The Retail Deductions You Didn’t See Coming—Because They Hit Post-Audit
- The HRG Team
- May 28
- 2 min read
Let’s talk about the deductions that sneak up on you.
You think the transaction is closed. The product shipped, the invoice matched, and the retailer paid. Case closed, right?
Not quite.
Months later, a deduction appears. There was no prior warning, no open ticket, just a line on a remittance that says, “post-audit adjustment.”
Welcome to the world of post-audit deductions. Quiet. Retroactive. And often, very costly.
What Makes Post-Audits So Risky?
Unlike standard deductions, which hit soon after an event (like a late delivery or short shipment), post-audits are often:
Months old
Difficult to dispute
Missing backup
Buried in bulk remittances
Retailers hire third-party audit firms to comb through past data, looking for pricing mismatches, promotion variances, freight term inconsistencies, or contract violations. These firms are incentivized to find something.
And once they do? The deduction comes out of your payment stream. No discussion. Just deduction.
A Fictional Example:
Imagine a mid-tier beverage brand that ran a seasonal buy-one-get-one promotion across a dozen banners. They paid all related trade spend. However, six months later, they were hit with $212,000 in post-audit deductions from a major retailer citing “promotion overfunding.”
Why? The retailer’s auditor interpreted a clause in the trade agreement differently than the supplier intended, and no one caught the variance in time.
Now, the funds are gone, and the AP team is scrambling to piece together the past.
How to Defend Against Post-Audits
You can’t prevent retailers from auditing. But you can:
Document every agreement, clause, and trade spend upfront
Retain audit-ready records for 2+ years
Use expert partners to pre-audit your own data before they do
Track recurring deduction types by retailer and build dispute libraries
Post-audits aren’t random. They’re often systematic; if they worked once, the same firm will try again.
Call to Action:
You don’t need a time machine to recover post-audit deductions. You need a strategy—and a team that’s seen it all. HRG can help you stop the bleeding and get your money back.
