Vendor Pre-Approval SOP for Promotions

Why this SOP exists

Many cannabis vendors expect a written record before honoring co-marketing credits. Without that record, every credit memo can turn into a negotiation: "I never agreed to that 20% off, why are you charging me for it?"

The pre-approval workflow in ShelfSpace gives you that record. When you set up a promotion the right way before running it in your POS, the credits you generate at month-end land in a clearly labeled Pre-approved section of the credit memo PDF — with the vendor's approval timestamp printed on the line. Vendors stop pushing back, your AP team stops arguing, and the cycle closes faster.

The three pre-approval paths

Every promotion needs one of these before it runs:

• Path A — Portal: Ask vendor to approve. Use this when you haven't talked to the vendor yet or you want them to click an explicit yes/no.
• Path B — Portal: Record evidence. Use this when the vendor already said yes — by email, text, or a quick call — and you just need to log the record.
• Path C — Email the AP bot. Use this when you're already mid-email-thread with a vendor and don't want to break flow to open the portal.

Path A — Portal: Ask vendor to approve

Use when you want the vendor to confirm in writing before you build the promo in Dutchie.

1. Go to ourshelf.space/retailer/promotions and click Request Promotion.
2. Choose Wholesale Promo at the top.
3. Under Vendor Approval, leave the default selected: "Ask vendor to approve."
4. Fill in the rest:
   • Vendor — pick from the dropdown.
   • Promotion Name — type the EXACT wording you'll use in Dutchie. See the exact-wording rule below — this is the single most important field on the form.
   • Discount — what the customer sees off retail (e.g., 20%).
   • Co-marketing rate — the share of the shortfall the vendor will cover. Default is 100%; lower it if you've negotiated a split.
   • Max budget (optional) — a dollar cap on the vendor's exposure.
   • Window — start and end date.
   • Scope — all products from this vendor, a category, or specific SKUs.
   • Apply to (multi-location accounts only) — a checkbox group of your locations. Your current store is checked by default. Check additional stores when the same promo will run at those too. Stores you don't check are not included.
   • Note to vendor (optional) — a sentence on why you want to run this.
5. Click Submit. The vendor receives an email titled [PROMO-N] Promotion approval requested with a button to your vendor portal. They can approve or decline there.
6. The promotions list shows the request with the Proposed status badge. Once they respond, the badge flips to Approved or Declined and you get a notification. (You can filter the list by Status > Proposed to see everything still awaiting a vendor response.)

Do not run the promotion in Dutchie until you see the Approved status. If you build it in POS while the vendor is still deciding, anything that sells in that gap lands in the "Without prior approval" section of the credit memo — exactly the situation this SOP is meant to prevent.

Path B — Portal: Record evidence

Use when the vendor has already said yes through some channel outside the portal. This is the most common path in practice — most vendor negotiations happen on email or the phone.

1. Steps 1, 2, and 4 are the same as Path A — get to the Request Promotion dialog and fill in the fields.
2. Under Vendor Approval, choose "I already have approval."
3. Two new fields appear:
   • Channel — a short description of how and when the vendor approved. Examples: "Email from Sarah at Verdant, 5/10/2026", "Text from Mike 5/12 — confirmed 20% co-marketing", "Call with Janet on Tuesday".
   • Notes (optional) — anything else worth recording: caps the vendor specified, brand restrictions, vendor contact name.
4. Click Submit. The promotion goes live immediately with the Active status badge. On the detail page, the Vendor Approval card shows "Evidence on file on MM/DD/YYYY" along with your recorded channel and notes. The vendor receives a notification email that you've recorded their prior approval — if anything is off, they can reply.

The credit memo PDF prints "Evidence on file MM/DD/YYYY" next to any line attributed to this promotion, so the vendor can see what they agreed to and when.

Path C — Email the AP bot

Use when you're mid-thread with a vendor or it's easier to type than click. ShelfiQ parses your email and creates the promotion record for you.

Email your retailer AP inbox (the address ShelfSpace assigned you, typically something like ap@yourdomain.com) with the details. A natural email works — ShelfiQ extracts the structured fields:

ShelfiQ should reply referencing the PROMO-N number and confirm what it recorded. If you cited a clear out-of-band approval ("Sarah approved by text"), it logs the promotion as Active with the "Evidence on file" note on the detail page right away. If you didn't cite an approval, it defaults to the "Ask vendor to approve" path — the vendor gets the portal email and clicks approve. Either way, you have a record before the promo runs.

One subtlety: the email path falls back to "Ask vendor to approve" if the sender's role isn't admin or owner. So if your buyer (without admin rights) emails the AP bot citing a vendor approval, ShelfiQ creates the promo as Proposed and waits for the vendor to click approve in the portal — the buyer's word alone doesn't unlock the evidence path.

The exact-wording rule

The Promotion Name field on every path is the bridge between what the vendor approved and what the credit memo charges them for. At month-end, ShelfSpace looks at every promotion ShelfiQ extracted from Dutchie POS data and tries to match each one to a pre-approved promotion record. The match works on the promotion name.

