Post-Audit Winter: Why Claims Spike After Q4
- The HRG Team
- Oct 2
- 1 min read
December closes clean. February lands a six-figure claim. It’s not just you. Many retailers run their deepest promo and freight reconciliations in Q1—often with better data than your year-end close had.
Common drivers:
Promo documentation lag. Your accruals matched the plan—auditors compare to final ad proofs and store execution.
Freight unmasking. Q4 expedites and split shipments resurface as OTIF or accessorial claims in Q1.
Case/inner mismatches. Peak DC congestion magnifies tiny spec errors that post-audit teams find later.
Price-pack shifts. “Limited” packs with leftover inventory create pricing variance headaches.
Fictional example (clearly hypothetical): A beverage supplier closes December with strong comps. In February, they received stacked claims—price variance on a holiday bundle, OTIF fees for two late lanes, and a co-op credit denial due to misaligned ad proofs. None are new; all are reconciliations.
A 30-day Post-Audit Readiness Sprint:
Day 1–5: Pull ad proofs, price files, promo calendars, DC receiving variances, and carrier exceptions into a single “doc room.”
Day 6–10: Tie each claim type to its evidence: POs, BOLs, PODs, ASN timestamps, promo authorizations.
Day 11–20: Build dispute packet templates by claim class (price, freight, co-op, shortage).
Day 21–30: Prioritize claims by recoverability and age; submit in waves with repeatable naming/version control.
What’s at stake: Suppliers that proactively assemble proof packs often see 10–25% higher recovery rates on post-audit claims—and cycle time drops from months to weeks.
Book a Post-Audit Readiness Check with HRG. We’ll help you spin up the doc room and fast-track your first wave of recoveries.
