$8M+
P&L impact recovered across three scenarios
$5–10M/yr
Recurring loss eliminated at the root
~$2.5B+
Spend analyzed across the network
5 months
To the first $6M in restored funding
Operating Context
The Challenge of Mapping Two Different Vendors' Agreements
A major acquisition merged the ERPs of one company with incompatible SKU formats with another and the vendor bill back agreements that funded much of this operator's margin never picked up the new SKU mapping. Billings due on purchases by the acquired-banner went un-billed. While appearing to be just normal operations with valid agreements and billings proceeding on schedule, any item that couldn't be matched by SKU would slip through unnoticed as unfunded and invisible to any standard control.
Leading convenience: retail & fuel operator
~17,000+ North American locations across two store banners.
~$2.5B+ spend analyzed
Merchandise, DSD, fuel, and vendor funding programs.
Post-acquisition engagement
Launched after a two-ERP merger, reconciling what was agreed against what was actually billed and paid.
High Volume Of
– Vendor billbacks and funding agreements across thousands of suppliers
– Direct Store Delivery (DSD) of soda, energy drinks, snacks, and beer
– High-frequency EDI invoicing, receiving, and payment cycles
– SKU and UPC mapping across two merged ERP environments
Complex Environment Included
– Post-acquisition ERP merge with different SKU formats
– Billbacks dependent on SKU to UPC mappings
– Auto-matching of EDI invoices to goods receipts
– Multiple vendor agreements for a single supplier with different terms signed by different teams
"When two retailers merge, integration, not the deal, creates the risk. Vendor funding is created in the agreements, but it has no value until the two systems match the item. With the mapping broken, any funding that is earned flows right out without a single error notice."
The Problem
How Discrepancies in Item Codes Created an Inadvertent Revenue Shortfall
Acquiring a significant retail banner should have positively impacted the profitability of the selected company. Instead, the management misjudged the importance of consolidating two ERP instances, decreasing costs under the umbrella of the new organization. In particular, the acquisition led to the emergence of the problem of reconciling closed revenues due to the differences in the presentation of stock keeping units (SKU). This occurred because the bill-back agreements between the merged entities did not consider the changes in the coding of SKUs and the discrepancy between the two systems.
System controls saw normal, clean operations. In reality, millions in valid vendor allowances were quietly dropping off the balance sheet without triggering a single automated alert.
01
Broken SKU-to-UPC mapping
Acquired-banner items never mapped to the new SKU format dropped out of billback funding entirely.
02
Items missing from agreements altogether
Products sold only under the acquired banner never made it into the agreements, so no funding could be claimed against them.
03
Conflicting vendor agreements
Where a supplier held more than one annual agreement, the wrong, lower-rate one was loaded into billing, so items were funded below the latest signed terms.
04
Receiving failure feeding overpayment
A glitch corrupted receipt data and broke EDI-to-receipt matching; a reactive ~$10M lump-sum settlement then double-paid invoices EDI had already cleared.
Each gap was legitimate to the controls in place. None of them triggered a rule. Uncovering the truth meant reconciling, between two ERPs and millions of documents, what was agreed against what was actually invoiced and paid, line by line, since the money was buried between the lines.
How We Solved It
From System Disconnect to Full Recovery in Five Steps
Instead of blindly chasing system errors, Discover Dollar re-established commercial context to financial execution. Through analyzing what is authorized by contract versus what gets physically processed by the merged systems, we exposed revenue leakage. All this was done on the operator's existing data with no disruption to their ERP or AP processes.
Thousands
Suppliers in scope
6 formats
Unified line-by-line
5 months
Idea to recovered dollars
01
Ingestion of Commercial & Financial Data
Bill-back agreements, purchase orders, goods receipts, EDI streams, proof-of-delivery (POD), invoices, and payments were securely ingested in both ERPs.
02
Extraction of Commercial Intent
Natural language processing was utilized across master data, contracts, and posting metadata to identify what is authorized to be paid, as opposed to what successfully cleared AP.
03
Matching of Agreement to Actual Execution
All authorized terms, including funds rates, individual costs, receipt statuses, and historical settlements, were automatically matched to invoices and payments, thus exposing any discrepancies.
04
Prioritization of Highest Impact Discrepancies
Discrepancies were prioritized by the deviation magnitude, not the transaction frequency, letting finance, AP, and procurement focus on the few claims that impact the P&L.
05
Embedding of Continuous Visibility
Finally, the reconciliation controls were embedded as a continuous detection engine and prevention tool, ensuring that no unplanned leakage will occur in the future.
The result wasn't a one-time clean-up. Fundable items were remapped so eligible funding bills automatically, and a line-level reconciliation layer was built in its place.
Value Delivered
Building Visibility Into Each Cent
By bringing billback agreements, purchase records, receipts, and payments together across both ERP environments, three distinct recovery opportunities emerged. The key insight was that each scenario had routinely bypassed the client's existing compliance checks without raising a single flag.
