What is revenue leakage for a wholesaler selling to retailers?

Revenue leakage is the margin a wholesaler loses after the sale: invoiced money that is never collected because retailers take it back as deductions, chargebacks, compliance penalties, and claims.

Does ROIAI One recover pricing, allowance, freight, or returns leakage?

No. ROIAI One does not audit pricing, allowances, freight bills, or returns. ROIAI One works the retailer deduction and chargeback dispute path only.

Solutions

Where margin leaks, and the slice we recover

Revenue leakage is the margin a wholesaler loses after the sale: invoiced money retailers take back as deductions, chargebacks, compliance penalties, and claims.

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Where margin actually leaks

Margin leaks out of the retailer-supplier relationship in five places: shortage and receiving claims, compliance and routing penalties, pricing and allowance discrepancies, freight and returns costs, and claims that expire before anyone works them.

Source	What it found
GS1 US (2022). New GS1 US Guideline Supports Retail Industry with Claims Compliance. Link	The retail industry faces more than $36 billion in claims annually.
U.S. Federal Trade Commission (March 21, 2024). Feeding America in a Time of Crisis: The United States Grocery Supply Chain and the COVID-19 Pandemic. An FTC Staff Report. Link	Walmart tightened its on-time in-full requirements in September 2020, requiring suppliers to achieve 98% OTIF compliance to avoid fines of 3% of the cost of goods.
Craig, N., DeHoratius, N., & Klabjan, D. (2021). Execution quality and chargeback penalties in retail supply chains, Journal of Operations Management. Link	Drawing on supplier compliance manuals collected from 111 retailers: the chargeback assessed for an execution-quality error (labeling, ASN, packaging, and carton problems) deviates from the true cost of that error by between 38% and 75% on average.

A chargeback is not a measurement of damage. It is an estimate, and the estimate is frequently wrong.

The fifth leak, claims that expire before anyone disputes them, is real and widely asserted, and it has no independent measurement. ROIAI One does not publish a number it cannot source.

What ROIAI One addresses today

ROIAI One addresses one of those five leaks: the retailer deduction and chargeback dispute path.

Roy, our AI agent, reviews each deduction, builds the evidence, and prepares the dispute for review, across shortage, concealed shortage, compliance, pricing, UPC, and packing claims. No rip-and-replace, no new software.

We do not audit your pricing, your allowances, your freight bills, or your returns. Those are real leaks.
They are not what we recover. If a retailer took money out of a remittance as a deduction or a chargeback, that is our lane.

Chargeback, deduction, allowance: what is the difference?

Term	What it is	How it is settled
Deduction	Any amount a retailer subtracts from a remittance instead of paying the invoice in full.	On the evidence.
Chargeback	A deduction issued as a penalty against a specific reason code, such as a shortage or a routing violation.	On the evidence.
Allowance	Money the supplier agreed to give up in advance, negotiated into the trading terms.	A commercial negotiation, outside what Roy touches.

Roy is not always a yes. It reads a case and recommends not disputing when the charge holds up. Read the case study

Retailer deductions arrive as reason codes, and every retailer writes its own. We published the Deduction Code Library, a plain-English reference to what each code means, why it is issued, and what evidence disputes it. Browse the Deduction Code Library

How it works

01
Detect the deduction
Roy monitors every retailer deduction as it lands, classifies the reason code, and flags the ones worth disputing.
02
Pull the evidence
It matches each chargeback against your invoices, BOLs, and proof-of-delivery.
03
Build the dispute packet
Roy writes the retailer-specific dispute, formatted to that retailer's reason codes and evidence rules.
04
Submit and recover
After review, packets are filed to the retailer portal or emailed to the right contact, and tracked until the money comes back.

Is a human involved?

Roy reviews each deduction, assembles the evidence and prepares the dispute, and ROIAI One’s own analysts review and release it. That review is selective and exception-based. The review burden is ours, not yours.

What it takes to connect

Roy connects to your ERP and retailer portals with the permissions your IT team grants: read access for the evidence a dispute needs, and write access only where the dispute work requires it.

Frequently asked questions

What is revenue leakage for a wholesaler selling to retailers?: Revenue leakage is the margin a wholesaler loses after the sale: invoiced money that is never collected because retailers take it back as deductions, chargebacks, compliance penalties, and claims.
Does ROIAI One recover pricing, allowance, freight, or returns leakage?: No. ROIAI One does not audit pricing, allowances, freight bills, or returns. ROIAI One works the retailer deduction and chargeback dispute path only.

Next step

Start with a mutual ROI analysis: we look at your deduction history and tell you what is worth recovering.