Happier Vendors

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Happier Vendors.

Big surprise…your vendors don’t like old recovery audit claims.  Many vendors are addressing their dislike by not accepting claims after their fund closes or after a stated amount of time from the transaction.  Nestle, for example, won’t accept recovery audit claims after six months from the transaction.  P&G won’t accept recovery audit claims after the close of the fund.

Taking 12-24 months to address your recovery audit claims isn’t good for your company either.  Of course you would prefer to have your funds now instead of later, but how?

The Answer is…

The near real-time error detection and correction solution that’s leading grocers across the country have adopted to perform monthly reviews.  RecoverNOW™ offers near real-time error detection and correction within 90 days of the transaction.  Not only do you accelerate cash flow and avoid losing funding from last year, you can improve your vendor relationships.

Weis Markets CFO Scott Frost said, “Moving the recovery audit closer to the transaction date has definitely improved the category manager/vendor relationship. And we get our money sooner.”

Better For Everyone

Every relationship has points of contention.  Just like marriages, finances are often at the root of vendor/merchant relationship challenges. Merchants will tell you that old claims are an aggravation to vendor relationships and interference to negotiating today’s deals.

Tops’ CFO Rick Mills reports, “In the spirit of vendor partnership, near real-time recovery audit is much better.  The situation is fresher in our minds and the turn-around time is faster for our cash.  Ultimately, this change improves our buyers’ margins and funding.”

Increased Recoveries.  Happier Vendors.

Near real-time reviews  increase recoveries  because errors are detected and presented as adjustments to individual invoices close to the transaction; this makes it easier for vendors to digest.

Now retired Hy-Vee Vice President of Purchasing and Marketing Mark McQuistan reported, “Implementing a near real-time recovery audit process is helping us eliminate the negative aspects of recovery audits.  Traditional post-annual audits were a disaster for vendor relations.  Buyers are now enjoying less recovery work.  The buyers and venders are happier. ”

NOW Can Make You Happy, Too.

ATG’s RecoverNOW™ reduces the human resources required to perform a recovery audit, so it is a cost-effective solution that both digs deeper and can do so more frequently. RecoverNow™ replaces the annual audit process with monthly reviews.  What does accelerated recovery mean to you?

• You recover your funds sooner!

• You recover more  because the errors are detected and corrected immediately as invoice adjustments while they are fresh in everyone’s mind.

• Your current year funds are not impacted by last year’s claims.

• You benefit with improved vendor relations and margins.

To learn more about getting faster recoveries and happier vendors with RecoverNOW™, contact ATG Vice President Paul Dinkins at pdinkins@atgaudits.com or (970) 672-4147.

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TradeView Analytics System Background Video

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John Franklin TVA

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TradeView Analytics Program Update

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December 2015

By Paul Dinkins, Avantis Partners LLC Board Member and ATG Executive Vice President

Topco Associates and Audit Technology Group (ATG) formed a joint venture, Avantis Partners LLC, in February 2015 combining ATG’s transaction data aggregation analytics platform with Topco’s category management expertise to deliver retailers on-demand views of vendor performance metrics through a SaaS application knows as TradeView analytics™.  The application offers visibility into trade funds from the item level up providing a true picture of net costs as well as comparative benchmarks to drive optimal vendor negotiations.  TradeView Analytics™ is available to all retailers and is hosted on the Microsoft Azure cloud.

Brookshire Grocery Company, headquartered in Tyler, Texas was ATG’s original beta partner to develop this program, the success of which lead to the joint venture with Topco Associates.  Beginning May, 2015 Avantis, LLC and ATG executives began meeting with retailers to demonstrate the program and explain benefits.  Since then seven additional grocery retailers have committed to participate in the program including Weis Markets, Raley’s, KVAT, Coborn’s, Big Y, Tops Markets and HyVee. 

Each performance metric is cast at the item, brand, sub-category, category, department and company levels with year over year comparison trends to quickly identify the extent of vendor support and identify negotiating opportunities to drive margin.  

ATG’s monthly transaction data assimilation originally developed for near real-time monthly recovery audits is the data engine powering the integrated TradeView Analytics™ program.  The integrated recovery audit covers the cost of data onboarding for TradeView Analytics™.    To date all participating Members have opted to use ATG for their recovery audits given the integrated financial advantage.

