Case study: one area manager, two distributors, every month

An area manager at a ready-to-drink and spirits brand reconciles depletion allowance invoices from two distributors every month. Here is what that looked like before Depletion Reconciler, and what changed.

Situation

The brand manages its deals in Tradeparency. Each month, each distributor sends an Excel invoice of depletion allowances, and the area manager keys a case total onto every Tradeparency deal line for that distributor so the calculated total can be compared with the bill. Two distributors means two invoices, two deal lists and two different file layouts every month.

What was slow

• About 3 hours per distributor sheet, keying case totals by hand.
• Invoices of thousands of rows. One distributor's monthly file was about 9,000 rows, one per account, product and promotion, all of which had to be rolled up to deal-line totals before any keying could start.
• Formats that moved. Mid-summer, the distributors changed their invoice layouts. Any spreadsheet built around fixed column positions would have had to be rebuilt.
• Totals that would not tie, with no quick way to see which rows made up the difference.

What changed

The area manager now drops two files into Depletion Reconciler each month: the Tradeparency DA export for the distributor and that distributor's invoice. The tool reads the invoice columns by meaning, groups cases by product, price and DA, and fills every deal line in Tradeparency's order. He reads straight down the list and keys the numbers in Tradeparency.

When the distributors changed their invoice formats mid-summer, the tool adapted without the files being cleaned or reformatted first. When a match was genuinely ambiguous, it asked once, and the answer was remembered for the next month.

The totals check turned out to matter as much as the speed:

• A mistyped price. On one bill, the totals check surfaced a row on the distributor's sheet with 30 cases priced at $8 instead of $35. That was $234 of allowance that could not match any deal, and it explained part of a gap that had been hard to pin down.
• A naming mismatch. On one bill about $11,700 of cases were listed as "Tea" on the invoice and "Iced Tea" in Tradeparency. Those lines are now matched automatically instead of by hand.

Results

• About 3 hours per distributor sheet of hand keying replaced by reading down a filled, ordered list.
• About 9,000 invoice rows from one distributor handled in the browser, with no manual pivot.
• Mid-summer format changes absorbed with no file cleanup.
• $234 traced to a single mistyped price (30 cases at $8 instead of $35).
• About $11,700 of cases surfaced from a "Tea" vs "Iced Tea" naming mismatch, now matched automatically.
• 116 to 0: lines needing a manual pick on one July bill, as matching improved.
• About four months of monthly use and counting.

What it means for your team

If your area managers key depletion allowances into Tradeparency, most of their month-end time goes to searching and matching, not to decisions. The same patterns showed up here that show up on most DA invoices: large files, shifting layouts, names that differ between the invoice and the platform, and the occasional typo that throws the totals off. Our guide to common DA invoice errors covers each of them.

Depletion Reconciler works alongside Tradeparency; it does not replace it. Your team still keys and approves in Tradeparency, with the numbers already lined up and a totals check that shows exactly which rows explain any gap. Invoices are read in the browser and never uploaded. For teams, the Team plan covers up to five area managers at $149/month, and includes our team setting up your distributors' formats.

Tradeparency is a trademark of its owner. Depletion Reconciler is an independent tool and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Tradeparency or Andavi Solutions.