A remittance line arrives looking like this:

R-4471   PO-88214   Fill Rate   -$514.80

Four fields. Most brands read one of them — the amount — book it to a deductions account, and move on. The other three fields are the ones that decide whether the $514.80 comes back. A distributor deduction carries a code that names the failure, a rule in a published document that authorizes the charge, and a deadline after which it stops being contestable. At KeHE that deadline can be as short as 48 hours at the dock. At UNFI the dispute window is reported at 30 to 60 days, with anything past 12 months refused outright.

The expensive deductions are the ones nobody read in time.

Three things every deduction line carries

Deduction lines feel arbitrary because they arrive stripped of context. The charge shows up net of an invoice payment, weeks after the shipment, with a short label and no explanation. That presentation is a formatting choice, not an absence of information. Every line is traceable to three specific things.

The code names the failure category. Fill rate, cut cases, late delivery, damage, pricing variance, promotional processing — each has its own label and its own logic, and a fill-rate charge behaves nothing like a damage claim when you go to contest it.

The rule authorizes the amount. Distributors publish their fee structures in supplier documentation: routing guides, fee schedules, policies and procedures. The charge is not invented at the dock. Somewhere in a document you were given access to, there is a clause that says what the threshold is and what happens when you miss it.

The clock decides whether any of it matters. Every deduction sits inside a window. Inside the window, evidence changes the outcome. Outside it, the same evidence changes nothing, and a valid dispute becomes a permanent margin loss on a technicality.

Brands that recover money are not better at arguing. They are faster at reading.

The dock clock: what a UDR is, and why 48 hours

At KeHE, the first clock starts before a deduction exists.

When the case count at a KeHE distribution center disagrees with what the paperwork says you shipped, receiving files an Unloading Discrepancy Report. The governing principle is worth internalizing because it shapes everything downstream: the count at the DC is authoritative. Your bill of lading is evidence against that count, not a substitute for it.

A UDR is notice of a discrepancy. The deduction lands only if the DC count stands. Suppliers are reported to have roughly 48 hours to answer with a signed bill of lading and packing slip, and the emailed link itself is reported to expire within about a week. Answer inside the window with documents that show the full quantity left your dock, and the shortage can resolve without ever becoming a charge. Miss it, and the count stands.

Two things make this window harder than it sounds.

The first is that 48 hours is a business-process problem, not a documentation problem. The evidence almost always exists. It is in a 3PL portal, a carrier account, an email attachment from a warehouse manager, a photo on somebody’s phone. Assembling it takes a day of asking people, which is most of the window spent on retrieval rather than response.

The second is that UDRs arrive addressed to whoever is on file, which is frequently one person. When that person is travelling, on leave, or has left, the window closes silently. There is no second notice. The next thing anyone sees is a short remittance.

The dispute clock: K-Solve and the 180-day wall

The second KeHE clock is longer and more forgiving, and it catches almost everything the first one misses.

Deductions are disputed through K-Solve, a case tool inside the KeHE CONNECT supplier portal. As of the current program, transactions and disputes route through the portal rather than email. Each case needs backup matched to the deduction type — typically the purchase order, the bill of lading, proof of delivery, and any UDR response already on file.

The number that governs the whole process is reported at 180 days from the deduction date. File inside it and the case is heard. File outside it and the deduction is waived permanently, whatever its merits. There is a practical wrinkle worth knowing: K-Solve’s quick search is reported to cover only the last 90 days, with advanced search reaching back further, so a brand doing quarterly deduction reviews can find its own oldest disputable items sitting outside the default view.

A hundred and eighty days sounds generous. It is generous, relative to the alternative. It is also long enough that a brand reviewing deductions once a quarter will routinely file with three weeks left, on charges whose supporting documents are now six months cold.

UNFI runs the same play with different numbers

UNFI’s structure is recognizable but the numbers move, and the direction they move is worse for a slow month-end close.

UNFI pays invoices net of deductions and codes them by family. Reported groupings: 01 for shortages, 02 for pricing discrepancies, 05 for unsaleables and damages, 10 through 12 for advertising and promotional charges including manufacturer chargebacks and off-invoice promotions, and 30 and above for compliance and logistics fees such as late shipments, labeling errors, and pallet violations. Shortages are the family most often reported as invalid, which makes 01 the first place to look rather than the last.

Fill rate is the metric that drives the most recurring charges. UNFI expects a fill rate around 95% on open orders, and a service-level fine of roughly 3% on the value of shorted goods is reported when a brand misses the threshold for two or more consecutive calendar weeks. The two-week condition matters more than the percentage: a single bad week is a data point, and a second consecutive bad week is a fee.