Look for more TradeView Analytics program updates.  For additional information contact:  Paul Dinkins, EVP and Chief Marketing Officer, ATG; pdinkins@atgaudits.com,  Office (970) 972-4147; Cell (970) 219-5768

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Value Of TradeView Analytics

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Brookshire Holding’s Kevin Albritton and Topco’s Steve Schmitchel discuss the value of TradeView Analytics.  

Kevin Albritton, Brookshire Holding’s Executive Vice President Sales and Marketing, shared the stage with Steve Schmitchel, Vice President, Program Management, Indirect Spend, and spoke about Topco’s new partnership with Audit Technology Group (ATG).Topco recently entered into a joint venture with ATG to provide members with a new solution – TradeView Analytics. TradeView™ Analytics leverages detailed transaction data to provide supplier and item level visibility into trade funds providing a true picture of net costs. This information can easily be viewed at a supplier, category or department level, providing the needed transparency for improved supplier negotiations. 

While Topco has worked with ATG for years, the specific TradeView™ opportunity was introduced to Topco by Brookshire Grocery Co. Albritton had this to say about the benefits TradeView™ can provide the Brookshire merchants through grocery-specific supplier scorecards, “these scorecards could be used to compare suppliers within a category and to evaluate year-over-year trending of supplier trade funds and margin. Instead of relying on supplier provided information, they would be able to enter with more relevant data and clear view of negotiating goals.” He continued by speaking about the importance of pursuing this opportunity through Topco, “we think the greatest value may be derived through benchmarking as more members participate. And this was why we felt the opportunity was best pursued through Topco.” 

Schmitchel closed by highlighting how the greatest value may be derived through benchmarking as more members participate, “The opportunity is to provide each of you with greater visibility into supplier tradefunds, improved supplier scorecards, as well as comparative benchmarks across the membership to drive optimal supplier negotiations.” To be one of the first five members to gain access to this significant opportunity, please contact Steve Schmitchel at 781-926-6030 or sschmitchel@topco.com.

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Topco, LLC And Audit Technology Group, LLC Form Joint Venture

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Error Detection and Correction is NOW

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Error Detection and Correction is NOW!

“Scan and bag” while you shop technology, smart phone loyalty cards, and Peapod’s “shop while you wait for your train” are improving the customer experience while requiring less of their time.  So while your customers are enjoying the benefits of real-time technology, why are you relying on last year information for your recovery audits?

Legacy recovery audits are literally last year (or the year before that).  And like VHS recorders, the days of expecting vendors to accept 12-18 month-old claims is coming to an end.

The NOW Generation

Forward-thinking grocers have tossed the legacy recovery audit process like a pair of worn out sneakers and replaced it with near-real time error detection and correction technology.  Weis Markets CFO Scott Frost adopted ATG’s RecoverNOW™ solution in 2009.  Frost stated, “I really don’t know why any retailer would want to continue with traditional recovery auditing.  I believe the traditional post-annual recovery audit will be non-existent in the next 10 years.”

“Moving the recovery audit closer to the transaction date allows Weis to address errors sooner. Our vendor partners can rectify inaccuracies in the same funding year, not one or two years later. It has definitely improved the category manager/vendor relationship. And we get our money sooner,” said Frost.

Bridging the Needs of Finance and Merchandising

HyVee also reports improvements on many levels.  Prior to his retirement, Hy-Vee then Vice President of Purchasing and Marketing Mark McQuistan reported, “Implementing a near real-time audit process is helping us eliminate the negative aspects of recovery audits.  Traditional post-annual recovery audits were a disaster for vendor relations.  Buyers are now enjoying less recovery work.  The buyers and venders are happier. ”

“We are getting all the money we deserve and getting it faster.  And that makes everyone happy. I see no negatives to near real-time error detection and correction,” said McQuistan.

Everyone Wins When You Get it Right Sooner.

ATG’s RecoverNow™ technology provides near real-time error detection and correction within 90 days of the transaction.  Near real-time recovery audits can increase recoveries by as much as 30 percent because errors are detected and presented as adjustments to individual invoices close to the transaction.  Rather than old, larger aggregated claims, vendors are presented with timely individual invoice adjustments eliminating age-related rejection by vendors.

