Rebate management blog - Page 15 - Enable

Businesses managing complex trading agreements face several hurdles that are difficult to overcome entirely when using manual processes and spreadsheets. Lack of transparency, inaccuracy and limited control of rebate accounting processes is common and the ramifications of these can have a damaging effect on profit, compliance, cash flow and business growth. For retailers, wholesalers and large buying groups, solving these issues to ensure receipt of the correct amount of rebate income and achiev...Continue reading

In our online guide “IFRS 15 — 7 steps to prepare for January 2018” one of our suggestions is to review every deal in every contract and make it SMART. We think that whilst it’s a good idea as part of financial compliance, SMART deals are good for anyone who manages a contract with complex rebate deals, so we thought we would share it with you. A SMART deal is like a SMART objective in project management terms, namely: Specific Be VERY specific. If a deal refers to “across all product lines”, i...Continue reading

Missing out on claiming manufacturer’s rebates is like negotiating a higher price with your suppliers. It simply shouldn’t happen! That's why we created {{cta('a2f66229-8bba-41bc-b443-cb17df844880')}} — THE rebate management system chosen by several building materials wholesale distributors and buying groups. There are many examples in the building materials business where, instead of agreeing an up-front discount, discounts are given in the form of rebates based on actual volumes purchased. Fo...Continue reading

IFRS 15 ‘Revenue from Contracts with Customers’ comes into force on 1st January 2018. The new financial reporting standards (IFRS 15) have a particular impact for businesses who regularly have contracts that contain “elements of variable consideration”. IFRS 15:51 provides us with examples of “variable consideration” which include rebates, incentives, refunds, performance bonuses, credits, price concessions, penalties or other similar items — items that impact the real net-net price and ultima...Continue reading

It isn’t unusual to find that rebate agreements cannot be fully represented within ERP systems and spreadsheets, resulting in disparate sources of information being stored within ERP systems, spreadsheets and even people’s heads! This management headache is multiplied when you consider these 3 major risks: lack of control over profitability, with poor understanding of true margin at point of sale, and roughly estimated true product costs feeding into profit calculations missed revenue opportun...Continue reading

Most businesses have a choice of 4 types of system to manage trading agreements: 1 — Your core ERP system Basic ERP systems do not cope with vendor rebates very well at all. Some ERP systems do have bolt-on vendor rebate modules. They tend to provide some flexibility but in a very complex environment the standard module is often not up to the job and incapable of modelling all the product / price / branch / margin combinations that might be required. As a result, many companies still need to res...Continue reading

Stratford-upon-Avon based software developer Enable has closed another record year in 2016 by sustaining double digit growth.

Sales for 2016 increased to more than £3.15m, up from £2.65m the previous year which represents an increase of 18.6% — more than £500,000. Licensing and implementing Enable’s new DealTrack software product was responsible for a significant portion of the growth.

During the year the company also welcomed 7 new starters on-board, taking the total headcount to 44 staff.

Co-founder and MD Andrew Butt comments:

“In 2017 with DealTrack and Enable iD we hope to pass through the £4m milestone.”

“We are receiving significant interest in our products and services from both UK and USA and are investing heavily in product development to make sure we are providing innovative software to our existing clients as well as attracting more new business.”

“We are also continuing to work closely with University of Warwick and plan to recruit many more graduates this year to help meet current and expected future demand.”

Rebates were “invented” as a way of driving sales growth without simply reducing the contract price. By agreeing these retrospective financial incentives based on actual sales, both the supplier and the distributor are working together to drive market share and growth. Rebate agreements are becoming increasingly more creative and many companies are finding that “standard” business systems don’t facilitate this creativity. Whilst many core business systems have some functionality to help monito...Continue reading