Ship and debit claims for electrical distributors, drafted for your analyst to check.

Today someone pulls every invoice line sold on special pricing, finds the agreement it fell under, confirms the end user, dates and catalog number, works out the cost difference at the right pricing unit, and keys or uploads the claim in that manufacturer's template.

For the test, AI does the matching and drafts each claim line with its agreement number, end user, quantity, costs and amount due, plus a list of the backup that is missing. Your analyst checks it. Nothing is filed, uploaded or deducted.

You pay full price first. Under ship and debit, the manufacturer bills you at into-stock cost and pays the difference only after you sell. ABB's published Canadian SPA policy says it plainly: shipments are billed at normal into-stock pricing, SPA discounts can't be deducted from those bills, and a claim is based on shipments to the listed end user after the material leaves your stock. Taking the credit as a deduction before the credit note arrives breaks that policy.

A clean claim needs a dozen facts from four places. ABB's list: quote number, a six-digit end user code, end user name, your invoice number and date to that end user, catalog number, quantity sold, purchased cost, pricing unit of measure, amount due, and both account numbers. The agreement supplies some, your sales invoice some, and your purchase history and the manufacturer's account setup the rest. The draft shows where every value came from.

Most denials are rule checks. The same policy denies a claim filed more than 90 days after the sale, a sale outside the SPA's effective dates, a product the SPA doesn't cover, a claim sent before the manufacturer authorized the end customer, material bought on a project quote or a promotion, and factory-assembled items. Claimed quantity can't exceed the manufacturer's stock shipments to that location, counted over two years. Each check runs on every drafted line, and a failure is marked with the rule it broke.

The paperwork may be EDI. An agreement can arrive as an X12 845 price authorization, a claim can go out as an 844 product transfer account adjustment, and the answer comes back as an 849. In Infor's SX.e, the SM Rebate Report moves vendor rebates from the Invoice stage to the Printed stage and numbers each claim, per vendor or one per sales invoice, and returns show up as negative amounts. Replies land in PD Rebate Reconciliation Entry, where each line is disputed or reconciled. Your reviewer checks that every return was netted against the claim it reverses.

Every manufacturer is different. Electrical Trends has noted that each manufacturer runs its own process, rules and terminology, and that SPAs can be written for one customer, a customer class or a vertical market. ABB takes revision requests within 60 days of processing; others set their own windows. So the success criteria list each manufacturer's rules from its own policy, and your reviewer, usually the rebate or pricing analyst, scores each draft against the claim you filed and what the manufacturer paid.

When your reviewer says yes against the success criteria, the job runs on new SPA sales for about 30 days.

Each drafted claim waits for your analyst, who checks it and decides whether to file. Only your team uploads, sends or deducts anything.

That month of live claims is priced as a fixed figure before you sign. Whatever comes after it is decided and priced separately.