Enable Blog — Special Price Agreements SPAs

If you’ve ever been confused about terminology relating to rebate management, you’re not alone! The world of rebates is a complicated place at the best of times, especially when there can be multiple different names for the same thing.

In this blog, we are going to focus on the system requirements for configuring, storing, monitoring, reviewing and operating rebate deals or special pricing agreements. 

Special Pricing Agreements (SPAs) are often considered a necessary evil in most industries. Whilst they can assist you and your trading partners in winning business over your competitors and allow you to enter new markets, the accompanying complications of managing SPAs can leave you wondering if they’re really worth it. Some businesses we have engaged with wish to cease dealing with special pricing agreements due to the burden of managing them!

SPAs (Special Pricing Agreements) are a common vendor program in many industry sectors. The program gives a special product discount for verified sales to an ultra-competitive event where in-stock discounts can’t secure the order.

Rebates, special pricing agreements, claim-backs, contract support are all very similar and at the same time quite different to each other. In essence they are all terms for the money that wholesalers claim from suppliers and manufacturers for selling their products. Some of the key differences lie in how the agreements are formed, whether goods are actually ever handled by the wholesaler, and how the claims are made.

Collectively, they are sometimes referred to as “vendor monies”. It is estimated that, annually, these amount to $600bn in North America and perhaps as much as $500bn in Europe.

In a world where margins are tight, wholesale distributors across nearly 50 sectors rely so much on vendor monies that their absence would be a serious dent in their profit margin.