Primary Scenario
Recovering Unbilled Billback Funding
$6M+
recovered in five months
After the takeover, the bill back agreements did not account for the new SKUs that were adopted for the acquired company's category. An end-to-end assessment of the monthly billings revealed that most of the 2024 agreements that were applicable to both banners failed to reflect the funding of the items that had been delisted by the UPC, and the products acquired only under the new banner were entirely excluded — plus corrected agreements that prevent $5–10M in annual recurring loss.
How It Leaks
– Acquired-banner items unmapped to the new SKU format dropped out of funding entirely
– Items sold only under the acquired banner never made it into the agreements at all
– Billings ran on schedule, so nothing ever flagged the missing funding
Once visibility was established between:
Billback Agreements
SKU / UPC Mapping
Captured Funding
Two further scenarios surfaced, each invisible to standard controls: With the same pool of data analyzed, two additional scenarios could explain the identified misstatement, each of which also involved reconciliation processes within the ERP systems that were applied correctly to the transactions recorded.
$908K
Conflicting Vendor Agreements
Where a supplier had more than one annual agreement, the wrong lower rate agreement had been loaded into billing resulting in items being underfunded compared to the latest signed agreement. Reconciliation ensured that each item was correctly related to its current agreement and recovered the shortfall.
$34K
DSD Overpayment in a Lump-Sum Settlement
A receiving glitch broke EDI-to-receipt matching and short-paid DSD vendors. A reactive ~$10M lump-sum settlement then double-paid invoices EDI had already cleared. Forensic reconciliation across POs, receipts, EDI feeds, PODs and the settlement surfaced the duplicates and unaccounted cost decreases.
Beyond these, recurring patterns mapped across the vendor base missed volume rebates, cost overcharges after price changes, cash-discount leakage, and further duplicate payment exposure. The merger made the convenience network larger; it also multiplied the seams where funding hides.
How We Decoded The Value
From Visibility to Impact
Discover Dollar did not start by looking for "errors." It started by restoring commercial context to retail financial execution.
Commercial & Financial Data Ingested
Data across purchase orders, goods receipts, advance payment ledgers, FX records, invoices, and payments was securely connected without disrupting existing ERP, Ariba, or AP workflows.
Commercial Context Extracted
Natural language processing analyzed master data, agreements, and posting metadata to understand what was actually authorized, and not just what processed through systems.
Intent Matched to Execution
Authorized commercial terms, unit costs, advance settlements, FX rates, and receipt states were systematically compared against invoices and payments to identify where automated execution diverged from economic intent.
Value-Impacting Mismatches Surfaced
Mismatches with real margin or P&L impact were surfaced and prioritized by materiality, not volume, enabling AP, controlling, and procurement teams to focus on what truly mattered.
Visibility Embedded as a Recurring Layer
Once validated, these signals became part of an ongoing visibility layer, allowing finance and AP teams to detect and address leakage continuously, not retrospectively.
The ROI Snapshot
In the first phase, on a single integration issue, the engagement returned more than 30x its own cost and closed the gap that would have leaked it again every year.
5 mo
to first $6M
2 ERPs
reconciled by UPC
100%
transactions tested
6 formats
unified line-by-line
Recovering millions was the quick win; building lasting resilience was the true transformation. With fundable items remapped and automated at the line level, manual chasing is replaced by automated billing leaving the leak closed for good.
One-Time Recovery. Continuous Protection.
Frequently Asked
FAQs
More than $8M across three scenarios in the first phase, including $6M in five months from billback gaps, plus corrected agreements that prevent an estimated $5–10M in annual recurring loss.
The first $6M in restored billback funding surfaced within five months, run on the operator's live billing and receiving data.
Because nothing looked broken. Agreements appeared valid, billings ran on schedule, and items that couldn't be matched by SKU simply fell out of funding. It was a silent post-merger failure with no error to flag and no single owner across two ERPs.
Ongoing. The leak was closed at the source, fundable items were remapped so eligible funding bills automatically, and a line-level reconciliation layer was left in place to catch the next cycle as it forms.
Existing procurement data only: billback agreements, purchase orders, goods receipts, EDI feeds, PODs, invoices, and payments. These were connected securely across both merged ERPs with no disruption to existing ERP, Ariba or AP workflows.
About Discover Dollar
Discover Dollar helps enterprises identify and recover value in the source-to-pay and merchandise functions that even the most sophisticated systems miss — finding value where systems silently stop, not just where they error. Discover Dollar has saved $450 million for Fortune 500 partners by solving recovery-audit problems and turning one-time recovery into a permanent reconciliation layer inside the AP function.
Discover Dollar Inc USA · 600 N Broad Street, Suite 5 #3308, Middletown, Delaware 19709 · +1 (856) 379 1108
www.DiscoverDollar.com
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