How to Run your Vendor Central Finance like an Amazonian

Jun 14, 2023 1:30 PM2:30 PM EST

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Key Discussion Takeaways:

Amazon regularly overcharges its sellers, and brands often lack financial clarity, causing them to overlook account chargebacks, shortages, and fees. These systematic errors comprise a high percentage of a seller’s revenue, inhibiting long-term profitability. How can you identify and recover hidden charges on your Vendor Central account?

There are three major charge classifications brands should recognize: chargebacks, shortages, and fees on excess trading terms. While Amazon alerts sellers to chargebacks and shortages, brands often overlook trading terms, where the platform fines items they didn’t receive or overcharges on excess units. Disputing these requires collaborating with your Vendor Central sales and accounting teams to analyze and present invoices within Amazon’s allotted time frame.

In this virtual event, Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson hosts Hannah Blackburn, the Co-founder and Director of The Hawkers Club, who talks about disputing and recovering Amazon charges. Hannah also discusses the mistakes sellers make when filing claims and disputes, how IT integrations impact disputes, and how to recover Vendor Central shortages and chargebacks.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • Three primary categories of Amazon charges
  • Common errors sellers make when filing claims or disputes
  • Collaborating with internal teams to recover Vendor Central shortages
  • How to manage international Amazon charges
  • Key considerations for IT integrations and invoice automations
  • The Hawkers Club’s business model for recovering Amazon overcharges
  • Tips to prepare for Vendor Central disputes
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Event Partners

The Hawkers Club

The Hawker’s Club was founded by former Amazon employees and provides strategic insight and support to drive result driven growth on Amazon.

Connect with The Hawkers Club

Guest Speaker

Hannah Blackburn LinkedIn

Director at The Hawkers Club

Hannah Blackburn is the Co-founder and Director of The Hawkers Club, a company that helps vendors and sellers solve their most pressing challenges and navigate eCommerce marketplaces, including Amazon and Target. In her role, Hannah advises online sellers and vendors on how to directly position their brands and value offerings as Amazon partners to increase profitability and revenue. 

Before co-founding The Hawkers Club, she joined Amazon as a brand specialist with an initial focus on vendor excellence and marketing before transitioning to stock management and profitability. Since she’s written the business logic powering some of the algorithms that run Amazon, Hannah knows how you can systematically make profitable decisions that Amazon’s algorithms reward.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson LinkedIn

Senior Digital Strategist at BWG Connect

BWG Connect provides executive strategy & networking sessions that help brands from any industry with their overall business planning and execution. BWG has built an exclusive network of 125,000+ senior professionals and hosts over 2,000 virtual and in-person networking events on an annual basis.

Event Moderator

Hannah Blackburn LinkedIn

Director at The Hawkers Club

Hannah Blackburn is the Co-founder and Director of The Hawkers Club, a company that helps vendors and sellers solve their most pressing challenges and navigate eCommerce marketplaces, including Amazon and Target. In her role, Hannah advises online sellers and vendors on how to directly position their brands and value offerings as Amazon partners to increase profitability and revenue. 

Before co-founding The Hawkers Club, she joined Amazon as a brand specialist with an initial focus on vendor excellence and marketing before transitioning to stock management and profitability. Since she’s written the business logic powering some of the algorithms that run Amazon, Hannah knows how you can systematically make profitable decisions that Amazon’s algorithms reward.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson LinkedIn

Senior Digital Strategist at BWG Connect

BWG Connect provides executive strategy & networking sessions that help brands from any industry with their overall business planning and execution. BWG has built an exclusive network of 125,000+ senior professionals and hosts over 2,000 virtual and in-person networking events on an annual basis.

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Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson

Senior Digital Strategist at BWG Connect


BWG Connect provides executive strategy & networking sessions that help brands from any industry with their overall business planning and execution.

Senior Digital Strategist Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson runs the group & connects with dozens of brand executives every week, always for free.


