1st March will be remembered as an important day in the UK Grocery sector because it’s the day that Amazon fell under the auspices of the Groceries Supply Code of Practice.
What is certain is that getting Amazon to trade fairly with its supply base will take time and will undoubtedly be a path with many twists, turns and pirouettes as that behemoth (of our creating) does its best to use its scale to do things exactly as it wants to. What I can tell you as a specialist forensic ‘sales’ auditor to the Grocery Supply base, is that as things currently stand, Amazon won’t receive a retrospective audit claim, little alone pay money back to suppliers where it can be evidenced as due. But it does find time to employ not only two internal audit teams, but also two external audit teams to forensically ‘reconcile’ its trading activity with anyone it trades with (and remember a reconciliation can only be completed by reconciling everything – if the claimant only presents claims in its favour, then it’s no reconciliation, just a demand for your profit).
Amazon is very good, ‘efficient’ even, at deducting these amounts it identifies – in no time at all. The contrast with the laborious, no – tedious (and fruitless) exercise that seeking answers, or reversals against these deductions is striking and might lead one to ask: how can the most sophisticated technology company in the world create such a clunky, unfathomable machine for challenging it, how come…?’
I suspect that this is precisely the sort of question that the indefatigable Code Adjudicator will seek to get to the bottom off. After all, if it’s easy to deduct money, then surely it’s easy to pay it back?
Let’s wait and see how long before Amazon sign up to the excellent Best Practice Statement on Forensic Auditing constructed by that very Adjudicator only last year, because if it happens in 2022, then you can be sure that this means he is working hard in your interest and its game on for Reconciling your trading with them.
And Salitix would be delighted to help.
Amazon now bound by the Groceries Supply Code of Practice – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
