Web Giant to follow New Code

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)

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SAL-deliver

We deliver...

  • Reduced exposure to GFR audit claims
  • We identify claims in your favour that were previously not identified and get them paid to you
  • We protect your commercial relationships by keeping audit claims separate from it
  • Provide insights into best practice
  • Reduce the time and resources otherwise required to manage audit claims
SAL-recon

We reconcile...

We reconcile the sales you make to your Grocery customers and:

  • reconcile the funding charges they make for the promotional activities you have with them
  • reconcile the relevant contracts and/or agreements that Govern your commercial relationship
  • we manage and defend the audit claims presented by their audit teams – the ‘goods for resale’
  • we secure ‘audit protocol’ agreements with the finance/audit team
SAL-gather

We collect...

We collect transform and store key historic trading data for the purpose of reconciling the trading activity it relates to.