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Discussion Transcription

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  0:18  

Wednesday everyone I am Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson, a digital strategist with BWG Connect and we are in network knowledge sharing group. So we stay on top of the latest trends challenges whatever is going on in the digital landscape we want to know and talk about it. We are on track to do at least 500 of these webinars this year due to the increase in demand to understand the digital space, we'll also be doing at least 100 in person small format dinners. So if you happen to live in a tier one city, feel free to reach out or check out our website. These dinners are typically 15 to 20 people having a specific discussion around a digital topic, and it's always a fantastic time. Oh, and we'd love to invite you. We spend the majority majority of our time talking to brands. That's how we stay on top of the latest trends and challenges and the content for future events. We'd love to have a conversation with you. So feel free to drop me a line at Tiffany@bwgconnect and we can get some time on the calendar is from these conversations, we generate the topic ideas, and it's also where we gain our resident experts such as Hawkers Club who's with us today. Anybody that we asked to teach the collective team has come highly recommended from multiple brands within the network. So if you're ever in need of anything within the digital space, please feel free to reach out we have a shortlist of the best of the best and we'd be happy to provide that information to you. Also note we do have a hiring agency that we partner with formerly BWG Talent that now is Hawkeye Search that we would be happy to put you in contact with as well. If you have any hiring needs. A few housekeeping items, we want this first and foremost, be fun. Educational conversation also dropped those questions comments into the chat q&a, you can always email me at Tiffany@bwgconnect.com. And we will get to them. And we started a few minutes after the hour. So we're rest assured we will wrap up before the end of the hour to give you time to get to your next destination. So with that let's rock and roll and talk about how to run your vendor central finance like a true Amazonian. The team at hawkers club have been awesome friends and partners of the network. So Hannah, I'm going to kick it over to you and introduce yourself. That'd be beautiful, we can dive in.

 

Hannah Blackburn  2:20  

Awesome. So yeah, I'm Hannah from The Hawkers Club. Probably kind of makes sense for today's call. But I started my career at PwC as a auditor, and I thought auditing is super boring, I want to be doing the work instead. Then I went to Amazon as an in stock manager, and then got to Amazon, I thought I really miss auditing. So now my favorite thing to do is to audit Amazon. And that's kind of what we do. We're all about the data all about the kind of financials trying to make Amazon account as profitable as possible. Beautiful.

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  2:58  

Yeah, this is such a interesting topic for me. So I was a director of eCommerce for 10 years manage the Amazon account. And I always felt like oh, the, there's something out there that we're missing, but I can't figure it out, or I can't get the data to prove that we're owed money. But it was kind of like out of sight out of mind. So I guess like in the world of if you have in theory loads, low chargebacks or storages. Are you okay? Or is that an incorrect assumption? So

 

Hannah Blackburn  3:33  

the way we like to see Amazon finance is three primary pillars of what they're charging you. So the first pillar is your chargebacks. The second pillar is your shortages. And then the third pillar is the bucket that a lot of people don't kind of notice, recognize a lot of the time. And the first few buckets, Amazon points them out to you that you know, this great shortage reporting. There is great chargebacks reporting. And that is because they think those buckets all your fault. You know, they think you labeled it wrong, you know, you didn't send it, etc. And I'm sure you're used to fighting those. And a lot of people have actually got that down to tap. But the third bucket is one that Amazon don't point out, because it's not your mistake, which Amazon loves to point out your mistakes. It is their mistake. And that is where they charge you excess trading terms. So such as trading terms on units where they, they didn't they send, they didn't receive them. So they say it's a shortage, they're going to charge you trading terms on it anyway. So it's important to go back to Amazon and say, Look, you had to have to pay for the goods or you're not going to charge us trading terms on them. You can't have it both ways. And then the second is when they will charge you trading terms on more units than they ever even ordered from you. So even if you deliver right even if you do everything right, there's glitches in their accounting system, which means they're overcharging you on trading terms without even like kind of doing it. On purpose. And the reason I say it's a glitch in the system is because there hasn't been a single vendor Central account that I've ever touched, some of which have been massive, some of which have been suspended for the majority of the time that I haven't found this issue on. So it doesn't seem like something that you can kind of get away from, it's just kind of working with Amazon. So that's kind of the important pillars to look for in terms of what they're charging you. But then there's other things to look for, which, because there seems to be a disconnect between the finance team because they're doing so much, especially beyond Amazon. And then the Amazon direct team, a lot of businesses seem to kind of overlook, and that's such as CIDOC incentives. So when Amazon are kind of rolling out a new program or charge, they first asked super nicely, and they say, Hey, if you do this, we'll give you an incentive, then they just say, Okay, you need to do this, and then they stop finding you. And most of the time, the finance team doesn't actually find out about the whole process until there's a fine. And the style initiative is the kind of I'd say the easiest example of that, where right now and in previous years, but also the running one right now, where if you have new sidewalks at the moment, you get to claim an incentive for every sidewalk unit. And that is a lot of thing that's never kind of shared with the accounting team. Because it's not something that Amazon automatically pay back. It's something that you need to claim. And it's something that's like everything in Amazon time bound. So if you don't claim it in time, that means that you don't get it. And then that means that in my opinion, by the time you get to the flip side of it, where Amazon is saying any mistakes you make, we're going to charge you it actually hurts even more, because you didn't even get the incentive when it

