What is a short-pay?

A short-pay is a payment that arrives smaller than the invoice. The retailer decides unilaterally what it owes, pays that, and documents the difference with reason codes on the remittance. The invoice stays open on the supplier’s ledger for the balance, and recovering it requires a dispute rather than a reminder.

Short-pays accumulate on the aged receivables report as small open balances that nobody has time to chase individually. Aggregated across a year they routinely run to a meaningful share of an account’s revenue.

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