Good on Paper, Bad on P&L: When ‘Clean’ Retail Audits Still Cost You

You passed the audit. Gold star. No red flags. No compliance penalties. Everything looked…clean.

But your bottom line tells a different story.

Let’s talk about that weird disconnect so many suppliers face: the audit report looks squeaky clean, yet deductions keep piling up—or worse, never get recovered.

Here’s the thing: Passing a compliance audit doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. It just means the specific boxes were checked during that review window. What it doesn’t mean is that all the deductions were valid. Many invalid deductions happen outside of what a typical audit even touches.

A Fictional Example A regional beverage brand was feeling confident after its retailer audit came back clean. However, three months later, they discovered a $42,000 discrepancy tied to short shipments that had never actually occurred. It turns out that the retailer had docked payment based on the estimated weight, not the actual case count. Since the deduction hit after the audit period, it was never flagged.

That’s what we call deduction lag. And it's common.

If you’re relying on a one-time audit report to tell you everything’s fine, you may be flying blind.

Deduction recovery requires a second lens—one focused not just on compliance but on the actual money being withheld from your payments.

The reality? Clean audits can be misleading. Recovery takes a different kind of scrutiny.

Take Action

Passing your audit doesn’t mean you’re getting paid in full. Let HRG show you what your audit missed.

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