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  6:58  

was awful. And how much time do you have to claim?

 

Hannah Blackburn  7:03  

So Amazon usually do it in nine month to 12 month

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  7:07  

spreads. And then what are the most common errors that people make when they are working with claims or disputes? So the most common

 

Hannah Blackburn  7:17  

errors, I think, is not knowing what to look for. And again, that's the whole the team's being disconnected. So one big thing that people don't look for is things that they don't know about. So as I mentioned, not very many people would ever assume Amazon was overcharging on trading terms. We have this level of kind of trust and Amazon's expertise, which is unfortunately misguided at times. A second one is a big example is provisional trading terms. So Amazon will charge you provisional trading terms only when a normal trading terms. And when I say trade terms, it's also the same as did changeable with Co Op agreements. They will charge you provisional when there isn't a co op agreement in place. But what they then do is once you have a co op agreement in place, they backdate that to the end of your previous Co Op agreement. But in the meantime, they were charging you provisional trading terms, which they don't pay back unless you ask. So a lot of people will find that if they look at a time, if they go back in time and look at the time when their account potentially was particularly bumpy with the vendor manager or they had a long negotiation, they'll start to find sometimes that small, sometimes they're pretty big, provisional trading terms on their account, which should be fully claimed makeable after the new agreement has been signed. But a lot of people don't know that. So they don't even know to go and get it.

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  8:44  

Definitely drop in question comments into the q&a chat. If this has resonated with you, which I'm sure it is with most definitely is with me thinking about previously, the work that we did, and also that love to hear your, from your lens, the counting silo and the eCommerce team. It was always very separate. And then we weren't really able to get cohesiveness unless there was you know, a fire drill happening like what you're saying like a big chargeback where it's like, Whoa, where'd this come from? Yeah, you've worked with a lot of brands. So like who is doing it? Right, like any insider tips on like, how to get those teams to really work together and help. Yeah, I guess, like conquer this essentially or prevent it?

 

Hannah Blackburn  9:37  

Yeah, um, so I know that a lot of people are going to be upset with this answer because no one wants more meetings. But this is one of the times where I think a meeting is really important. Anytime a new incentive or a new trading term or a new expense comes out. I think it's important to get the two teams together and say, so that the accounting team knows this is what the expense This is what it should be looking at. This is what should be covered. And more importantly, this is what should not be covered. So as an example, Amazon removed the capability on most accounts, to reject returns, even if you have a no returns agreement with them about a year ago. But what most accounting teams don't know is that even though they don't have the power to reject the returns anymore, once the return charges come through, all they need to do is cite their no returns agreement to Amazon, and then they will get fully refunded for those charges. So a lot of the time, I think, a change is made on Amazon. And then all it takes is a small meeting between the kind of the sales team and then the accounting team to make the accounting team feel like they have the power to action, these things, because I think a lot of it is if you don't have the knowledge Amazon is you know, it's one of your biggest clients, if not your biggest client, you don't want to upset them. So you just think, Oh, I'm sure the sales team would have told me about this, if I should do something. I think it's kind of connecting those two sides. And quarterly monthly meeting, I would say quarterly is totally fine. The reason I say that is because like for example, when we distribute the overcharges on trading terms, we do it quarterly even though a lot of people ask us to do a monthly and that's because Amazon will come back and say to you, don't worry, it's only been a month, it's only been six weeks, we'll sort this out, they never sorted out. But you have to give it at least a quarter for Amazon to listen to you that it's actually a problem.

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  11:38  

Okay, so at least a quarter for them. The other thing is the time management project management of open tickets in cases. Yeah. Any guidance on that? Because that's another job in itself is once you've actually opened up a case or dispute now you have to watch it. So they don't close it on you. Yeah.

