PREVENTIVE AUDIT FOR RETAIL
Protect margins and accelerate cash flow. Fix issues before execution. Ensure cash at settlement.
PRGX Preventive Audits for Retail identify and address funding, promotion, and return issues earlier in the cycle. The result: accurate margins, all funding received at the time of payment, no post-audit recoveries, and stronger supplier relationships.
Why Preventive Audits for Retail?
Recover More In-Year
Identify and resolve issues prior to payment so more cash lands in the current fiscal year.
Right-First-Time Billing
Ensure all funding flows into the cost of goods—delivering more precise margins from day one.
Stronger Supplier Relationships
Resolve issues before billing—eliminating surprise deductions and reducing administrative burden for both sides.
Promotions: Ensure Accuracy and Protect Margins
With razor-thin margins and substantial CPG trade spend on the table, tracking and recovering promotional funding is essential for retailers to safeguard profitability.
PRGX Preventive Audits leverage AI-driven checks to validate promotions before billing, including:
- Pricing, rebate, and lump-sum validation
- Margin and UOM errors
- Missing items, stores, or periods
- CPI misalignments
See Brad Royer, Senior Vice President of Global Retail Operations, explain what a preventive audit is and why addressing errors earlier in the cycle is the real game-changer for retailers.
Prevention in Action
How it Works
- Margin Accuracy: Accurate billing billing means no post-audit recoveries, delivering stronger profitability.
- Preventive Review: Comprehensive checks on promotional agreements before billing begins.
- Feedback Loop: Actionable insights help commercial teams address issues immediately.
- Deal Refresh/Update: Adjust terms and funding setups to maintain more precise margins.
Client Success: John Lewis Partnership:
Waitrose deployed PRGX Preventive Audits to tackle margin erosion caused by misaligned promotional funding. Within the first year:
- 40-50% of recoveries moved upstream, preventing costly delays.
- 15% increase in savings/returns to the client, directly boosting in-year profitability.
- Commercial teams welcomed the integration, with suppliers facing fewer surprise corrections and clearer evidence trails.
“…Waitrose has successfully deployed the new preventive capability…enabling teams to detect, question, and prevent potential margin erosion before it occurs…This has improved in-year profitability, accelerated cash flow, and eliminated both the delays and ambiguity previously faced with certain retrospective recoveries.”
Keith Rosser,
John Lewis Partnership
Returns: Reclaim Hidden Profitability
Returns and reclamation represent a small but critical area of recovery for retailers. Ensuring pricing, handling, and unsalable agreements are being followed is essential, However, capturing this value requires speed and precision, especially after high-volume periods like the holidays when tracking and billing suppliers on time becomes increasingly difficult.
How We Help:
- Pre-Billing Reconciliation: Return data is assessed and validated before invoicing suppliers to ensure accuracy.
- Fast Turnaround: Invoices are prepared incorporating the findings of the preventive review ensuring accurate billings the first time.
- Reduced Disputes: Suppliers receive clear, accurate data upfront—minimizing back-and-forth communication
Client Success: Transforming Returns Billing for a Leading Global Retailer
A major retailer partnered with PRGX to overhaul its returns billing process:
• 99% billing accuracy achieved through pre-bill validation.
• Post-audit recoveries on returns were virtually eliminated.
• Real-time defect reporting drove sustained process improvements.
Expertise + Technology: Stopping Issues Before They Are Billed
PRGX moves recovery audit expertise earlier in the process—combining deep knowledge of promotional funding and returns with AI-powered technology to stop issues before they become costly.
Our proprietary AI cuts through thousands of emails, contracts, and addendums, matching data fast to keep promotional billing on track—with real-time insights for accuracy and margin protection.
See Brad Royer, PRGX Senior Vice President of Global Retail Operations, explain how PRGX harnesses AI to process millions of emails, classify issues, and accelerate turnaround time.
What Sets PRGX Preventive Audits for Retail Apart
Built on Retail
We built our foundation on retailers and understand promotions and trade funding inside and out.
Find What Others Miss—Faster
Our expertise and proprietary technology approach uncovers issues that others can't, delivering accurate results sooner.
Immediate Bottom-Line Impact
Our recovery audit expertise moves upstream, catching issues closer to the transaction so margins stay accurate.
PRGX Preventive Audit for Retail: By the Numbers
Start Protecting Margins Today
Recover more in-year, streamline supplier relationships, and safeguard your profitability with PRGX Preventive Audits for Retail.
PRGX Preventive Audits for Retail
What exactly is a Preventive Audit for Retail?
PRGX takes its proven retail recovery audit expertise—the same processes, data, and technology—and moves it earlier in the cycle, pre-transaction. Instead of issuing claims and pursuing payments from suppliers after the fact, issues are identified and corrected before they impact performance. The result? Cleaner billing, faster cash, and fewer disputes.
Is a Preventive Audit just a faster version of a post-audit?
Yes and no. We use the same data and expertise, but the outcome is fundamentally different. Rather than recovering lost profit after the fact, Preventive Audits ensure billing compliance address the real pain point: why are these issues occurring and what can we do to stop them? Issues get corrected and everyone moves forward—no claims, no disputes.
What does it take to transition to a Preventive Audit model?
Success requires establishing internal timelines with some change management, ensuring your finance and accounting teams have time for their normal processes before PRGX steps in. Data delivery frequency is also key—we typically need at least monthly feeds, though many clients provide weekly or even daily data. Once processes are set up and automated, the system runs smoothly with minimal disruption.
What types of promotional funding issues can Preventive Audits catch?
Common issues include wrong funding rates or triggers, margin and unit-vs-deal errors, missing items or stores on contracts, price/CPI misalignments, and rebate or lump-sum setup gaps. For example, if a new product flavor wasn’t added to an existing promotional contract, or if an allowance was entered as per-unit instead of per-case, Preventive Audits catch these before they cause profit loss.
How does this benefit suppliers?
Suppliers benefit significantly from Preventive Audits. Issues are caught and resolved prior to billing, reducing overall discrepancies. The people involved in negotiations are still at their desks and can address questions quickly. It also helps suppliers manage their own promotional funding more effectively. The result is fewer surprise deductions, less back-and-forth on dispute resolution, and stronger commercial relationships for everyone.
