Vendor: recovery (invoice shortages)

About this article

This article describes how to use ChannelEngine to dispute invoice shortages so that you can recover payments for the products that you supplied to Amazon as a vendor.

Table of contents

Introduction

Overview

Key Metrics

Dispute process

• Dispute shortages for multiple invoices
• Dispute shortages for a single invoice

CSV export

FAQs

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Introduction

Invoice shortages occur when Amazon Vendor claims that the quantity of products they received is less than the quantity listed in your invoice. As a result, Amazon may withhold payment for those missing products. You can use ChannelEngine's invoice shortages feature to see and dispute shortages on invoices submitted to Amazon Vendor. The process allows you to:

• Quickly identify shortages for invoiced amounts for items.
• Submit disputes for a single invoice or multiple invoices at once.

ChannelEngine automatically determines the type of dispute to submit to Vendor Central – a traditional dispute or a support case. Amazon requires a support case if you re-dispute an already rejected shortage. This can often happen if you believe Amazon is incorrect or if you have new evidence to support your dispute.

Amazon's dispute eligibility window is typically on shortages from up to five years in the past. Use ChannelEngine to recover potentially five years of invoice shortages. 

To manage the recovery of invoice shortages, go to Vendor, Shortages.

Overview

To view the overview of invoice shortages, go to Vendor, Shortages.

The Invoice shortages overview shows all invoices submitted to Amazon Vendor, including invoices where ChannelEngine has detected shortage amounts. ChannelEngine’s logic detects invoice shortages, providing more opportunity to recover these than solely using Vendor Central.

Key metrics

At the top of the page are four key metrics:

• Submitted - the total amount of all original invoices submitted, excluding invoices for which there is a shortage claim reversal (SCR).
• Initial shortage - the total shortage amount identified across all original invoices, excluding SCR invoices.
• Recovered - the total amount recovered from Amazon so far through disputes (paid in full or partially recovered).
• Current shortage - the current shortage amount for all invoices.
  • This value updates based on the selected tab that you are viewing (Recoverable, In progress, Recovered, All) and applied filters.
  • On rare occasions, Amazon may pay the full shortage amount for an item without updating the invoice shortage amount in its system. As a result, minor inaccuracies may occur.
  • To prioritize items within Amazon’s typical dispute eligibility window (up to 5 years), filter by date range using the date picker.

Tabs

From the Invoice shortages overview, you can navigate through four tabs:

• Recoverable - all invoices for which there are shortages that can be disputed now. If an invoice already has a related dispute that is pending, that invoice is not shown on this tab.
• In progress - all invoices for which there are pending disputes.
• Recovered - all invoices with shortages recovered to date from Amazon Vendor through disputes.
• All  - all invoices submitted to Amazon Vendor. 

Filters and search

At the top of the invoice shortages overview, you can search and filter the list of eligible invoice shortages to dispute. 

Locate specific invoices in the search bar, or filter by Channel. (The default is All.) Filtering by Due date is especially powerful because Amazon typically allows disputes on historical shortages from up to five years in the past. 

Columns

Use the Columns multi-selector dropdown to further refine the invoices in each tab. You can combine filters with the visible columns to view a specific set of invoices, e.g: all invoices across all Amazon Vendor channels with a due date within the last 90 days that have a disputable shortage.

• Channel - the channel (account or region) on which the invoices were processed. 
• Invoice no. - the invoice number.
• Status - the status of the invoice shortage, e.g.: Disputable.
• Initial invoice status - the first status of the invoice, e.g. Paid.
• Invoice date - the invoices by the date range by which they were issued.
• Invoice due date - the date by which the invoice must be paid.
• Dispute count - how many times the given invoice was disputed.
• Submitted - the amount of the original invoice that was submitted to the channel.
• Accepted - the amount that the channel agreed to pay against the invoice. 
• Initial shortage - the initial shortage amount on the invoice, if any.
• Recovered - the shortage amount already recovered through a previous dispute.
• Total paid - the amount Acception plus Recovered.
• Current shortage quantity - the number of items that are not yet remunerated by the channel.
• Current shortage - the amount Submitted minus Total paid.

Dispute process

Amazon's dispute eligibility window is typically on shortages from up to 5 years in the past. 

Dispute shortages for multiple invoices

You can dispute shortages that exist on multiple invoices at once and submit the disputes to Vendor Central. If you do this, all items on the selected invoices with shortages are included in the submitted disputes.   

1. From the left-hand side menu, click Vendor, Shortages.
2. Select the specific channels (accounts or regions) for which you want to dispute the invoices from the dropdown, if needed.
3. On the Recoverable tab, select the check box for each invoice with shortages you want to dispute. Select the Channels check box to select up to ten invoices to dispute at once. If you want to dispute more than ten, repeat for each page of results.
4. Above the table, click Dispute selected. On the Dispute shortages page, you see the total number of disputed invoices, the total number of disputed items across all invoices, the total dispute amount for all items across all invoices, and the total dispute amount for each invoice.
5. Click Submit disputes to submit the disputes to Amazon for approval.

Dispute shortages for a single invoice

You can dispute shortages for specific items on a single invoice and submit the dispute to Vendor Central.

1. From the left-hand side menu, click Vendor, Shortages.
2. Select the channel for which you want to dispute shortages on invoices, if needed.
3. On the Recoverable tab, locate the specific invoice with shortages that you want to dispute.
4. Click Dispute. On the Dispute shortage for invoice page, you can update the default Dispute details message that confirms the items were shipped to provide the justification for the dispute.
5. All items included in the invoice with shortages are available to dispute. For each item, you can see its Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN), the item quantity and invoiced amount, the initial shortage quantity and amount, the recovered quantity and amount, and the current shortage quantity and amount. The total outstanding amount for all items is also shown.
6. In the Dispute items section, uncheck any items that you do not want to dispute. A history of prior disputes for the invoice, and evidence from Vendor Central that the items were shipped or received, are shown, if available.
7. Click Submit dispute to submit the dispute to Amazon for approval. 
   
   

When you submit a dispute, ChannelEngine queues it for export to Amazon Vendor and generates a temporary dispute number. When the submission process completes, ChannelEngine replaces the temporary dispute number with a permanent dispute number

CSV export

To review and analyze your invoice shortages, you can export them as a CSV file. On the Invoice shortages page, click Data export, then select CSV as the file format and choose a delimiter. Click Download report data. The CSV file is downloaded automatically to your computer. You can open it in a spreadsheet program (e.g.: Google Sheets) or any other tool that supports CSV.

FAQs

From how far back can I submit disputes?
This depends on your Vendor agreement with Amazon. ChannelEngine enables you to submit disputes from as far back as Amazon allows, typically five years.

What happens if Amazon rejects my dispute? 
If Amazon rejects your dispute, the dispute count increases and you can re-dispute the shortage if you believe Amazon is in error. Sometimes, a dispute is successful after 4-5 attempts.

Should I dispute everything at once or only a few shortages at a time?
ChanelEngine automatically manages the submission of your disputes and support cases to Amazon, so you can dispute as many shortages as often as you like.

Do I always have to click the Dispute button to submit a dispute?
Yes, currently, it is only possible to manually dispute shortages on ChannelEngine.

If Amazon rejects my dispute, how do I dispute the shortage again? Do I need to submit a support case? 
You do not need to follow a separate process. Re-submit the dispute via ChannelEngine, and ChannelEngine will automatically determine whether to create a regular dispute or a support case based on Amazon's responses and the status of the dispute.

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