Retail Strategies & Supplier Insights

This isn’t about fighting every deduction. It’s about protecting working capital with a repeatable operating system.

Discover how to build a Retail Compliance Operating System to control compliance issues. Learn Retail Compliance strategies for 2026 success.

If 2025 felt like retailers were measuring everything, 2026 is when they start enforcing it with fewer humans in the loop. The reason is simple: AI and automation spending is exploding. International Data Corporation (IDC) forecast that year-over-year spending on AI will grow 31.9% from 2025 to 2029, reaching $1.3 trillion by 2029, driven largely by agentic AI-enabled applications.

In the first quarter (Q1), promotions are enforced by systems, not people. Here’s how suppliers stop short pays, billback chaos, and trade spend leakage before it repeats all year. Trade spend is one of the biggest checks you write all year. And in Q1 (first quarter), it has a bad habit of turning into a second job—because the retailer’s system starts “auditing” your promotions for you. Not with a person. With rules.

Trade spend is supposed to buy growth. In Q1, it often buys you something else: confusion, short pays, and weeks of “Can you resend the backup?” If you’ve ever looked at a deduction and thought, “We already funded that promotion… why are we paying again?”—welcome to the club. Why this matters more than ever in 2026 Retail is entering 2026 with shoppers still seeking value. Retailers are leaning into deals, private label, and “dupes,” and they’re getting more aggressive about

You can have a strong sales year and still feel broke. That usually means one thing: money is leaking out after the sale—through deductions, chargebacks, and short pays.

“Retail deductions” are amounts a retailer withholds from your invoice—usually for shortages, compliance issues, pricing discrepancies, freight/OTIF misses, or after-the-fact (post-audit) claims.

You don’t have to choose between a food broker  and a deduction recovery  team. The compounding effect comes from both: brokers prevent...

Let’s be real: retail deduction software is essential. But software surfaces claims; experts recover dollars. Winners use both.

Promotions feel like a win-win. Shoppers get a deal, sales lift, and the retailer’s happy. But not every promo helps. Some destroy margin without driving lasting volume.

Late trucks. Wrong pallet configs. Missing paperwork. Each slip turns into a deduction. And the math adds up fast. A $300 error on a truckload? Multiply that by 200 loads a year, and you’ve lost $60K before you know it.

Recovering retail deductions can be complex, but most brands lose money due to avoidable mistakes. Here are the five most common missteps:

If your CPG brand sells to major retailers like Walmart, Kroger, or Target, you’ve likely experienced the frustration of deductions ...

If you’re a CPG supplier working with UNFI, you know the drill: you send the shipment, you send the invoice, and you wait for payment. But somewhere between “invoiced” and “paid,” things get messy.

The 2025 “One Big Beautiful Bill” puts $186 billion in SNAP cuts on the table over the next decade. Starting in 2028, states begin covering 5–15% of benefit costs based on their error rate, up from zero, and must pick up 75% of administrative costs instead of 50%.

What We Learned from This Year’s Retail Heavyweight Showdown Every July, it’s the same showdown with new twists: Amazon Prime Day versus...

There’s nothing quite like the surprise of a post-audit deduction. You close the books thinking everything’s in order… and six months...

Navigate retail deductions with expert strategies. Understand OTIF compliance, markdown allowances, chargebacks, and more to protect profit

Introduction For suppliers doing business with Walmart, understanding post-audit deductions is not just important—it's crucial for...

In the fast-paced world of consumer packaged goods (CPG), suppliers often navigate a maze of fees, fines, and deductions imposed by...