The big idea: if you want fewer retail deductions, faster closes, and calmer audits, you don’t start with deductions—you start by building an audit-ready finance team.

Retail chargebacks are like speaking a foreign language—only no one bothered to give you the dictionary.

You closed the books. The year looked solid. Everyone celebrated hitting margin goals. Then six months later, a notice lands on your...

Every supplier is looking for ways to manage deductions faster and more efficiently. Enter retail deduction software. These tools promise automation, visibility, and streamlined workflows. And they do deliver value—up to a point.

Here’s why deductions never really go away—and why having a proactive recovery strategy matters.

Let’s be real: peak season is chaos. Trucks run late, warehouses overflow, and every second counts. That’s exactly when shortage deductions—claims that your shipment didn’t arrive in full—start stacking up.

Imagine this: a shopper buys a blender, uses it twice, then decides it doesn’t match their kitchen aesthetic. Back it goes. But instead of chalking it up as a return, the retailer marks it as “defective.”

Most brands assume deductions come from poor performance. But many stem from inadequate documentation or miscommunication between departments—or between suppliers and retailers.

Fictional Scenario: Summit Snacks  entered Q2 expecting strong numbers from a big club-store launch. But by June, the CFO’s forecast was...

Retailers don’t just audit random SKUs—they target your top performers. Find out why high-volume products are more likely to rack up chargebacks—and how HRG helps you stop the bleeding.

Let’s start with a scenario. Totally fictional—but uncomfortably familiar. A mid-sized food supplier had just launched a packaging...

Let’s be honest. If you’ve ever had to log into more than five retailer portals in a single day, you’re not managing deductions—you’re...

Retailers change policies quietly. A new compliance rule. A new labeling standard. A modified deadline. Sometimes, the first notice is a wave of deductions.

Retailer audits often reach 12 to 24 months back. That means a “clean” month can come back to haunt you if an auditor uncovers a compliance issue or documentation gap. It’s like getting a bill for a party you thought someone else already paid for.

Here’s the truth—retailers aren’t trying to cheat you. But their systems are often a different story. Most deductions are triggered automatically by software scanning for any deviation from thousands of rules. A mislabeled pallet? A misread barcode? Even something as small as an EDI mismatch can set off a chain reaction.

The Case for ‘Proactive Recovery’ We get it. Post-audit recovery feels like a safety net. If something slips by, you’ll catch it later....

Picture this: You’ve had a busy year. New product launches. Packaging updates. Retail resets. Deductions? They’ve been piling up, but you...