Time left in the recovery window →
What is included
Six capabilities, six deliverables
Each one is a packaged capability — the data model, the scoring logic and the deliverable already designed around the decision it serves. They are built to run together, but each produces an artefact that stands on its own.
01
Structured, Effective-Dated Terms
Agreement & Term Extraction
Reads signed PDFs, scans and amendments using OCR and language models, normalizes cost, payment terms, allowances and markdown provisions into a structured term set, and resolves supersession so the governing version on any date is unambiguous — each term carrying its source clause with it.
02
Validity Adjudication
Transaction-to-Term Matching
Matches each PO, invoice, remittance, deduction and post-audit claim to its governing term, computes expected-versus-actual variance and classifies every claim as valid, invalid or recoverable — with the clause attached as evidence rather than cited from memory.
03
Monthly Health Scorecard
Retailer Compliance Health Scoring
Rolls the adjudicated claims into a composite health score per retailer, banded red, yellow or green, ranking where compliance is eroding — with drill-down from a single score all the way to the purchase order and item line driving it.
04
Open-Exposure Read
Pattern & Exposure Analysis
Decomposes leakage by retailer, term type and reason code, detects recurring invalid-claim patterns and ages each claim against its recovery window — surfacing the addressable dollars at risk of expiring unworked.
05
Dispute & Recovery Brief
Opportunity Scoring & Banding
Bands every claim — accept, dispute, recover or reassess — each mapped to one action, and routes a structured brief that pairs each contested claim with a recommended approach to the retailer’s merchant or accounts payable team.
06
Deduction & Exposure Forecast
Exposure Forecasting & Tracking
Produces an expected deduction and audit-exposure profile per retailer and term with a confidence interval — versioned and stored, so post-period accuracy traces back to the model that produced it.
The artefacts
What actually arrives, and who it arrives for
Six named deliverables rather than access to a tool. Each is versioned, traceable to the model that produced it, and routed to the team that acts on it.
Deliverable 01 · Agreement & Term ExtractionStructured, Effective-Dated Terms
Reads signed PDFs, scans and amendments using OCR and language models, normalizes cost, payment terms, allowances and markdown provisions into a structured term set, and resolves supersession so the governing version on any date is unambiguous — each term carrying its source clause with it.
Deliverable 02 · Transaction-to-Term MatchingValidity Adjudication
Matches each PO, invoice, remittance, deduction and post-audit claim to its governing term, computes expected-versus-actual variance and classifies every claim as valid, invalid or recoverable — with the clause attached as evidence rather than cited from memory.
Deliverable 03 · Retailer Compliance Health ScoringMonthly Health Scorecard
Rolls the adjudicated claims into a composite health score per retailer, banded red, yellow or green, ranking where compliance is eroding — with drill-down from a single score all the way to the purchase order and item line driving it.
Deliverable 04 · Pattern & Exposure AnalysisOpen-Exposure Read
Decomposes leakage by retailer, term type and reason code, detects recurring invalid-claim patterns and ages each claim against its recovery window — surfacing the addressable dollars at risk of expiring unworked.
Deliverable 05 · Opportunity Scoring & BandingDispute & Recovery Brief
Bands every claim — accept, dispute, recover or reassess — each mapped to one action, and routes a structured brief that pairs each contested claim with a recommended approach to the retailer’s merchant or accounts payable team.
Deliverable 06 · Exposure Forecasting & TrackingDeduction & Exposure Forecast
Produces an expected deduction and audit-exposure profile per retailer and term with a confidence interval — versioned and stored, so post-period accuracy traces back to the model that produced it.
Previews are schematic. They carry no figures, because the numbers on them would be ours rather than yours.
The output
Every claim lands in one of four bands
Banding is what turns a remittance file into a worklist. Each band carries one action and one owner, sequenced by addressable dollars and by how much window is left.
TIER 1Accept
Consistent with the governing clause. Close it and stop it consuming review capacity.
TIER 2Dispute
Departs from the term in force. Challenge it with the clause attached as evidence.
TIER 3Recover
Already absorbed, and still inside its window. Pursue it before the window closes.
TIER 4Reassess
The terms or the data underneath are too thin to adjudicate. Enrich before acting.
The workflow
From a signed PDF to a recovered dollar
The first step is the one everybody skips: until the terms are structured and effective-dated, nothing downstream can be tested against them.
1
IngestSigned PDFs, scans and emailed amendments read
2
ExtractCost, payment, allowance and markdown terms normalized
3
Effective-dateSupersession resolved so the governing version is unambiguous
4
MatchPOs, invoices, remittances, deductions and claims to their term
5
AdjudicateValid, invalid or recoverable, with the clause attached
6
RouteBanded, aged and sent to deductions, account or finance
Supersession is resolved explicitly, so the governing version of a term on any given date is unambiguous — which is what makes a dispute defensible.
What changes
Four things that stop being true
The workflow does not add another report. It replaces four sentences that get said in every review with something specific enough to act on.
“We’ll find out at the next post-audit.”
Claims are adjudicated as they are remitted, while the recovery window is still open.
“That deduction looks wrong.”
It departs from a named clause, in force on that date, by a computed variance.
“Compliance with that retailer feels like it’s slipping.”
A monthly health score per retailer, banded, with drill-down to the PO and item line.
“We absorbed it — it wasn’t worth chasing.”
Claims are sized in dollars and aged against their window, so effort follows recoverable value.
Who it is for
One workflow, four seats
The same governed output, presented for the decision each team actually makes. Nobody is asked to interpret somebody else’s view.
Deductions & Accounts Receivable
A monthly health scoreboard and a tiered worklist sequenced by addressable dollars, so claims are worked while the windows are still open.
Customer Business Managers
Independent, clause-level evidence and one specific ask for every line review and post-audit, each paired with an analog win.
Finance & Trade Leaders
Portfolio KPIs in business terms — invalid-claim rate, leakage prevented, recovery rate and exposure recovered — tied back to spend.
Account & Recovery Teams
Claim-to-clause scorecards carrying variance, age and evidence, localizing leakage to the exact retailer, purchase order and term.
How it is governed
What makes it repeatable
Anyone can produce this read once. What makes it a capability is that the grain, the logic and the model version are fixed and stored, so the next cycle is measured the same way as the last one.
Grain
Retailer × PO × item line × term. A health score always drills to the transaction that moved it.
Evidence
Every adjudication carries its governing clause. A dispute is defensible because the source text travels with the claim.
Effective dating
Supersession is resolved explicitly, so an amendment emailed two years ago cannot quietly govern today’s deduction.
Versioning
The exposure forecast is versioned and stored, so post-period accuracy traces back to the model that produced it.
Start with one retailer.
Bring one retailer’s agreements and a single remittance period. We’ll extract the governing terms, adjudicate the deductions against them and show you the recovery brief it produces — before you commit to anything wider.