Tops Friendly Markets took “now” to a new level as ATG’s first client to adopt monthly recovery audits.   Its merchandise managers, vendors and accounting firm are seeing impressive benefits.  Tops’ CFO Rick Mills reports, “Since moving our recovery audit process in-house to existing staff with near real-time technology, we are on track to reduce our recovery expense by almost half.  These changes will accelerate our recovery by at least one year.  The faster turn-around time for our cash is extraordinary.”

How Does NOW Work?

ATG’s RecoverNOW™ reduces the human resources required to perform a recovery audit, so it is a cost-effective solution that both digs deeper and can do so more frequently. RecoverNow™ replaces the annual audit process with monthly reviews.

RecoverNOW™ can be implemented in a few as eight weeks.  It is available as both an outsourced and in-house solution.

What Do We Know About NOW?

ATG was founded as a recovery audit firm for the grocery sector. Today, ATG is a technology company providing recovery audit and analytics solutions for all large retail entities.

ATG continues to be the only demonstrated, near real-time audit service provider to retail. We leverage technology to do 12 times a year what our competitors  do once or twice a year.  Of yeah, and we do it without offshoring jobs.

So…I guess you can say we perfected NOW.

Out with the old (ways).  In with the new (money).

Legacy recovery audits are passé.  Why wouldn’t you want your money today rather than 18 months later?

If you want to explore joining the NOW generation, contact ATG Vice President Paul Dinkins at pdinkins@atgaudits.com or (970) 672-4147.

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4 Ways To Drive More Value From Your Recovery Audit

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4 Ways To Drive More Value From Your Recovery Audit

1. Accelerate Reviews – Leverage your current recovery audit  and get more out of what you’ve been doing for years by moving to near real time detection and correction. When you move to monthly audit reviews everyone can focus on today’s business instead of last year’s mistakes and improves the experience for all stakeholders, finance, merchants and vendors alike.

2. Bring your audit in house to reduce the cost of recovery – Get the audit tools, training and data support services for your team to outperform the pros and save a boatload of money as well.  Learn how Tops Markets used these tools to become so effective that the external primary audit firm recently resigned after several years of virtually no findings.

3. Get access to prepared datasets –  With your move to near real-time reviews you get the ability to gain access to near real-time assimilated P-2-P transaction data which can be repurposed to a variety of new value channels like ad hoc queries and research.

4. Get visibility to supplier trade funds – Give your merchants a real negotiating advantage through visibility to supplier trade funds and on-demand vendor scorecards by leveraging the repurposed data.

You call the shots on recovery audit and we would like to help you understand how you can drive more value from your recovery audit.  To learn more, drop us a replay and we will set up a short chat and if desired a complete system demonstration from recovery audit through our TradeView™ Analytics applications.

About Audit Technology Group LLC – Audit Technology group is a cloud based purchase transaction science company that’s thinking bigger about recovery auditing. We specialize in near real-time payment error detection and correction, business intelligence and analytics solutions serving retail and retail grocery within the fortune 1000.

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TOPS MARKETS INTERNAL RECOVERY AUDIT TEAM ACHIEVES EXCELLENCE!

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TOPS MARKETS  INTERNAL RECOVERY AUDIT TEAM ACHIEVES EXCELLENCE!

Congratulations to Tops Markets’ Shaun Stair who heads up the Tops’ internal recovery audit team.  Shaun and his team have been so successful that the external primary audit firm resigned.  There just is no longer anything left to find.  Tops Markets internal recovery audit utilizes Audit Technology Group’s data services, cloud based audit tools and support services.  Congratulations to Shaun and ATG’s Lynn Dombrowski who supports the Tops team!

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Do You Know

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Do You Know?

Legacy recovery audits review transactions and seek recoveries 12-24 months after the original transaction date.  It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best we could do with the technology available.

But now, in addition to losing the use of the cash for more than a year, some recoveries are lost completely as it is becoming more common for vendors to place limits on the age of claims they will accept.  Nestle, for example, is now telling many grocery clients they won’t accept recovery audit claims more than six months from the transaction.  Other vendors don’t accept claims after the close of the fund.

