The Setup
A dispensary was giving one of their vendors the full treatment — premium shelf placement, featured menu positioning, budtender recommendations during customer interactions. This is standard practice in cannabis retail. Vendors pay for placement, either through explicit co-marketing agreements or through credits that offset the dispensary's promotional costs.
The problem: nobody was tracking it. The vendor got the benefit — their products were being actively promoted in-store — but no credit was ever created, no memo was ever sent, and no money changed hands. The dispensary was doing the work and eating the cost.
This is one of the most common blind spots we see. The dispensary knows they're promoting vendor products. The vendor knows they're getting promoted. But the actual credit — the money the vendor owes for that promotion — never materializes because nobody does the math.
What We Caught
We ran the numbers. The dispensary's sell-through on this vendor's products was significantly above keystone pricing benchmarks — the industry standard 2x markup from wholesale to retail. When a dispensary promotes a vendor's products and drives sell-through above what you'd expect from passive shelf presence, that delta represents promotional value the vendor should be reimbursing.
We calculated $2,340 in co-marketing credits owed for the current billing period. Not a guess — a line-by-line calculation based on actual POS data, comparing promoted product sell-through against baseline rates for similar products without promotional support. See how credit recovery works.
How We Recovered It
- Co-marketing calculation — We compared actual sell-through rates against keystone pricing benchmarks. Products being actively promoted sold at rates 30-40% above comparable non-promoted products. That lift is the vendor's promotional value — and they owe for it.
- Credit memo generation — We built a formal credit memo with the supporting data: product SKUs, sell-through rates, baseline comparisons, and the calculated credit amount. This isn't an email asking for a favor — it's a documented financial claim with the math to back it up.
- Vendor approval workflow — We sent the memo directly to the vendor's AP team. The vendor reviewed the data, confirmed the promotional activity, and approved the credit. No pushback. When the math is clear and the data is real, vendors pay. They already budgeted for co-marketing — they just weren't being asked to spend it.
- Invoice offset — The approved $2,340 credit was applied against the vendor's next open invoice. Instead of the dispensary paying the full invoice amount, we deducted the credit and paid the net balance.
- Payment processing — We cut the net payment to the vendor. The credit was recovered and applied in a single billing cycle — no carryover, no "we'll get to it next month," no credit sitting in a spreadsheet slowly being forgotten.
Why Dispensaries Leave Credits on the Table
Three reasons:
- Nobody does the math. Calculating co-marketing credits requires comparing sell-through against baselines, tracking promotional activity, and building documentation. Most dispensaries don't have the bandwidth.
- Nobody sends the memo. Even when a dispensary knows they're owed credits, creating and sending a formal credit memo feels like a confrontation. It's not — it's a billing event. But it requires time and process that most stores don't have.
- Credits don't demand attention. Invoices scream — they have due dates, late fees, and vendors calling to collect. Credits whisper. Nobody calls you to remind you that you're owed money. So credits expire, get forgotten, or get absorbed as a cost of doing business.
For a typical dispensary, unclaimed vendor credits run 4-6% of revenue annually. For a $3M store, that's $120,000 to $180,000 per year. The $2,340 we recovered here was from one vendor in one billing cycle. Multiply that across all vendors and all months, and you start to see the scale.
The Result
$2,340 recovered. One vendor. One billing cycle. The dispensary didn't write an email, build a spreadsheet, or have an uncomfortable conversation. We did the math, sent the memo, got the approval, and applied the credit.
The vendor didn't push back. They had the co-marketing budget — they just weren't being asked to use it. When the data is clear and the ask is professional, vendors approve. They'd rather pay what they owe than lose shelf space.
"The vendor owed them $2,340 and would have happily never mentioned it. We asked. They paid."
If you're running in-store promotions and not recovering co-marketing credits, you're leaving money on the table every billing cycle. Start with a free evaluation — we'll connect to your POS data and show you exactly what's owed. You can also run the numbers yourself with our credit recovery calculator.