Credit recovery is designed to mostly run itself: build each vendor's memo from your data, send it, chase the follow-up, and book what's approved — without you touching a spreadsheet. But "run itself" only works if you've told it how to behave. That's what the Settings tab on /retailer/credits is for. It's a handful of switches that, set once, shape every future month: what each memo is allowed to ask for, what happens when a vendor stays quiet, and where an approved credit ends up. This is a tour of all of them.
Source toggles — what the ask is allowed to include
The first group of settings decides which kinds of credit are eligible at all. There's a toggle for returns, one for co-marketing, and one for price drops and aging markdowns. Turning a source off means that credit type simply never appears on a memo — regardless of what's in the data. It's the bluntest, most useful control you have: if you don't pursue aging credits with a particular vendor, switch it off for them and the topic never comes up.
These live at two levels. The retailer-wide toggles set your default posture; the per-vendor toggles override it for a specific relationship. A vendor you have a rich co-marketing deal with keeps that source on; a vendor who only ever agreed to cover defective returns gets everything else switched off. The result is a memo tuned to each agreement instead of a one-size-fits-all ask.
Auto-approval — what books when a vendor goes quiet
When a vendor's review window lapses without a response, the defensible portion of their memo is deemed approved. This setting decides what happens in that moment, and it's granular on purpose: per vendor, per credit category. Each category can be set to book automatically or to park in your queue for a final manual approval.
Auto-book the categories you'd never second-guess; park the ones you want to eyeball. Silence still closes the loop — you just decide how much of it you review.
The practical pattern: returns and waste — the least disputable credits — are the natural candidates to auto-book, so quiet vendors clear themselves. A category you're still calibrating with a vendor can be left to park, giving you the final click. Either way, a vendor's silence resolves the memo; this setting just tunes how hands-off that is.
Excluding a vendor entirely
Some vendors you simply don't run credit recovery with — a handshake arrangement, a consignment-only partner, someone you settle a different way. Rather than switch off every source one at a time, you can exclude the vendor from credit recovery outright. They drop out of generation completely: no drafts, no memos, no asks. It's the clean way to say "not this one" without leaving half-configured toggles behind.
What happens to approved credit memos
The last setting is a fork, and it's the one worth getting right: "What to do with approved credit memos." It decides where an approved credit actually goes.
- Integrated AP — if you pay vendors through ShelfSpace, approved credits show up automatically as deductions when you pay that vendor's invoices. No hand-off, no double entry.
- External AP — if your bills are paid elsewhere, ShelfSpace hands you the approved memos to share with your accounting team, and you mark each one applied once the deduction is taken in your own system.
Both paths end with the credit actually reducing what you pay — the setting just decides whether the platform takes the deduction for you or hands it off. Choose the one that matches how your AP already runs.
Where the rates live
One thing this tab intentionally doesn't hold: the coverage rates. Target margin, the vendor's share on returns, co-marketing, and aging — those are set per vendor on each vendor's own Settings tab, and they're covered in setting your target margin and coverage rates. Think of it as two jobs: the rates decide how much a credit is worth; the settings on this tab decide whether it's asked for and what happens after it's approved.
Set it once
- Turn on only the credit sources you actually pursue — retailer-wide, then per vendor where a relationship differs.
- Auto-book the categories you'd never argue about; park the rest for your click.
- Exclude any vendor you don't run credit recovery with.
- Point "what to do with approved credit memos" at your real AP path — integrated or external.
- Then let the month run — every memo will match the agreement you configured here.
These switches are the difference between a credit program that reflects your real vendor deals and one that asks for the wrong things. Set them once and the monthly cycle does the rest. If you'd like a hand mapping your vendor agreements onto them, start with a free evaluation.