A promotion that did not reach the invoice
· 本页面以英文提供。
A promotional price that does not appear on the invoice is usually one of four things: the window had closed before the goods moved, the minimum quantity was not met, the promotion ran on a different item code, or the discount sits at document level and never reached the line. Check in that order.
Price Double Check compares an invoice with the price list a buyer forwards and names the differing lines in a reply by email. A promotion is the hardest case it meets, because the promotional price is rarely in the price list at all: it lives in a letter, a sales call or a line in a newsletter, and the only record of it is the one the buyer kept.
Start from that asymmetry. An announcement is not a finding: when a supplier writes that six lines are on offer for six weeks, the news is not that prices fell but which lines actually carried the offer, over which dates, and whether the document agrees. Answering that needs the announcement filed beside the list it modifies.
The four places a promotion goes missing
- The window had closed before the goods moved. The price that applies is the one in force on the date of supply, not the one in force when the order was placed or when the invoice was cut, and a promotion is the only kind of price that is designed to expire. An order placed inside the window and delivered outside it is the ordinary shape of this, and the argument for working from the delivery date is set out in the list in force on the delivery date.
- The minimum quantity was not met. European invoices are built on a standard that carries, separately from the price itself, the quantity that price is quoted for, precisely because a price per case and a price per unit are both legitimate. A promotion conditioned on twelve cases is void at eleven, and nothing on the document will say that it was conditioned at all. Read the condition off the announcement and the quantity off the line.
- The promotion ran on a code of its own. Join on the item code and never on the description: across one real set of documents, 335 of 442 invoice lines carried wording that differed from the price-list row describing the same goods. A promotional pack often has its own code, so the promotional line joins nothing at all and reads as an item that was never listed. That is an absence of basis rather than a finding, and the two deserve different words in a reply.
- The discount sits somewhere other than the line. The standard permits a discount against the gross price on the line and, separately, an allowance against the whole document, and a document-level allowance is invisible to any per-line comparison. The test is arithmetic: add the line amounts and see whether they reach the printed total. In the acceptance run behind this service all eleven invoices in scope reconciled to their printed total to the cent, which is what makes a gap worth reporting rather than a sign of a misreading.
What each shape of difference usually turns out to be
| What you are looking at | The usual cause | What settles it |
|---|---|---|
| The list price, with no discount anywhere | The window had closed on the date of supply | The delivery date on the document against the dates in the announcement |
| The list price on some lines and the offer on others | A minimum quantity, met on one line and not the next | The quantity on each line against the condition in the announcement |
| A line that matches no row in any list | A promotional pack carrying its own item code | The last list that named both codes, or the supplier's own crosswalk |
| Lines that do not add up to the printed total | A discount taken against the whole document | The total, which the lines plus the allowance must reach |
| A difference of a cent or two per unit | A four-decimal list price rounded to two on the invoice | Recompute half-up on both sides and allow a cent per unit |
| The offer price still billed months later | A promotion that was never switched off | Two or more invoices read together, not one |
The promotion that never ended is the same problem reversed
One of the five findings in the validation set is a promotion with no end. A bar was billed at €1.26 from March onwards while the list in force said €1.176, and €1.26 did not enter a price list until October. Read one invoice and €1.26 looks like the price. Read the spring and the summer together and it is a figure that became normal without anybody agreeing to it.
The reverse runs the same way: a promotional price that outlives its window favours the buyer until somebody notices and corrects it backwards. Either finding exists only across documents, never within one.
What to keep so the question can be answered at all
- The announcement, with the dates and the conditions it named. A promotion with no written window cannot be checked by anyone.
- The price list the promotion modifies, in the version that was current when the offer was made. A discount is a number against another number.
- The order, with its quantities. Where the order sheet is the supplier's own list with quantities filled in, the price expectation is recorded line by line at the moment of ordering.
- The date of supply, because that is the date the window is measured against.
- The invoice itself, in every version of it. One number in the validation set arrived as three files with one date and three different totals.
简而言之
- What a buyer has to go on when the promotion was agreed by telephone
- An email back to the supplier confirming the lines, the price and the dates turns a conversation into a document, and it is the whole basis for the comparison later. Without it the invoice is the only record, and the invoice is the thing in dispute.
- How long there is to raise a missing promotional price
- European law on late payment contemplates a procedure of acceptance or verification of the goods, and caps it at thirty calendar days unless the contract says otherwise. That is the window in which a difference is a question rather than a claim, and it is a good reason to check on arrival.
- Why a promotion is not reported as an overcharge on its own
- An item billed above the list in force is an overcharge. A promotion that is absent may be an expired window or an unmet condition, both of which are correct behaviour. The useful reply names the line, the two prices and the reason the offer may not apply.
Forward one invoice and the price list it should have been billed on, with the promotional letter in the same message, and the comparison comes back by email with the dates set against the lines. What it costs is on the home page, and the letter to send once a line is settled is in the letter that gets a credit note.