From Manual Vendor Billing to a $25M Automated Profit Engine
A retail hard surface flooring client was leaving millions on the table — not because the vendor subsidy programs didn't work, but because the manual process couldn't keep pace with explosive growth. We replaced it entirely.
A Growing Company With a Shrinking Ability to Keep Up
A client in the retail hard surface flooring industry was scaling fast — opening multiple new store locations every single week. With that growth came an expanding vendor network and a suite of cost recovery programs: defect chargebacks, photo shoot cost shares, display board programs, grand opening surcharges, and more.
The problem? Every one of these programs was managed manually. A dedicated team member spent the majority of their time chasing subsidy claims, formatting spreadsheets, emailing thousands of vendors individually, and hoping nothing fell through the cracks. The company was leaving millions of dollars on the table — not because the programs didn't work, but because the manual process couldn't scale.
Manual Processes That Couldn't Keep Up With Growth
As the company grew from a small startup to a publicly traded retailer, the vendor subsidy workload compounded. What had once been manageable with spreadsheets and email had become a full-time-plus job. Hiring more people wasn't the answer — the same manual errors, the same formatting inconsistencies, the same vendor disputes would simply multiply.
Seasonal programs ran on different cadences. Some billed monthly, others quarterly. Merchants needed to review and approve charges before vendors were billed. The existing process had no automated audit trail, no way to enforce format standards on thousands of incoming remittance files, and no mechanism to automatically route charges through Accounts Payable.
A Python Automation Platform Built for Scale
We designed and built a Python-based automation platform that handled the entire vendor billing lifecycle — from data intake to AP payment — without human intervention at any step.
The system was triggered by an IT-generated control file containing summary and detail program data. From there, it automatically generated merchant audit files on SharePoint, where buyers could review and adjust individual charges. Once reviewed, the platform consumed those responses and calculated final billing amounts.
For the vendor-facing side, the platform generated over 10,000 automated vendor communications per billing cycle — each with detailed PO- and SKU-level remittance breakdowns and access-controlled SharePoint links to their remittance directories. Vendor access was automatically provisioned and de-provisioned through integration with the company's Product Information Management (PIM) system.
The final output was a consolidated Accounts Payable file — a simple import into the payment system that automatically offset vendor charges against their next PO payment. Multi-million dollar chargebacks became a clean, transparent, fully auditable process.
$25 Million in Annual Profit. One Less Full-Time Position.
In the final full year of operation, the automated vendor subsidy platform generated $25 million in profit — not revenue, profit — from programs that had previously been too chaotic to manage at scale.
The full-time position dedicated to manual billing was eliminated entirely. Ten thousand vendor communications per cycle went out automatically. Merchants had a structured, easy-to-use workflow for reviewing charges. Accounts Payable had a clean import file. And for the first time, every charge was backed by a documented, auditable paper trail.
The platform also enabled the business to expand the programs themselves — because the team now had capacity to negotiate new subsidy rates and roll programs out to additional vendors. The automation didn't just maintain the existing business. It grew it.
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Our pricing model is tied to your ROI.
We charge approximately 10% of documented cost savings. If we don't deliver measurable results, you don't pay. No six-figure contracts. No hourly billing surprises.
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