Rebate and deduction claims, for the side that files and the side that pays.

One shape, two sides. Every claim on this page starts the same way: a price or an allowance agreed before the sale, goods that moved at a different price, and a gap settled afterward on paper. The side that is owed files, with the agreement and a sales or delivery record behind it. The side that pays checks the claim against its own copy of the deal, then pays, cuts, refuses or deducts. Sometimes the two desks are the two ends of one transaction: a foodservice distributor's deviation billback is exactly what lands on a food maker's promotion claims desk. For the test, the answer key is the same either way: claims your team already settled and what came of them.

Promotional money comes with a federal rule. Section 2(d) of the Robinson-Patman Act, 15 U.S.C. 13(d), bars a seller from paying a customer for services or facilities the customer provides in selling the seller's goods, such as an ad or a display, unless the payment is available on proportionally equal terms to every customer competing to resell those goods. The FTC's guides on advertising allowances, last revised in 2014 at 16 CFR Part 240, prescribe no single method and call payments tied to dollar volume or quantity bought generally the simplest. They add that a seller should take reasonable precautions to see that the services it pays for are performed and that it is not overpaying, and that a customer should spend an allowance only on what it was given for. That is one reason a paying desk wants the ad page or the store photo, and pays by the deal sheet rather than the request. Prices agreed for one end user, project or operator raise other questions, which stay with your counsel; the draft applies each agreement as it was written.

The same dollar sits on two sets of books. Under ASC 606-10-32-25, what a seller pays or credits to a customer, or to parties that buy its goods from that customer, reduces the transaction price, and so revenue, unless it buys a distinct good or service. Paragraph 32-27 records that reduction at the later of the sale and the payment or promise to pay, even a conditional promise, and customary practice can imply one. The receiving side mirrors it: under ASC 705-20, what a vendor pays or credits generally reduces the purchase price of the goods bought, with three exceptions, among them payment for a distinct good or service and repayment of specific, incremental costs of selling the vendor's products. So a billback lowers the maker's revenue and the distributor's cost of goods, and both controllers care which month it lands in. The proof of concept books nothing. It gives your reviewer each amount and the record behind it.

Proof of the resale, and checks that settle too much. A claim against a manufacturer rests on a record of what was resold, to whom and when. X12 has a transaction set for that record: the 867, Product Transfer and Resale Report, which can report product sold from one or more locations to an end customer. A claim against a customer starts from a payment that came in short, and when that payment is a check, section 3-311 of the Uniform Commercial Code matters. A check offered in good faith as full satisfaction of an amount in genuine dispute or not yet fixed, with a conspicuous statement saying so, can discharge the whole claim once it is cashed. An organization can guard against that by naming where such communications must be sent, and in some cases a claimant can undo it by repaying within 90 days. So any full-payment wording on a short check goes to the top of the draft, for your credit manager.

What changes by industry, and what never does. Electrical distributors watch end user codes and filing windows, foodservice distributors watch operator rosters and random weights, and a food maker watches dates, units and backup arriving by portal, EDI and email. The test stays the same: drafts on a review sheet, scored by your reviewer, the person who knows these claims best, against what your team filed or paid. It never files a claim, never pays or refuses one, never takes or disputes a deduction, and never decides what is owed. The page behind each card covers what that desk sends, the rows its drafts are scored on and its hard limit.