The Scorecard: Measuring Your Credit Program

You've been sending credit memos and chasing approvals all month. So — is it actually working? There's one screen that tells you, at a glance, exactly what your credit program is recovering.

Right here, your entire credit program lands on a single row. What the system found you were owed. What you actually asked your vendors for. What they've already approved. And the rate you're winning. Four numbers, and you know instantly whether all this effort is paying off.

This is the funnel every credit dollar moves through. Everything the engine identified you were owed, everything you formally requested, and everything the vendor signed off on — laid out side by side. You can literally watch the money travel from a raw opportunity into real dollars back in your pocket.

Now here's the part worth understanding. You don't ask for every dollar you identify, and that's on purpose. Before a memo ever goes out, the asks you can't prove get stripped away, so your vendor only sees a clean, defensible number. You leave a little on the table by design — and in exchange, your requests almost never get fought.

And that's exactly what this recovery rate proves. When nearly everything you ask for comes back approved, that's hard evidence your asks are backed by real data, not padding. If this number ever slips, it's your early warning that you're requesting things you can't defend — and it's time to tighten up.

The scorecard also splits every dollar by where it came from — customer returns and waste, co-marketing promotions, and aged-inventory markdowns. One glance shows you which source is doing the heavy lifting this month, and which one's worth leaning into next.

And when you sit down with a vendor, this is your receipts. Here's what you asked for on their promotions, here's what they approved, and here's the recovery rate — real figures, pulled straight from their own product's sales data. There's no arm-waving. Just a clean record of what this program actually recovered for you.

So instead of wondering whether all those credit memos ever added up to anything, you've got the answer on one screen — identified, requested, approved, and the rate you're winning. That's your proof the program's working, and your playbook for making next month even stronger.