Good practice: write the name in ShelfSpace first, then copy-paste it into Dutchie when you build the discount. If Dutchie's character limit forces you to abbreviate the name there, ask your ShelfSpace admin to update the promotion record so the wording on both sides matches before the monthly credit memo runs. (Retailer-side name editing isn't on the promotion detail page yet — admin tooling is the path for now.)

Examples of safe vs. risky naming

• Safe: ShelfSpace says "20% Off Tincture Tuesday"; Dutchie says "20% Off Tincture Tuesday". Exact match — auto-classified as pre-approved.
• Safe enough: ShelfSpace says "20% Off Tincture Tuesday"; Dutchie says "20% off Tincture Tues". Small drift — auto-classified as pre-approved.
• Risky: ShelfSpace says "April Co-Marketing"; Dutchie says "Tincture Tuesday 20%". Different names — credit lands in "Without prior approval" and the vendor will dispute.

What happens after the promotion runs

When ShelfSpace runs your monthly credit recovery cycle, every promotional discount Dutchie applied to this vendor's products gets classified into one of three buckets on the credit memo PDF:

• Pre-approved promotions. Matched to a Promotion record where the vendor approved either in the portal or via evidence on file. The vendor's approval channel and date are printed next to the line. These almost never get disputed.
• Promotions without prior approval. Discounts Dutchie applied that don't match any pre-approval record. The vendor can dispute these through the standard credit memo approval workflow — and they often will.
• Standard pricing and retailer programs. Loyalty discounts, employee discounts, and POS adjustments. These are not vendor-funded promotions and are handled separately.

The goal of this SOP is simple: drive everything you can into the first bucket. The math is the same either way — what changes is how much friction you hit collecting it.

Recording approval after the fact

If you used Path A and the vendor responded outside the portal — by email or text, or said "yes" on a call — you can still record that as evidence without waiting for them to click the portal link.

On the promotion detail page in ShelfSpace, click Record evidence after the fact. Add the same Channel + Notes fields you'd use for Path B. The promotion flips from Awaiting Vendor to Approved (Evidence on file), and the vendor gets a confirmation email so they can flag any mismatch.

FAQ

What if the vendor never responds?

The promotion stays in Awaiting Vendor indefinitely. There's no auto-approve. If they go silent, follow up directly — and once you get an answer, either record it as evidence (Path B / "Record evidence after the fact") or ask the vendor to click the portal link.

What if the vendor declines?

The promotion is flagged Declined with the vendor's reason captured on the record. You can either choose not to run the promotion, or run it knowing the credit will land in "Without prior approval" at month-end. Most retailers choose to renegotiate.

The credit memo shows a promotion in "Without prior approval" — what do I do?

Two common causes:

• POS wording drifted from the ShelfSpace record. Ask your ShelfSpace admin to update the promotion's name to match Dutchie's wording, then have the credit memo regenerated.
• No pre-approval record exists for this promo. If the vendor genuinely approved out-of-band, create the record now using Path B (Record evidence). If the credit memo is still in admin QC (Pending Admin status), regenerating will pick up the new record and reattribute. Once admin has approved the credit memo (Draft, Pending Review, or beyond), the record is locked — your admin will need to void and regenerate it.

We have multiple locations — does the promo apply to all of them?

Only the stores you select. Different locations routinely run different promotions, so pre-approval is per-store.

• Portal: the Request Promotion dialog shows a "Apply to" checkbox group when your account has more than one location. Your current store is checked by default. Check additional locations only when you want the same promo to run there too. You can also uncheck your current store if the promo runs only at a sibling location — the record will be scoped to whichever stores you check.
• Email (AP bot): ShelfiQ asks you which store(s) before recording when your AP inbox covers more than one location. You can also name the store(s) in the original email ("...for the Worcester store" / "...at both Worcester and Lynn") and ShelfiQ extracts the scope.

Sibling stores you don't select are not auto-included. Each location's monthly credit memo independently classifies its own sales against its own pre-approval records — a promo recorded only for Store A won't reattribute Store B's sales as pre-approved.

What if I select a store that doesn't have an active partnership with the vendor?

That store is silently dropped from the promotion's scope — the record is created for the stores that do qualify, and a warning lists the skipped store(s). On the portal, you'll see an amber toast naming the skipped location. In the email path, ShelfiQ's reply will name the skipped store ("Recorded for Store A — Store B doesn't have an active AP partnership with Acme so it was skipped"). If you need that partnership opened, reach out to ShelfSpace support.

How does ShelfiQ make sure it's the right vendor when I email it?

You write the vendor name the way you'd say it in conversation — ShelfiQ looks it up against the retailer's active AP partnerships and resolves to a single vendor only when the match is unambiguous (similarity ≥ 85% AND no near-tie with another partner). If two of your vendors have similar names (e.g., "Acme Botanicals" and "Acme Cannabis Co."), ShelfiQ replies asking which one you mean before recording anything. If the name doesn't match any active partner, ShelfiQ asks you to confirm — it won't invent a vendor UUID or pick the wrong partner silently. The lookup is scoped to your active partnerships only, so a vendor you don't have a relationship with can never be selected by accident.

Who at the vendor receives the approval email?

The vendor's primary AR contact in their ShelfSpace portal, plus any contacts they've marked to receive notifications. If they want to add or change recipients, they can do it themselves under their portal Settings → Contacts.