Core returns and parts credits, followed until the credit shows up.

A remanufactured part goes out on a repair order with a core charge on it, and the manufacturer bills your dealership a core charge of its own. The old part comes off the machine and gets drained, tagged and shipped back. Later a credit memo arrives: for the full deposit, for less, or not at all. Surplus stock sent back for credit follows a similar path on a different calendar.

For the test, AI reads copies of that paperwork for returns already closed and builds the trail for each one: the charge, the shipment, the credit and the difference. Nothing is shipped, claimed or posted. Your reviewer lays each trail beside the one your parts team kept.

Every core has two deposits. The manufacturer charges your dealership a core charge on the reman part, and you charge your customer one on the counter ticket or repair order. Each comes back only when a core does, in acceptable shape. A customer who never brings the old unit in leaves you holding your own core charge. A core that goes back and draws a short credit leaves the difference with you. The trail shows both sides for every reman part number.

The credit depends on the core's condition, and the maker grades it. One Cat dealer's published core acceptance criteria sort returns into full credit, partial credit and no refund. Full credit needs an acceptable part number and a core that is fully assembled and complete, free of fire damage, heavy rust and torch marks. An engine core must turn its crankshaft through 360 degrees twice one way and once the other after it comes out of the machine, and a cracked block is billed back as a separate charge. John Deere's parts store grades returned cores in three bands too: complete with no visible external damage; visibly damaged, holding more than residual fluid, or an electronic part with a broken tamper seal; and disassembled or damaged by fire or water.

The repair order predicts the credit. The same Cat dealer's criteria tell the inspector to ask the service department or the customer why the part was replaced, because a failed, non-running core earns only partial credit on many components. Some things look like failure and aren't: on hydraulic cylinders, seal leakage and drift count as wear. How the core travels matters as well. It goes back drained, with openings plugged, fastened to the shipping stand it arrived on, and never taken apart to check it. So the trail reads the technician's cause and the return paperwork together, and marks which short credits look explained and which look worth a question.

Stock returns run on their own rules. Surplus parts go back under each manufacturer's return program and your dealer agreement, and some states write rules of their own. Florida's law for outdoor power equipment dealers, for one, requires suppliers to offer a yearly chance to return surplus parts for credit. It excludes obsolete and superseded parts, takes only new, unused parts on the current returnable list, gives the supplier 60 days after the parts arrive to issue credit, and leaves packing and freight to the dealer. A superseded number on a return, or one credit memo covering several returns, is where the matching needs a person.

What your reviewer will watch. Does every core charge on the manufacturer's invoices have a return, or a reason it hasn't gone back? Is every credit memo matched to the shipment and the part it pays for? Is each short credit explained by the inspection result, or flagged? Are customer core charges refunded when their cores came in, and still open when they didn't? And does the list stop at what the paperwork shows, instead of guessing why a credit came up short?

After your reviewer says yes, the job follows new core charges and returns for about 30 days.

The missing-credit list goes to your parts manager, who decides what to chase and with whom. No manufacturer or customer hears from the AI, and every refund or write-off is still your team's call.

Any next job waits until those 30 days are done, and starts only if you ask for it.