 

Hannah Blackburn  11:57  

So I think that it's one of those unfortunate things where you do have to watch it. But um, the two things that I always tell everyone is, don't feel that you're because something's gone beyond the 60 days, I don't know where the whole 60 days is what you have to claim something came about. It's it's not true. It is 24 months on overcharged trading terms. It used to be three years. And if it's a really outrageous overcharge, and I'm talking about hundreds of 1000s, you can stretch it to three years. But on a standard dispute, which will be you know, between 50 and 100,000, for overcharged trading terms on most accounts, Amazon will cap it at the 24 months. But on shortages, if you look at it from an Amazon perspective, that's actually not kept. So the big thing on timing is Don't, don't not dispute just because you think the timing has passed. It's always worth disputing. And then the second thing is, this is kind of about timing, but also about rejections is that whenever Amazon rejects the dispute, even if you missed the window, and you didn't respond in time, you can go back and say, Okay, you guys rejected this dispute, please share your evidence with me. And that's important for two reasons. One, a lot of the time, the evidence will prove that they didn't actually look at your dispute. And then you will be able to go and submit it again. So what we, when we submit a dispute, we have we do have a 95% success rate, but of that 5% That we don't pass, we will submit it up to three additional times. And then that actually lifts us down to an incredibly small percentage doesn't get accepted. Because in their evidence, we find that, like, for example, if we claim on 10 agreements, or 10 invoices, they will have they'll say, Okay, this is what we found, and they've only looked at five of them, and they just straight out rejected the other five without even looking. So it's important because you're gonna have to retrace and then the second reason it's important is because Amazon's statute of limitations only applies to chargeback shortages, disputes that have never been previously raised. So if you raise something, and then it gets rejected, you're actually extending out your time that you can address it with Amazon, because then it's an unlimited time that you can talk about it again. So the worst thing you can do is not raise it, because then the statute of limitations kicks in.

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  14:41  

Very interesting. That's a great trick of the trade there. Wow. And when you say like it gets rejected, are you actually talking to a human being at that point, or is it still purely on the back end in the portal? So the good part with

 

Hannah Blackburn  14:56  

the disputes on the actual financial disputes is you aren't talking to a human being at that point, when you first submit it, and you get all these automated messages, yes, that's automated. But the moment you ask for evidence you're talking to a human being. And once they actually

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  15:12  

get approved, how long does it take to get your funds back.

 

Hannah Blackburn  15:16  

So there's two different types of kinds of approvals. The first one is when you do it through the finance portal, and it's just the management, that one is incredibly quick, so I have to hand it to Amazon on that one, it's between five and seven days is what they quote, and they have stuck to that or under every single time we've raised the dispute. So that's awesome. The second one, though, is we kind of have a, like a workaround for raising shortages, which is, rather than kind of pursue the shortage on the invoice that you believe you shipped it on, find where Amazon, put those goods. So that's how we do it. Given though we do do it kind of programmatically, because it's such a laborious task, and it does take ages. But for example, we will find where Amazon have attributed those goods, and then we invoice them on the pier where Amazon thinks they are, rather than on the pier, where you ship them where they actually should be. And that that takes a bit longer that process. But it's much more successful than the traditional financial dispute for shortages.

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  16:27  

Very interesting questions, comments, put them into the chat, and we will get to them. Let's talk about international sales. So how do you manage that when you're selling in different countries, different accounting practices and current season all of it.

 