The dispute window is where UNFI diverges sharply. Reported at roughly 30 to 60 days, with adjustments older than 12 months denied and no escalation path through the portal once the deadline has passed. A filing needs the purchase order, invoice, bill of lading, and proof of delivery attached.

Overages carry their own timer. UNFI may accept extra product and charge a per-order overage fee, or reject it and bill back storage or disposal, and suppliers are reported to have around 14 days to arrange the product once notified.

	KeHE	UNFI
First clock	~48 hours to answer a UDR at the dock	None equivalent — the deduction is the notice
Dispute window	~180 days from the deduction date	~30–60 days
Hard cutoff	Waived after the window	Adjustments past 12 months denied
Where disputes go	K-Solve, inside KeHE CONNECT	Supplier portal, no escalation after deadline
Fill-rate trigger	Reported 98% threshold, ~3% on shorted value	Reported ~95% on open orders, ~3% after two consecutive weeks below
Evidence expected	PO, BOL, proof of delivery, UDR response	PO, invoice, BOL, proof of delivery

Figures here are compiled from public third-party sources, including KeHE’s own mandated EDI provider and several deduction-recovery specialists. Supplier fee schedules sit behind portals and change on their own schedule. Confirm every number against your current supplier documentation and your own agreement before you act on it.

Reading a code into one of three verdicts

Once a line is decoded, it sorts into one of three outcomes, and the sorting is the work. Brands that treat every deduction as a dispute waste their best people on charges they earned. Brands that treat every deduction as a cost of doing business fund the ones they did not.

Disputable. The charge cites a rule you did not break, or the distributor’s own records contradict its claim. A fill-rate fee where the bill of lading and signed proof of delivery show the full ordered quantity shipped is the archetype: the shortage happened after your product left, and the evidence is documentary rather than argumentative. Late-delivery penalties often land here too, when the appointment was moved by the DC or the delivery was signed inside the window.

Valid, so fix it upstream. Cut cases you short-shipped. A pallet stacked over the height limit that got reworked at the dock. A barcode that did not scan. Filing these wastes the window the contestable charges need. They are defects, and the correct response is to change the process that produced them. A charge you earned twice is a process problem wearing a deduction’s clothing.

Structurally avoidable. Some charges are program fees you opted into, or defaulted into. Promotional processing on manufacturer chargebacks and extra-performance programs are reported around 8% with their own floors and caps. New and small suppliers at KeHE have an opt-in route worth knowing about: an administrative allowance program, reported as a flat 2% invoice allowance for suppliers inside their first year and under roughly $500k, which covers several launch-stage fees at once. Whether that trade is favorable depends entirely on your volume, and it is arithmetic worth doing before your first quarter rather than after your fourth.

The classification changes what you do. It also changes who does it, because only the first category belongs to a disputes process at all.

Where the evidence has to live

Every recoverable deduction resolves to the same short list of documents: the purchase order, the bill of lading, the advance ship notice, the invoice, and the signed proof of delivery. Nothing exotic. The evidence exists in every case. It lives in five systems owned by four teams, and a 48-hour window is too short to go collect it.

This is the case for keeping orders, inventory, and retail trading on one record rather than stitching them together after the fact. When the EDI 856 you transmitted, the carrier scan that closed the delivery, and the invoice you sent are all attached to the same purchase order, answering a UDR is a retrieval rather than an investigation. The clock stops being the binding constraint.

Prevention compounds in a way recovery cannot. A deduction disputed successfully returns one charge, once. A defect engineered out of the process — pre-ship validation that catches a bad label or an over-height pallet before pickup, fill-rate visibility early enough to expedite or short-ship deliberately — returns that money on every future order. Brands running native EDI with pre-ship validation on Endless see a 90% drop in retailer EDI chargebacks, because the charge never gets raised rather than getting argued down.

Recovery still matters. Distributor counts are imperfect, some charges are simply wrong, and the windows are unforgiving enough that you want that capability in-house or on retainer. It works better as the second line than the first.

What this changes on Monday

Four things are worth doing this week, and none of them require new software.

Find out who receives UDR notifications at your company, and make it a distribution list rather than a person. This is the single highest-return change available, and it costs an email to your KeHE contact.

Pull your last two quarters of deductions and code them into the three verdicts above. The ratio tells you whether you have a disputes problem or an operations problem, and most brands are surprised by which.

Check the oldest disputable item still inside its window. If you review deductions quarterly against a 180-day deadline, you are filing on cold documents by design, and moving to monthly is usually enough to fix it.

Read your current routing guide and fee schedule, not the copy you downloaded when you onboarded. Thresholds and fee amounts get revised on the distributor’s schedule, and a compliance checklist built against a superseded document is a list of charges you are about to pay.

The deduction line is not withholding anything. The code, the rule, and the clock are all there, in four fields, waiting for somebody to read past the amount.