Amazon Vendor: recovery (invoice shortages)

ChannelEngine’s recovery management feature helps you recover missing payments from Amazon Vendor via disputes and reclaim your lost profits. ChannelEngine:

• Automates dispute recovery for invoice shortages.
• Identifies disputable areas, such as invoice shortages.
• Identifies recoverable amounts on invoices and recovered amounts.
• Allows you to easily submit disputes to Amazon Vendor for approval.

This article describes how to dispute invoice shortages so that you can recover payments for the products that you supplied.  

Table of contents

Introduction

Setup

Overview

Search, settings, and filters

Dispute shortages for multiple invoices

Dispute shortages for a single invoice

FAQs

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Introduction

Invoice shortages happen 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 you have new evidence to support your dispute.

Setup

To enable the Amazon Vendor module on ChannelEngine, contact your customer success manager.

Overview

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.

To see an overview of the invoices, from the left-hand side menu, click Vendor, Shortages.

At the top of the page, you can see:

• 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 - the current shortage amount for all invoices. This value updates based on the selected tab (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 their system. As a result, minor inaccuracies may occur.

Search, settings, and filters

In the Invoice shortages overview, you see a search, several different filters, and the following 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. 

Use the filters listed below to filter the invoices that are divided across the four tabs: Recoverable, In progress, Recovered, and All. Extra filters are available for the All tab to further narrow down the list of invoices. Search for a specific invoice by number or use the filters. You can combine the filters to see a specific invoice overview, such as 'all invoices across all Amazon channels, with a due date within the last 90 days, that have a disputable shortage'.

• Channel - filter by the Amazon Vendor channel (account or region) through which the invoices were processed. You can filter by All channels or specific channels.
• Due date - filter the invoices by the date range by which they must be paid.
• Invoice date - filter the invoices by the date range by which they were issued.
• Creation date - filter the invoices by the date range when they were imported into ChannelEngine.
• Columns - the tabs contain multiple columns that display invoice data. You can filter the tabs to display specific columns, as needed. 
• Has initial shortage - filter by invoices that include initial shortage amounts. 
• Has recovered items - filter by invoices that include items with shortage amounts already recovered through a previous dispute.
• Has current shortage - filter by invoices with a current shortage or not, Yes or No. 
• Has pending payments - filter by invoices where payments are outstanding, Yes or No. E.g.: some invoices may be partially paid, i.e., payments for some items on the invoice might be withheld by Amazon due to quantity shortages or another reason. 
• Has payments - filter by invoices where payments have been made, either in full or partially.
• Has pending dispute - filter by invoices with a dispute submitted to Amazon Vendor that is pending.
• Can dispute - filter by invoices that are currently eligible for dispute.
• Due date - filter by the invoice payment due date. This is the date by which Amazon Vendor must pay the invoice. 
• Start date - filter by invoices submitted on or after this date. E.g.: You can use the Start date and End date filters to narrow the invoices list to only show invoices submitted between 1 September 2024 and 6 December 2025.
• End date - filter by invoices on or before this date.
• Invoice status - filter on the status of the invoice, Paid, Processing, Approved for payment, or Submitted. 

All tabs contain the following columns that display the invoice data:

• Channel
• Invoice number
• Initial invoice status
• Invoice date
• Invoice due date
• Dispute count
• Submitted amount
• Accepted amount
• Initial shortage amount
• Recovered amount
• Total paid amount
• Current shortage quantity
• Current shortage amount
• Actions

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

FAQs

How far back can I submit disputes from?

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 do anything different. Re-submit the dispute 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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