Hannah Blackburn  16:43  

So there's three main things there. The first one is the problems that you'll find in one country, or unfortunately, the same in every country. So you do have overbilling in every single country, or single locale, sadly, the second one is a big one for Europe. And that is VAT charges. So Amazon is very clear that you are responsible for your VAT charges. And this is something that I like to make sure that everyone knows, especially when they're coming from like an American finance background. Because if you don't charge Amazon for VAT, the first time you submit the invoice, you can't go back and amend it, and they won't pay it to you. But whether or not you collect that VAT has no implication on whether or not you owe it to that respective European government. So it's one of those things where Don't even start to be honest, until you are confident and ready to charge VAT, because you'll have to pay it out whether or not you collect it. And the thing is, it's 20%. So that's quite a knock, if you do forget to collect it. And then the last thing is currencies. So there is a kind of, I call it an error, maybe it's an oversight on vendor Central, where if you change currency on your account, anything that's currently unbilled in the previous currency cannot be invoiced. So it's very, it's a huge deal to change currency on your account. And it's also something to not be taken lightly. However, it is possible to invoice those through the ticket system eventually. But it's one of those things where it's a very specific process and a huge lift. So always make sure wherever possible that you set an account up in the right currency. And then to be honest, I always advise to change it during the non peak periods if you need to make a change, because I know a lot of people will start in euros, and then they'll find out actually, we could have done this in dollars. We're an American company, we want to be in dollars, and they will just want to change it as soon as possible. My advice is to change it either right before q4, so late August, early September, or right after q4, late January, early February. And that's going to be so much less lift for your accounting team. Because there'll be less invoices that need to be done through the ticket system one by one. And then also you'll have a much faster response from Amazon, because that's when they're a lot less busy themselves.

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  19:25  

That's a great point. And I was also told never get angry. The ticket system. Because yeah, that's true. which I know can be difficult at times that they take it out the ticket system where they impose it on you but yeah, keep it professional people keep it professional. We have a question here. Is there a way to address invoices that show a canceled status but need to be disputed?

 

Hannah Blackburn  19:54  

Yes, so it depends on disputed in what sense. So you Use those you do for the dispute management portal, there shouldn't be a difference between a cancelled partial canceled invoice slash PIO and like a normal one. If that being rejected, then I would use the finance ticket system.

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  20:17  

More questions, comments, please put them in the chat q&a And we will keep getting to them. How about it integrations with this? Cool. So

 

Hannah Blackburn  20:27  

it integrations are awesome. They save you lots of money. But there is no infallible IT system. So one thing that most people don't know, is that whether or not they send the right thing from their side, there's two points where it can go wrong. One, what they send out to Amazon, and then to what Amazon actually received. So if you say for example, invoiced everything, but if there is a glitch, or if what for whatever reason Amazon don't receive the PIO or sorry, the invoice for a PIO, they will not tell you. So there is a pot in the system where they say, oh, like in the financial scorecard where they say, Hey, this is things that you should have invoiced us. And then sometimes you'll get emails saying, Oh, these are missing POS. But that's great, but it's a drop in the ocean. And it's definitely not everything that's there. So we I've only come across one account in my entire career where I haven't found missing invoices on an EDI API connection. And that is because if Amazon doesn't receive it, they don't tell you, they just go ahead and not pay you. So we go all the way back. And we'll often I mean, sometimes we'll find by 10,000. That's average. But then sometimes we'll actually find hundreds of 1000s that haven't been invoiced. Now because the invoice was never sent, because Amazon never received the invoice. And then Amazon never

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  21:59  

said that it was because they didn't have to. Yeah, exactly. So the onus is really on you at all times as the brand. That's uh, you really have to be watching every angle of this. I think it's a good time to people are asking the business model of Hawkers Club. So if you want to give an overview of how you do what you do, that'd be awesome.

 

Hannah Blackburn  22:21  

Yeah, sure. Um, so we recovered the funds that you're not awful brands aren't often recovering themselves. So we don't really touch chargebacks. We don't really touch shortages. I think there are a lot of great companies that do that. And I'm sure like BBG works with some of them as well. What we do is we focus on the ones that kind of I mentioned today that, I'd say a bit more shocking. So like Amazon overcharging you on trading terms, Amazon, charging you on trading terms where they shouldn't be. So they'll charge you sometimes on freight, your freight Co Op on direct fulfillment. Like POS products, so that actually means that they are completely overcharging you. And that's 100% reasonable, sometimes they'll charge you trading terms on an agreed Di. So unless you have specifically agreed trading terms on di Amazon shouldn't be charging you. And if they are that's 100% reclaimable. So it's these kind of Stranger pockets that a lot of the time people don't even know what to look for. Again, a lot of people don't realize that if an API or EDI connection goes down, Amazon don't help you clean it up. They won't tell you where you're missing invoices are. So we go back and we recover those. And then our kind of business model is that we charge 10% of whatever we successfully recover. So a lot of people say this is the amount whether or not recover anything. I don't think that's fair. So that's why we do it on a completely what we recover basis. And the kind of thing about that is I also think it shows my confidence that we'll definitely find something on every account. Unfortunately, I've never not found anything and like I said to Aaron recently I have a thing where if I ever don't find anything by the CFO of BIA, and I haven't

