When you receive a check from a major chain store, or potentially not even a major store, you may notice that they have taken credits for what would be considered a bill back . This is for things like marketing, shelf space rental, promotions, and more. These can be hard to calculate ahead of time and most of the time you don’t know about them until you receive the check. You have two ways to account for these.
The Long Way - Create a credit for the same amount for an item that is, to the best of your knowledge, categorized for financial reporting purpose via an item on the system. This method is the most transparent and best for reporting purposes. For example, you can run a report on how many times you have credited “Marketing Bill Back” to Safeway Store #454.
The Short Way - Discount one or many invoices as you are entering the payment and classify the discount from a general ledger perspective. However, there are a couple of hiccups.
- If the credits are larger than any one invoice, you will have to spread it out over multiples due to the fact that there is only one discount per invoice.
- Reporting is less transparent, but the financial impact is taken care of quicker.
bMobile Route Software has made it easy to accomplish either of these methods at a parent (corporate) level or child (store) level.
This is part of the fun of being in this market and we are glad to help win and keep these accounts with our DSD companies.
