We'll start this article with an overview of how suppliers become aware of UNFI deductions and then get into some of the flavors of them.

Up front it's worth noting that UNFI has a pretty complicated data ecosystem compared to a lot of buying customers from a supplier point of view. There is no single uniting portal like a Walmart Retail Link, Amazon Vendor Central, or Target Partners Online. Instead, there are several different portals that a supplier might have access to, and usually not in a transparent or easy to know way. Meaning, suppliers might have the option to have access to something and may not know that they should or could. Or, they do, but the knowledge is siloed within their organization. Further, on UNFI's side, they also experience a fragmented internal ecosystem, likely as a result of the various mergers and acquisitions they've carried out over the years.

All that said, there is one uniting factor for UNFI deductions: email. UNFI sends copies of your remittance in email as well as backup for deductions, what we would call the deduction details documents. The deduction details are attachments on the email. They can be PDFs, or zip files with spreadsheets or text files or additional PDFs, or sometimes a link to a SharePoint folder where you can download a zip or individual files with details on deductions.

When they do not email you deduction details, you can request them by sending an email to DeductionsBackup@unfi.com. Get a bit more on this from UNFI's support article on requesting deduction backup.

That we're aware of, there are at least 4 different emails UNFI uses to send details of deductions.

There is more than one action that can be taken on deductions, and for this article, we'll just focus on the disputing side since UNFI provides some dedicated paths for that.

In January 2026, UNFI announced they would be launching a new Dispute Center portal by Direct Commerce, Inc. It launched in February 2026 and can be accessed from within myUNFI.com.

Most deductions can be disputed via the new Dispute Center, and not all. As of the writing of this article in July 2026, the following types of disputes will still need to be handled outside of the portal (usually email):

High-level, there are two types of deductions you'll see as a UNFI supplier.

Quick definition on end-retailers: if you sell to UNFI and then UNFI sells your product to Food Lion, Food Lion would be the end-retailer.

Within #1, you'll have all the typical deduction types you might see from any other retailer customer. There can be quantity and pricing discrepancies, fines for things like pallet quality or timeliness or completeness of documentation (like ASNs or BOLs), spoilages, and contractual and trade or promotional related deductions.

For #2, unlike most of your other customers, UNFI will also pass through deductions received from the end-retailers. Often these are related to trade programs UNFI has with each end-retailer banner (e.g. Food Lion) or parent company (Ahold Delhaize owns Food Lion) or individual stores (Food Lion of Roxboro, NC on 1005 Madison Blvd). They're usually valid and should be planned and budgeted for (assuming they were communicated ahead of time or you have historical data). However, it's worth double checking them in case a promotion in stores didn't actually run or ran outside of contract terms or your products weren't featured at a show or in an ad run.

We have more coming here, especially as it relates to the pass-through deduction side of UNFI. Please let us know your questions and let us know if something we've said here doesn't meet your experience. We'd love to learn from you and help all of us work on a more transparent and resilient supply chain.