The Math

Do you know how much money you have lost in:

• unrecovered overpayments?
• taking old claims out of current funds?

What if you could eliminate your losses, and instead, increase your recoveries by as much as 30 percent?

Adopted By Other Leading Grocers

There is a solution that offers near real-time error detection and correction within 90 days of the transaction.  RecoverNOW™ has already been successfully adopted by leading grocery chains to perform reviews monthly.

Weis Markets CFO Scott Frost states, “Moving the recovery audit closer to the transaction date allows us to address errors sooner. It has definitely improved the category manager/vendor relationship. And we get our money sooner.”

Hy-Vee’s retired Vice President of Purchasing and Marketing Mark McQuistan stated, “I see Hy-Vee making more money because of this important change. In the past when we found a problem from one or two years back, the ‘recovered funds’ were often taken from this year’s promotional funding.  Because we are addressing issues within the same fiscal year, we are able to maximize the best possible deals for our customers.  That makes everyone happier.”

Tops’ CFO Rick Mills reports, “The faster turn-around time for our cash is extraordinary.”

And, in the spirit of vendor partnership, near real-time recovery is much better.  The situation is fresher in our minds and the turn-around time is faster for our cash.  Ultimately, this change improves our buyers’ margins and funding.”

Recover Overpayments

Stop losing money.  Replacing legacy recovery audits with near real-time error detection and correction means increasing recoveries and accelerating cash flow.

RecoverNow™ technology provides near real-time error detection and correction within 90 days of the transaction.  Near real-time audits can increase recoveries by as much as 30 percent because errors are detected and presented as adjustments to individual invoices close to the transaction.  Rather than old, larger aggregated claims, vendors are presented with granular, timely individual invoice adjustments eliminating age-related rejection by vendors.

It Is The Future NOW

We think Weis’ CFO Scott Frost said it best, “I don’t know why any company wouldn’t do what we are doing. I really don’t know why any retailer would want to continue with traditional recovery auditing.”

To learn more about how near real-time error detection and correction can benefit your company, contact ATG Vice President Paul Dinkins at pdinkins@atgaudits.com or (970) 672-4147.

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eReconcile™ – Fully Electronic Statement Audit

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eReconcile™ – Fully Electronic  Statement Audit

Industry Veteran Chuck Andrade Joins ATG to Lead eReconcile™ Shared Services Division

Do you want online, real time reporting and delivery of fully validated credits ready for deduction?  How about having your vendor master file cleansed as well?  Want this work performed onshore?  ATG’s electronic statement audit solicitation, review and validation processes coupled with a vendor portal provides the most added value at the lowest cost.  Schedule an on-line visit to discuss your needs using the contact button on the  bottom right of this screen.

ATG provides eReconcile™ a fully electronic statement audit,  as part of our comprehensive retail recovery audit service.  Because we have all of the data as part of our full scope audit, we deliver validated credits ready for deduction with no additional effort by clients required.  The process is entirely paperless with fast turnaround from statement request to claim generation including a vendor portal for vendor statement submission as well as paid history research.  Yep, this is real added value for both vendors and clients to reduce expense associated with correspondence.    Plus, clients get on-line reporting with vendor master file cleansing instructions listing identified corrections.  Best of all, our technology is so efficient we keep jobs here in America.

People behind the technology make the statement audit process work and nobody knows statement auditing like Chuck Andrade, who now leads ATG’s Shared Services division.  Chuck brings 17 years of commercial and retail statement auditing experience to the ATG team.  He is recognized as a subject matter expert in the areas of statement and disbursement auditing as well as escheatment avoidance.  Most recently, Chuck was Director of Operations for PRGX from 1999 until 2013.  His statement audit management experience coupled with advanced technology provides an even greater value for our clients.

Click on the Contact button on the bottom right of this screen to schedule a web meeting to learn more about our eReconcile™ service and solution.  You will learn how this technology can increase vendor response to vendor solicitations, increase open credit identification and recovery, eliminate all of your credit validation time, reduce vendor correspondence expense and cleanse your vendor master file.  How cool is that?

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