How to reconcile supplier statements without losing a day every month
Supplier bills drift from what actually shipped through cancellations, partials and missing credits. A weekly reconciliation routine for multi-supplier retailers.
Month end. There are five supplier invoices in your inbox, each in a different format. Your job is to work out whether they match what actually shipped, using a store export, a few email threads and a spreadsheet someone built two years ago.
Most retailers pay anyway, because checking properly takes longer than anybody has. Small errors go through, and they usually go in the supplier's favor, without anyone intending it.
- Sunday midnightOne cutoff for every supplier
- OrdersMatch billed orders and quantities
- ReturnsApply every return credit
- MondayPay what matches, log the rest
Each step is explained further down.
Where the differences come from
Here is an illustrative week with one supplier.
Illustrative: billed $4,180 against $4,012 shipped.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Supplier's bill for the week | $4,180 |
| Value of orders shipped, per your records | $4,012 |
| Difference to explain | $168 |
| Order cancelled after confirmation, but still billed | $92 |
| Credit for a returned item, not applied | $76 |
| Explained | $168 |
Those two lines are typical. A few other causes come up often enough to check for by name:
| Cause | What you will see |
|---|---|
| Cancelled after billing | A charge for an order that never shipped |
| Partial shipment | Billed for three units when two arrived |
| Missing return credit | Return is complete, credit has not appeared |
| Shipping mismatch | Charge differs from the agreed rate |
| Price change | Unit price does not match your agreement |
| Duplicate billing | Same order appears twice, often after a reship |
Why weekly beats monthly
A difference is much easier to explain at seven days old than at 35. People remember the order, the emails are near the top of the inbox, and the supplier has not closed the period.
A weekly check is also small. If each supplier takes 15 minutes, you can clear them in one sitting and start the next week with a clean slate. Discovering a month of accumulated differences is what turns this into a full day's work.
A routine that works
For example, Sunday at midnight. A single cutoff prevents the same order from landing in two periods, or falling between them.
Check that each billed order exists and shipped before you look at the price. Most mistakes appear at this step.
Compare the units billed to the units confirmed as shipped, using the supplier's own shipment record.
Go through completed returns and confirm that each one has a credit against it, before you approve the total.
Approve the undisputed amount, record the disputed lines with a reason, and carry them forward until they are closed.
Fix the source, and most of this goes away
Reconciliation is hard because the two sides are working from different records. You have orders in Shopify, and the supplier has their own system, joined together by emails. Each confirmation, decline and shipment that happens outside a shared record is another thing to reconcile later.
So the best way to reconcile less is to give both sides the same record of each order as it happens.
How StackKnack helps
StackKnack Relay keeps that shared record for Shopify retailers and the suppliers they work with.
- Each order is a specific commitment, with its confirmation, decline or shipment recorded against it.
- Suppliers work in the Relay portal, so both sides can follow the same order history.
- Every Monday, you get one clear statement per supplier, showing what shipped.
Your team still decides how to resolve a genuine disagreement with a supplier. But you start from one statement and a clear order history, rather than from five different invoice formats.
Want to see what a weekly statement looks like for your suppliers? Tell us how you settle up today, and we will walk through it with you.