Retailer deductions matched to their backup, then called valid or disputable.

A retailer pays an invoice short, and the remittance shows a deduction number, a code and an amount. The pieces that explain it sit somewhere else: a claim in the customer's portal, backup sent by email, your promotion agreement, the signed delivery receipt. Today someone in AR puts those together and decides whether the money is gone or worth asking back for.

In the proof of concept, AI works deductions your team already closed. For each one it names the backup it matched and drafts a call: valid and cleared to the right promotion or account, disputable with the evidence attached, or missing something, with a note of what. Nothing is filed and no one is contacted. Your reviewer compares each call with your analyst's.

Promotions and trade spend. These take the most matching. One deal can come back as an off-invoice deduction, a billback, a scan-based claim, or a charge for an ad or a free fill. Distributors such as UNFI and KeHE pass promotions back as manufacturer chargebacks, which they call MCBs. The draft matches each one to the promotion agreement or deal sheet: right items, right dates, right rate. Common problems are a deal taken twice, a promotion applied to a month it didn't run, or a discount on an item that wasn't in it. The agreement often sits with sales or your broker, not with the person working the deduction.

Shortages. The customer's receiving count says fewer cases arrived than you invoiced. The answer is in the delivery paperwork: the signed BOL or proof of delivery, whether the receiver noted an exception, the seal, the ASN you sent. When the POD shows a clean signature for the full count, the draft marks the shortage disputable and attaches that page.

Pricing and compliance fines. A pricing deduction comes from a cost mismatch: the customer paid what its own system says, not what you invoiced. The draft checks the PO cost, your price list and the date any cost change took effect. Compliance fines cover arrival outside the window, a missing or wrong ASN, labeling and pallet errors, and missed appointments. Their backup is the appointment confirmation, the carrier's arrival time and the timestamp on the ASN you sent.

Spoilage and unsaleables. These depend on your agreement with each customer. Some take a flat swell allowance in place of returns, so a separate damage deduction on top of it needs a closer look. Others deduct for damaged, short-dated or expired product found at the dock, where the backup is the receiving record, photos, and the lot code and date on the case.

Every customer runs it differently. Codes differ by retailer and distributor. Backup arrives through a portal, an EDI 812 or a separate email, sometimes before the payment and sometimes long after. Dispute windows range from hours to a full year depending on the customer, so the draft records which window applies to each deduction, from the rules you give us. Your reviewer, the person who knows your deductions best, watches for the calls that cost money either way: a valid promotion disputed, which strains things with a buyer, and an invalid fine written off because nobody found the POD.

After your reviewer's yes, new deductions get the same treatment for about 30 days, as remittances arrive.

Each call waits for a person on your team to approve it before anything is cleared in your ERP or a dispute goes to a customer. The reviewer keeps the same side-by-side, deduction by deduction.

Nothing else is added in that month.