Vendor: recovery management

About this article

This article provides an overview of ChannelEngine's Vendor module and tips for using Vendor to optimize recovery management with Amazon Vendor.

Table of contents

Introduction

Requirements

Setup

Features

• Recovery dashboard

• Invoice shortages

• Price discrepancies

• Dispute process

• General recovery settings

• Reports

• CSV export

Read-only access

Interactive demo: how to download dispute reports

Introduction

Vendor, ChannelEngine’s recovery management tool, enables you to manage the payment recovery process with Amazon’s Vendor Central.

Vendor automates the recovery process by sending disputes to Vendor Central on your behalf. Use Vendor to recover your lost profits on operations from potentially up to five years in the past. ChannelEngine:

• Identifies disputable areas, including invoice shortages and price discrepancies.

• Identifies recoverable amounts on invoices.

• Allows you to easily submit disputes to Amazon Vendor.

• Automatically generates monthly invoice reports for your administration.

As the technical requirements for working with Amazon Vendor grow more complex, ChannelEngine keeps your workflow simple. With the click of a button, ChannelEngine automatically sends disputes to Amazon Vendor and tracks recovery payments for you. With Vendor, you can manage disputes directly on ChannelEngine, eliminating the need to switch between systems.

Requirements

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

• You must have a vendor relationship with Amazon.

• You must have an account on Amazon Vendor Central.

• At least one Amazon Vendor plugin must be enabled in your ChannelEngine environment.

Setup

On Amazon Vendor Central

ChannelEngine requires Vendor Central API access scopes (Invoices, Shipments, Payments, Inventory, Operational Reports, etc.) to retrieve recovery data. Ensure all relevant users have the correct access scopes.

For ChannelEngine to retrieve recovery management data, it needs specific access scopes in your Amazon Vendor Central account. To grant access, invite a ChannelEngine user to your Vendor Central account. The user’s email address/contact details are provided to you by ChannelEngine.

1. Log in to your Amazon Vendor Central account.

2. In the top-right corner, go to Settings and select Manage permissions.

3. Click Add another person, then enter the email and contact details provided by ChannelEngine.

4. Under Roles and permissions, assign the Contributor role to ChannelEngine.

5. Grant the following access scopes:

   • API access

   • Invoices

   • Purchase orders

   • Payments

   • Costs

   • Shipments

   • Inventory

   • Operational performance

   • Operational reports

6. Click Send invitation.

On ChannelEngine

Onboard new users to Vendor by adding the users to your ChannelEngine environment. Go to Settings, Users. For guidance, check out ChannelEngine: add and remove a user.

Features

To access Vendor, go to Vendor in the side bar menu of ChannelEngine.

Recovery dashboard

To access the recovery dashboard, go to Vendor, Dashboard.

The recovery dashboard provides real-time insights into disputes with Amazon Vendor, relating to invoice shortages and price discrepancies, for proactive recovery management on ChannelEngine. For further reading, check out Vendor: recovery (dashboard).

With this dashboard, you can:

• View all recovery data in one place and manage disputes efficiently.

• Understand the amounts that are potentially recoverable from Amazon Vendor via disputes and the amounts that have already been recovered from Amazon Vendor.

• Quickly recover all disputes of a particular type (shortages and price discrepancies) for the current year.

• Access a full history of recoverable and recovered amounts across all Amazon channels, i.e., Amazon regions, and per Amazon region.

• Manage disputes directly from the dashboard or from the Invoice shortages and Price discrepancies pages.

Invoice shortages

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

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. To find out more on how to manage invoice shortages in Vendor, check out Vendor: recovery (invoice shortages).

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.

Price discrepancies

To access the overview of price discrepancies per invoice, go to Vendor, Price discrepancies.

Price discrepancies, also known as price claims, happen when Amazon pays less than the invoiced price of your products for any reason. The reasons for price discrepancies can range from Amazon incorrectly applying an outdated contract price, a misapplied promotion, or pricing errors in Amazon's system.

The dispute process on price discrepancies mirrors the dispute process for invoice shortages. To find out more on how to manage price discrepancies in Vendor, check out Vendor: recovery (price discrepancies).

You can use ChannelEngine's price discrepancies feature to identify and dispute price discrepancies on invoices paid by Amazon Vendor. The process allows you to:

• Quickly identify price discrepancies for invoiced amounts for items.

• Submit disputes for price discrepancies on a single invoice or multiple invoices at once.

Dispute process

Submit disputes from the Dashboard, Invoice shortages, or Price discrepancies pages.

