Deduction Agent

In consumer-goods distribution, a large share of every invoice never gets paid in full. Retailers and distributors deduct against shipments for trade promotions, slotting, shortages, damages, pricing claims, returns and freight — and a meaningful portion of those deductions are invalid, duplicated, or unsupported. The Deduction Agent is a working agent that reads every short-pay and chargeback as it lands, classifies the deduction reason, and decides whether it is valid or worth disputing. It does not hand a finance analyst a spreadsheet of exceptions to sort through; it does the triage itself.

Because it runs on the ConnectX data layer, the Deduction Agent can match each deduction back to the underlying commercial reality the rest of the platform already holds — the promotion that was actually authorized and its terms, the order and delivery record, the agreed price and trade-spend commitments, proof of delivery, and prior claims against the same account. That matching is where invalid deductions surface: a promo deduction taken twice, a price claim that contradicts the agreed rate, a shortage charged on a load that was signed for in full, or a freight back-charge with no contractual basis. The agent assembles the back-up documentation into a dispute packet and routes valid recoveries for collection while clearing legitimate deductions so the team never touches them.

The Deduction Agent works alongside the rest of the Finance family rather than in isolation. It hands reconciled trade claims to the Settlement Agent, surfaces accounts whose deduction behavior signals rising exposure to the Credit Agent, and feeds resolved outcomes back to the commercial side so trade-spend and pricing decisions reflect what is actually being deducted in the field. Every action it takes is logged with an auditable decision trail, and like every agent in the FMCG Cloud marketplace it must earn FMCG Verified certification before it goes live.