Every statistic used in FlowSense external content has an entry below: the direct quote, the source, the URL, the methodology, and what the number means and does not mean. If a number isn't here, it isn't on a FlowSense page.
The supply chain accountability category has a credibility problem. Vendor marketing pages quote statistics without sources. Industry reports cite each other in circles. Numbers get reformulated in retelling until the original methodology is lost. Operators who buy software based on those numbers get burned when the math doesn't show up in their P&L.
FlowSense is a new category. The handoff problem has not been productized before. Operators looking at us are right to want proof. This page is the proof.
Every external claim FlowSense makes traces to a primary source listed here. Every quote is direct. Every URL works on the day this page was published. When sources update or rot, this page updates. When we add a new statistic to a deck or a page, we add it here first.
I am building this company the way I would want a vendor to build for me. That means showing my work.
Three-tool triangulation. Every claim is checked across three independent AI research tools and corroborated against published primary sources. Where the tools disagree, the most conservative defensible reading wins.
Direct source verification. Where possible, the primary document is read end-to-end. The institutional benchmarks cited on this page were verified by reading the original PDF, not by trusting a secondary citation.
Scope honesty. Each entry includes a note on what the number means and what it does not. Narrow studies are framed narrowly. Vendor marketing is labeled as such. Adjacent statistics are not used as primary anchors.
Third-party institutional research. Named methodology, named sample size, primary document publicly accessible.
Vendor marketing on a vendor's own product page. Useful because the vendor stakes their public reputation on the claim. Flagged because of vendor interest.
Adjacent or scoped statistics. Real numbers from real sources, but with narrow scope. Used as supporting color, never as primary anchor stats.
"Median is 1.1 - 2% of sales. (2021 median was 1/2 - 1% and 2018 median was 1/4 - 1/2%) ... 17% reported > 5% of sales (this was 6% in 2021)"
The median non-trade deduction load roughly quadrupled across three waves: 0.25 to 0.5 percent of sales in 2018, 0.5 to 1 percent in 2021, and 1.1 to 2 percent in 2023. The share reporting more than 5 percent of sales nearly tripled, from 6 percent to 17 percent. The survey also reports the number of companies reporting deduction increases rose 38 percent versus 2021.
Self-reported, ten industry groups, non-trade deductions only. The 2023 respondent count is not stated in the published deck. Individual experience varies; the direction is the finding.
"Brands lose 5-7% of annual revenue to deductions, chargebacks, and compliance fines."
Across CPG and consumer goods, total deduction load (trade promotions, allowances, chargebacks, compliance fines combined) typically runs 5 to 7 percent of top-line revenue.
This is not the recoverable portion. Most is legitimate trade spend or contracted allowances. The recoverable piece is a subset.
"the median response across all respondents was non trade deductions were 1/4 - 1/2% of sales"
The 2018 wave, retained as the trend baseline; superseded as the current anchor by the 2023 wave above. The movement between waves is the finding.
Not the current benchmark. Use the 2023 figures for today's exposure.
"For all respondents, 6-10% of all deduction dollars are invalid or disallowed and charged back to your customer (median)."
Across all 203 respondents, the median company classified 6 to 10 percent of its total deduction dollars as invalid or disallowed.
This is the all-respondent median, not any single industry's rate. The survey's by-industry table ranges from Food, Beverage and Grocery at 1.1 to 5 percent, to Pharmaceutical/Nutritional at 6 to 10 percent, to Consumer Electronics/Toys/Sporting/Hardware-Software at 5.1 to 10 percent, up to Apparel, Footwear and Accessories at 15.1 to 20 percent. Do not present any single industry row as the headline figure. Shortage claims specifically run higher; trade-related deductions lower.
"data from the Retail Value Chain Federation (RVCF) indicates that 65% to 80% of retail shortage claims are actually invalid"
Narrowed to shortage claims specifically, the invalid rate is much higher than the overall median.
Not the rate across all deductions. The original RVCF document is membership-restricted, so this is cited via a secondary source.
"The median percent of invalid deduction dollars recovered is 60%."