ChannelEngine automatically determines the kind 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.

• Tab views - the invoice shortages and price discrepancy pages group disputable amounts across four tabs:

  • Recoverable - displays confirmed eligible shortages (blue-highlighted items).

  • In progress - pending disputes.

  • Recovered - any disputable items that ChannelEngine has found, disputed, and recovered from Amazon in the past. Recovered items can also include those that Amazon initially marked as short and were eventually paid.

  • All - a historical overview of all disputed items.

• Submitting disputes
  Choose to submit your disputes in bulk or one-by-one. Submit disputes in bulk, from the recovery dashboard, or by selecting multiple line items in the invoice shortages or price discrepancies pages. ChannelEngine limits submissions to 25 disputes per Amazon account per day to prevent system overload. A single click initiates the selected disputes.

• Resubmission strategy
  Amazon may reject claims. If so, re-dispute items within the allowed window. Some vendors resubmit multiple times (or escalate via support cases), often achieving up to 90% success over time. ChannelEngine automatically turns re-disputes into support cases. To view your past and current support cases, go to Vendor, Support Cases.

• Dispute flow
  The dispute mechanism is the same for both invoice shortages and price discrepancies. Locate the shortage or discrepancy line item in the overview, and click Dispute to submit. Although less frequent, price discrepancies generally yield quicker resolutions.

General recovery settings

Use general settings to optimize how you send both manual and automated disputes to Amazon in Vendor, Settings. For each Amazon Vendor channel on which you are active, a dedicated section appears that contains three subsections:

• Automations - decide on your automation schedule: on which days and times of the week to automatically send disputes, the cap on the number of disputes, and the characteristics on which to select invoices for disputes. For guidance, check out Vendor: recovery automation.

• Open statements - specify the invoice date range to exclude from both the manual and automated recovery process, for either invoice shortages or price discrepancies. For guidance, check out Vendor: open statements.

• Settings - choose the minimum and maximum invoice ages for the recovery process. For guidance, check out Vendor: recovery settings.

Reports

Invoice disputes

To view your monthly recovery reports, go to Vendor, Invoiced disputes.

Three days before the end of each month, you receive a report summarizing all successful recoveries for which ChannelEngine has submitted a dispute on your behalf. For each recovery, the report includes:

• Invoice number - the invoice number of the relevant invoice where the shortage or price discrepancy occurred.

• Invoice date - the original date of the relevant invoice.

• Dispute type - the disputed item, i.e.: shortage invoice or price discrepancy.

• Payment number - the unique payment number of the recovery payment.

• Recovered amount - the amount that was recovered from Amazon, in the currency of the channel from which the amount was recovered.

Payments

View a comprehensive overview of successful payments at Vendor, Payments. For each payment, view the payment's:

• Channel - the Amazon Vendor channel against which the payment was made.
• Payment no. - the unique identification number of the payment. 
• Payment date - the date and timestamp of the payment transaction.
• Payment amount - the amount of the payment. 
• Status - the status of the payment, e.g.: Successful. 
• Actions - click View to inspect a detailed view of the payment, broken down by the related invoices. Export the detailed view as a CSV file.

Filter your payments by channel with the Channel filter.

Use the search bar to search by Payment no.

Support cases

View a comprehensive overview of your opened support cases at Vendor, Support cases. For each support case, view the support case's:

• Channel - the Amazon Vendor channel on which the support case was opened. 
• Case ID - the unique case number. 
• Related item - the product about which the support case was opened.
• Case type - generally, a shortage claim or a price claim.
• Status - the status of the support case, e.g.: Resolved.
• Case created - the date and timestamp of the date on which the support case was created.
• Case updated - the date and timestamp of the latest activity on the support case.
• Actions - click View to read a timeline view of communication that includes the request generated from ChannelEngine and Amazon Vendor's responses.

Filter on your support cases by channel with the Channel filter. Use the date filter to filter support cases by the date on which the case was created or the date on which the case was updated. 

Use the search bar to search by Case ID or Related item.

CSV export

Create CSV exports from the Invoice shortages, Price discrepancies, Payments, or Invoiced disputes pages. Customize columns, e.g.: shortage quantity, due date, and dispute status, in the CSV file for offline analysis.

Read-only access

Set up read-only access for specific users in your organization by assigning those users a custom role. For guidance on setting up custom roles for recovery management users, check out Vendor: recovery management permissions.

Interactive demo: how to download dispute reports

For a full walk-through of Vendor recovery management, check out our demo on YouTube.