Trade spend that gets planned, not just spent.
Promotion planning, budgeting and settlement for retail trade — with the measurement layer that shows what actually lifted.
- Promotion capture
- Feeds and matching
- Parallel settlement
- Cut-over and baselines
- Operated
Trade promotion is often a large line on the P&L and one of the least measured.
Budgets are committed in planning decks in October. Promotions run in stores the following spring. Retailers take deductions off invoices, and someone in accounts receivable matches them to whatever agreement they can find. The promotion is rarely evaluated, because by the time anyone has the sales data the next plan has already been signed.
The trade promotions module of Sales Performance closes that loop on one auditable record. A promotion is planned against an account and a budget, executed with the terms written down, settled against those terms when the claim or deduction arrives, and measured against a baseline once the sell-out data is in. The same record carries all four stages, so the finance question — “what did we get for the money” — has an answer with data in it.
The module shares the plan designer, calculation engine, dispute flow and settlement ledger with the rest of the family, which is why a trade claim and a distributor rebate reconcile the same way. It deploys on its own, and can be paired with partner and channel programmes when the same key accounts run both.
Four modules, one promotion record.
Each module owns one stage of a promotion’s life. Because they write to the same record, the calendar knows what was settled, settlement knows what was planned, and analysis knows both.
Promotion calendar
Account-level planning with budget control and conflict visibility. Key account managers build the year against an allocated budget, see overlapping mechanics on the same SKU before they are booked, and submit promotions for approval with the terms attached. What was agreed with the retailer is written down once, in the record that settlement will later read.
Claims & settlement
Deduction and claim matching against agreed terms. Retailer deductions and submitted claims are matched to the promotion they belong to, tolerance rules decide what clears automatically, and everything that does not match goes to a queue with an owner. Leakage is surfaced, not absorbed into a write-off account at year end.
Post-event analysis
Lift against baseline per promotion, computed from your sales feeds once the event window closes. Incremental volume, incremental margin and cost per incremental unit sit next to the plan that was approved, so the ROI conversation happens with the numbers, not around them.
Funds governance
Accruals and balances finance can reconcile continuously. Every approved promotion accrues against its fund from the day it is approved; every settlement releases or trues up that accrual. Month-end is a report, not a reconstruction.
What it does, in detail.
Deductions matched, not absorbed.
Trade spend is often settled by the retailer taking it off an invoice. The settlement module ingests deductions from your ERP, matches each one to the promotion and terms it belongs to, and clears it when the amount is within tolerance. What does not match — a deduction for a promotion that was never approved, a claim above the agreed cap, a proof-of-performance that never arrived — becomes a dispute with an owner and a deadline. That discipline is where trade-spend leakage can be recovered, and the module reports the recovered amount by retailer and promotion.
- Deduction, claim and invoice-level settlement in one flow, with per-retailer tolerance rules
- Unmatched items sit in a queue with reason codes, and a write-off is a decision on the record
Every promotion gets a verdict.
Once the event window closes and the sales feed has caught up, the analysis module computes lift against a baseline for that promotion: incremental units, incremental margin after the cost of the deal, and the cost per incremental unit. Baselines are configurable — trailing weeks, same period last year, or a control set of stores — and the method is recorded with the result. The verdict is stored against the promotion, so next year’s calendar is planned with evidence about what worked at that account.
- Baseline methods chosen per category or account and versioned like any other rule
- Every promotion gets a post-event ROI, with the result kept on file
- Results roll up to account, brand and mechanic so the pattern — not just the event — is visible
Funds that reconcile themselves.
Trade funds are accrued the moment a promotion is approved and released or trued up when it settles. Balances are visible by fund, account and period at any time, with the promotions and settlements behind each number one click away. Finance gets accrual and reversal entries by cost centre at each close, generated from the same ledger the settlement module wrote to. Because the calendar, the settlement and the GL all read one record, they agree by construction.
- Fund hierarchy per client: corporate, brand, account and discretionary funds with their own approvers
- Accruals posted on approval, adjusted on settlement, reversed on cancellation — automatically and visibly
- Period-end pack for finance: balances, open accruals, unmatched deductions and ageing
One record, three readers.
Plan the year against a budget you can see.
The account manager builds the calendar for their retailer, sees the fund balance move as promotions are booked, and gets the post-event verdict on last year’s events while planning this year’s. When a deduction does not match, it lands with them first — with the promotion and the terms attached, so it can be resolved by showing the agreement.
- Calendar, budget and overlap warnings on one screen
- Last year’s lift shown per mechanic while planning
- Variance queue with the retailer’s claim and the approved terms side by side
Accruals that match the calendar.
Trade finance sees fund balances, open accruals and ageing of unmatched deductions continuously rather than at close. Approval thresholds are theirs to set; any promotion above them waits for a named person. At period end the accrual entries and the settlement true-ups are generated from the ledger, not reconstructed from a spreadsheet that may or may not agree with AR.
- Live balances by fund, account and period
- Approval thresholds and approvers as configuration
- Close pack generated from the settlement ledger
Which money worked.
Leadership sees trade spend by account, brand and mechanic with the lift each produced. The question shifts from “did we stay in budget” to “which mechanics earn their cost at which accounts”, and the next annual negotiation is prepared with evidence of what the retailer’s events actually delivered.
- Spend and lift by account, brand and mechanic
- Cost per incremental unit trended across seasons
- Exports to your BI for the planning cycle
Plans and claims in, one ledger, five outputs.
What ships, what is configured.
Governed contracts, not emailed files.
ERP
Invoices, deductions and credit notes in; accruals and GL postings out
Retailer claims
Per-retailer mappings for claim files and portals, normalised into one model
POS & syndicated sell-out
Store-level sales for baselines and lift, on the provider’s cadence
Product & account master
SKUs, hierarchies and account structures kept in sync with your MDM
Salesforce
Account teams and plans in; promotion status and results back
Data platform
Promotion, settlement and lift tables exported to your warehouse and BI
Workflow & Procurement
Approval flows for budgets and above-threshold promotions
Calendar first, settlement second, measurement once the data lands.
Promotion capture
We read this year’s plan with the account managers who own it and rebuild it in the calendar: mechanics, funds, approvers and the terms each retailer has actually agreed.
Feeds and matching
ERP deductions, retailer claims and sell-out data land under governed contracts. Tolerance and matching rules are configured and tested against last quarter’s deductions.
Parallel settlement
The matching engine runs alongside your current deduction process until the numbers agree. Every difference is explained.
Cut-over and baselines
Settlement goes live, accruals post from the ledger, and the first post-event analyses run on promotions with a closed window.
Operated
The Odeontech team that built the module runs it to SLOs agreed with you, tunes baselines as data quality improves, and supports each planning season.
Frequently asked questions
Elsewhere in the family.
See it on your own deductions.
A guided demo with an engineer who operates the platform — configured toward your promotions and your retailers, not a canned deck.