The median company recovers 60 percent of the dollars they have already identified as invalid. The other 40 percent is owed money never collected.
This is recovery from the invalid pool only. Recovery across all deductions is much lower because most deductions are valid.
"The difference between operators who recover 80% of their shortages and those who recover 10% comes down to one thing: documentation."
In c-store/DSD specifically, where the receipt is signed in real time at the dock, recovery is roughly 80 percent when the shortage is documented at the handoff and roughly 10 percent when it is not.
Not generalizable across all categories or channels. Used only for the DSD/c-store handoff.
"On average, about half of all disputed deductions are repaid."
Of the deductions a brand actually disputes, roughly half come back.
Not the dispute rate. Most deductions are never disputed. This is the win rate among disputes filed.
"On average only 20-30% of deductions are ever disputed by suppliers, yet an average 40% of disputed deductions are won back."
25 percent disputed times 40 percent won back is roughly 10 percent of the disputable pool actually recovered. The realistic baseline most operators are at today.
Not a hard floor. Strong process and tooling do better.
"A $200 deduction may require $300-$500 in internal staff time to resolve."
"Finance teams spend 30-50% of their time chasing down deduction details across emails and spreadsheets."
"The median DDO reported across all respondents is 44 days."
"the median time from receipt of deduction until ultimate resolution is 90 days, or 3 months"
"When asked about their biggest internal challenge when trying to control deductions, 41% of respondents reported cross-departmental cooperation."
"Do you automatically write off deductions below a certain value? ... Up from 73% in 2021 ... All respondents $50 - $100 ... Food, Beverage and Grocery $100 - $250 ... Up from $25 - $50 in 2021"
Most companies automatically write off deductions below a threshold without investigation, up from 73 percent of companies in 2021. The median threshold doubled between 2021 and 2023 (from $25-$50 to $50-$100 across all respondents), and in Food, Beverage and Grocery the median threshold is $100-$250 per deduction. Below the threshold, deductions settle without anyone determining validity.
This does not measure whether the written-off deductions were valid. It measures where investigation stops being economical.
"OTIF performance is tracked at the case level, not just the PO level, and failures typically result in compliance chargebacks worth roughly three percent of cost of goods sold."
Walmart's pre-2024 OTIF program publicly carried a fine of roughly 3 percent of COGS per non-compliant case.
Not the current program. Effective February 2024, Walmart's OTIF measures Prepaid On-Time (90%), Collect Ready (98%), and In-Full (95%) by category, per secondary reporting; the historical 3 percent figure should not be presented as today's structure. Current negotiated terms vary by supplier.
"In our benchmarking data we found that nearly all brands receive supply chain-related chargebacks from Amazon, and 90% report receiving shortage deductions that are believed to be incorrect."
Numbers we used to use, and don't anymore. Three statistics in an earlier internal ROI model did not survive verification. They never appeared on a public surface; they were caught by the discipline this page describes.
"5 to 7 percent of revenue lost, attributed to multiple sources"
Why retired: Wrong attribution chain. The figure is real but only SPS Commerce supports it directly; CPG Vision and Productiv do not say what they were claimed to say. Replaced with: SPS Commerce alone, plus the Attain/CRF 0.25 to 0.5 percent non-trade benchmark as the conservative anchor.
"30 to 40 percent recovery rate without documentation, as a general industry claim"
Why retired: Real number, wrong scope. Only true for c-store vendor shortage disputes where the receipt was signed without notation. Replaced with: DohAssist 80/10 used only with explicit narrow scope; Attain/CRF median 60 percent recovery as the broader benchmark.
"60 percent of deductions are disputable"
Why retired: No published source supports it. Was a model assumption embedded as sourced data. Replaced with: Attain/CRF median 6 to 10 percent invalid (203-company benchmark, all respondents); for shortage-specific framing only, RVCF 65 to 80 percent of shortage claims invalid.
If a URL on this page is broken, a quote is wrong, a source has been retracted, or you have better data than what we cite, send it. The point of this page is to be correctable.
Email directly: sales@flowsensehq.com