Profit recovery ensures that your business only pays for what has been delivered by your clients and/or suppliers. It involves reconciling your existing contracts, and identifying and recovering any payment errors, thereby boosting your business’s financial health.

Profit recovery is important because in tough trading environments where net margins are hard-won, no business can afford to give away its revenues and therefore profit for nothing. It’s the reason that retailers conduct ‘goods for resale’ recovery audits, to maximise the value of their contracts with their supply base. And it’s the reason why suppliers should conduct their own ‘sales audits’ of their trade spend – to maximise the value of these activities and boost their net margins.

A trade spend review meticulously examines your agreements with retailers to ensure accuracy between what was agreed in the contract and what was subsequently paid based on performance. A non-trade spend review would usually examine the contracts your business has in areas like energy, distribution, establishment, and packaging, then what has been paid through the AP ledger, to identify any discrepancies.

These are claims that fall outside of the standard charges you receive from your clients for historical activities (i.e. relating to trade spends and promotional activity not in the current trading year), which are typically generated and sent to you by a third-party audit company. It’s important to distinguish these claims from the day-to-day claims your business receives from its clients in the normal course of trading because they are generated differently, using different assumptions and criteria.

A sales audit is the process by which a specialist auditor reviews all the charges that a supplier receives against its sales with its retail customers to reconcile those payments against the contracts against which they are paid. In FMCG businesses focused on prospective growth, there is little time or resource available to conduct detailed reviews of historical transactions, which can mean significant sums of money (and therefore lost profit) are paid in error.

In summary, a sales audit allows astute, commercially sensitive businesses to focus on their core objectives, without compromising long-term profitability and continuous process improvement.

This review is a complete managed service, whereby Salitix manages the receipt, logging, validation, and settlement of any historical charge a supplier receives from its customer that is over and above the standard, day-to-day charges it receives in the normal course of trading, typically relating to a historical transaction that is prior to the current trading period. A business receiving this type of claim would benefit from our claim defence review service, because outsourcing the management of the claims saves both time and money. This is particularly true when coupled with a trade spend review, as any claim made will be included in the reconciliation that Salitix conducts as part of that review, leading to greater accuracy when validating the claim(s).

A profit recovery managed service is a comprehensive solution to prevent profit leakage and loss, whereby all aspects of the administration, identification, negotiation, and execution of historical claims are managed on your behalf by Salitix. Our expert teams collate and co-ordinate the validation process of the audit claims you receive from your customers, while delivering a trade spend review on your behalf to pinpoint profit leakage and contractual mistakes. We then collaborate with retailers to negotiate and recover the funds/monies validated or identified, which means no time or resource investment by the supplier.

This frees up your time to focus on the primary job in hand, so commercial channels and dialogue can be focused on current and/or prospective commercial activity.

In commercial dialogue, there is always tension as both parties seek to deliver the best terms possible for their respective party from the prospective trading agreements being negotiated.

By engaging with a specialist ‘trade spend’ auditor like Salitix, your business can remove dialogue relating to historical activity from its current commercial conversations, helping to reduce the noise and friction that these topics can add to day-to-day negotiations.

Salitix has established channels of communication with retailers specifically for historical transactions, which are entirely separate from commercial channels. This ensures that there is no conflation of a historical error requiring potential repayment and the negotiation of prospective commercial contracts.

Absolutely not. In fact, they are likely to be enhanced because Salitix utilises dedicated communication channels with retailers that operate independently of your trade teams’ commercial relationships and channels. Salitix functions as your discreet partner, working diligently behind the scenes to enhance your profits, meaning your commercial relationships remain protected to do what they do best – grow your business!

Our pricing model operates on a “no win, no fee” basis. If we don’t successfully recover any profit for you, there are no charges, i.e. any fee is contingent on a recovery first. This means that our service is a risk-free way to uncover hidden profits that would otherwise not go into your margins.

We tailor our approach to meet your unique needs. Typically, we require access to your accounting records, trade agreements, and pertinent documents related to your trade spend. Whatever data we require and obtain, its security is a top priority for Salitix and we maintain data security certifications and protocols to this effect.

Salitix consistently recovers an average of 5% of net profits for our new clients upon completion of an initial review and settlements thereafter. While we can’t guarantee the outcome given the intricacies of different trade spends, data quality, and other relevant factors, you can rest assured that you will only pay for our service when we deliver a financial benefit.

Salitix thoroughly examines all facets of your trade spend, which might include:

• Fixed funding charges for things like gondola ends and POS fees
• Duplicate payments or overcharges
• Variable funding such as multi-buy promotions or price reductions
• Issues with EPOS data, case pricing and retro payments
• Problems with free stock, multi-saver trigger issues and VAT anomalies
• Cost price changes, non-invoiced goods, orders that exceed invoice values, returns, stock compensation and EPW
• Joint business plans and/or overrider triggers and execution criteria and trading incentives
• Cash settlement discrepancies, advertising issues and/or price harmonisation inconsistencies
• Problems with service level compensation, lump sum support, exit plans and vouchers/coupons

Salitix is the sole company specialising in profit recovery for suppliers within the UK retail sector. We are a team of experienced auditors who specialise in FMCG retail sales, dedicated to ensuring UK suppliers maximise their net margins.

Our commitment is to help suppliers maximise their returns while minimising the effort required to recover them.

Salitix was established by audit professionals with extensive experience working for retailers. This background gives us unparalleled insights into the complexities of retail audits from both sides, retail and supplier. Since 2011, we have assisted many suppliers in recovering lost revenues and margins, ranging from mid-sized brands to global corporations.

Reach out to us via email, phone, social media, or contact us here. Our approachable team is ready to discuss your profit recovery needs.

We are eager to connect with you!