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  24:15  

had to do that yet. You have never found nothing. So telling of the breakdown of the process flow that comes to working with Amazon. Wow. You've worked with a lot of accounts. Very, very interesting. Questions, comments, put them into the chat and we will get to them. So if a brand's walking away today after this call, what are some low hanging fruit quick fixes that they can jump on now to start making a difference? That's a really good

 

Hannah Blackburn  24:49  

they can have that too. A really good question. So the big things they can do is they can make sure that their finance team are informed about three things in particular And the first one is if they have a GMM agreement. So that is called a gross margin agreement. And that is where they have a guaranteed profitability that Amazon needs to have per month, and then they make up the difference. This is one way, Amazon definitely overcharge. I've seen them overcharged quite often on this. So the finance team need to understand what this is and need to feel empowered to raise a ticket with Amazon and say, No, you guys weren't profitable, you shouldn't have charged us on this. And to be honest, that one, I would suggest being a little bit cheeky back with Amazon. And I would actually dispute this every single month. Because I've, every time I've disputed it, I've ever managed to get all of it back, or at least some of it back. So it's one of those ones where Amazon is definitely being cheeky with you. So I would do the same back. The second is, I would make sure that your accounting team know what your trading terms are for. And like a lot of accounting teams, for example, don't know where they should be trading terms and where they shouldn't. And that's not their fault, that is just Amazon is so nuanced that if someone's got to do a Walmart, Target, Amazon, eBay that day, they're not going to think, Oh, this is definitely a format of a dropship invoice, you know, let's go back and fix this. And then the last one is, they should know about is the price per vendor code. So a lot of accounting teams will like say this, this is our Amazon price, because that's how it is with you know, Wayfair, Target, etc. But at Amazon, it's very much price per vendor code. And Amazon will sometimes mix that up, and they will charge you the domestic price for dropship, or DI, it's one of those things where you actually have to check it on a vendor code by vendor code basis. The second thing is go back and make sure that you know all the incentives that you are applicable for and make sure you've applied for those. So if you've done any sign up this year, then there should be incentives that you can apply for. And it's one of those things where Amazon, they offer it, but they don't make it easy. It's in the little news section on vendor central that I think like no one ever reads. But it's on that. And then the last one is never ever take Amazon's word for it. So make sure that you check the details of their audit claims. So what we do is we audit Amazon back, right? But I'm sure your accounting team if you ask them, or you probably already know, we'll be receiving emails from Amazon once a quarter saying, Hey, we've audited you audited you guys, you guys actually owe us more money. And a lot of people say, Okay, we'll pay it, I guess they've done an audit. Most of the time, we get about two thirds to a half of that audit amount back. So even though Amazon say we've done an audit, they send you this mammoth file, do check it, even though it's stressful, because it's very likely that they're wrong.

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  27:54  

So even after all of that, you still have to go back and check that mammoth file to make sure. Yeah, sad to say, but you have to audit their audit. Yeah. Okay, bear it up, or not. Oh, so we have a question here of does the Hawkers Club offer services that focus on account financial management, such as chargeback shortages versus total account management, like agencies?

 

Hannah Blackburn  28:26  

Yeah, so we, you know, we do all count, like we do do account management, because that's what they kind of bought a lot of agencies do. But we also do one off finance projects. So a lot of what we're doing this year, in particular, because actually, we were talking about the top of the call, this is being squeezed for a lot of people, a lot of our projects this year are solely finance based. And we have a model where we do it, we do it as a one off. And then after that it's optional. If you want us to automatically do it every quarter for you. Most people are so happy with the reclaim that they say yes, but then other people say no, we want to do it once a year, then sometimes people just want to do the one off. But yeah, like a lot of people are totally fine with their account management. And they just don't even know this is happening, which is why we separated it as like an optional extra.

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  29:15  

When you go into an organization who are the stakeholders that Hawkers Club is collaborating with.

 

Hannah Blackburn  29:23  

So we often will talk to finance, but actually the people that are most excited about it, kind of the people whose like profitability of the account they most rely on so oftentimes it's the like director of eCommerce, or sometimes it's the brand owner. It's the people that have to kind of answer at the end of the year. Like why is this not as profitable as we thought it

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  29:46  

would be? Because it is literally going to your bottom line. Exactly. What a what a treat. Question here if you have items that are siag certified, but never claimed the incentive When you apply for the incentive, it depends

 

Hannah Blackburn  30:03  

on the time period. So if it's still within the window, you can but if you, for example, Silex certified something two years ago, even if there was an incentive at that time, you can't go back and claim it, you have to do it within Amazon's window.

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  30:19  

And just to confirm all the solutions and tricks we're talking about today is one P.

 

Hannah Blackburn  30:24  

Central. Now three P. We're working on three P because Amazon is overcharging on three P as well. But right now, we're just solidifying the vendor central so that our vendor central today, got it. 

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  30:40  

Perfect. Final questions, comments, put them into the chat. Any last thoughts, tricks of the trade takeaways? As we close? Yeah,

 

Hannah Blackburn  30:51  

the two things that I'd say as the final thoughts is, one, it's not a one stop shop. So unfortunately, there's not going to be a time where you, you go back, you claim everything. And then it's good. Because these are systematic errors on Amazon site. They keep occurring. And because these are systematic errors based on percentages of your revenue, you can't grow out of this being a problem. It grows with you. And I think that's kind of the most depressing, but also the most important thing to remember that it's something that you need to be addressing, no matter how you do it. Because you just can't get away from it. It's not something where you think, Oh, we're too big a company to do it. It's it's kind of falling you around like a Amazon hungover shadow.

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  31:39  

Yeah, it's like a gremlin or something that's just a parasitic, like, Oh, my goodness, that's a great way to look, it's growing with you, it is not going to dissolve at any point, it's just going to become a bigger monster, that you're just trying to shove underneath the rug is a great way to look at it. I'd be terrified, but realistic.

 

Hannah Blackburn  31:59  

But on the positive side, it's 100% addressable, this is not something that you negotiate with a vendor manager, this is something that with the right evidence, Amazon just pay you back. So it's not one of those things where you say like, I'll bring it to Amazon, and they'll ignore me, like, like a lot of things like shortages. This is something where with the evidence, you get paid back. So that's the kind of positive, if you have

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  32:22  

a plethora of these claims disputes is that any leverage when you go to bat for negotiation time to show them where they failed? Does that help you as a brand in any way shape or form? So

 

Hannah Blackburn  32:37  

it does, if you're talking about shortages and chargebacks words, terms overcharging that Amazon sees is a purely financial transaction. So they'll say you need to raise this with the finance team, you have a dementia, we'll be able to help you very much. But in terms of shortages and chargebacks, yes, the more you can bring to a vendor manager at the end of the year and say this is what you cost us. This is our evidence, the more likely you are to get that claim addressed. But the important thing to remember is Amazon if a vendor manager solves it for you, they will ask you to sign something well, not saying but email them to say okay, this is the amount we've agreed that we're going to pay you back. And you can't claim dispute anything against this period ever again, be really careful on that because if a vendor manager asks you to sign that or share that back with them, it is pretty much evidence that it's definitely more than what they're going to pay you. So if they come to an agreement with you, and then they asked for that, my advice is to at least negotiate one more round and you'll at least be able to recover more because there is more that's pretty much the evidence that there is you'll never get it all back if you decide to go through like with a vendor manager but you will get

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  34:00  

a lot more of it faster. That is great Intel awesome. I'm recording of this session so yeah, we can get this sent out if people want to watch the recording. After this is over, we'll follow up after the events and can send out an edited version for you. So no problem there. Well, I think this is again like having worked with Amazon for 10 years and always having that I know it but I can't prove it. This solution is very exciting to be a part of and like being able to watch you guys help brands every day is very cool to watch so we definitely encourage follow up conversations with The Hawkers Club. And yet we will send out the recording when I share it beautiful love it. So definitely reach out to The Hawkers Club that will be following up as well and love to have a conversation with you all that's how we get the content for future events, so always feel free to reach out and it's Tiffany@bwgconnect.com. So with that, Hannah, you're awesome. You always come with like a wealth of information. I love it. So thank you so much for your time today and thank you all for joining. Thanks, weekend. Take care

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BWG Connect provides executive strategy & networking sessions that help brands from any industry with their overall business planning and execution. BWG has built an exclusive network of 125,000+ senior professionals and hosts over 2,000 virtual and in-person networking events on an annual basis.
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