Walmart's dispute platform called Accounts Payable Dispute Portal (APDP) exists within Retail Link. The stated purpose of the application was to remove reliance on the third-party dispute portal (Direct Commerce, DCI) for AP deductions, and to bring this functionality into Retail Link where disputes can be more directly tied to claims. In this article we'll explore what has changed with APDP compared to the old Direct Commerce portal, and how Deductions Navigator has been updated to continue offering intuitive deduction research and disputing automation.

With APDP, Walmart has brought disputing "in house" rather than outsourcing the development of their dispute portal to Direct Commerce. APDP is in Retail Link, and it's accessed with your normal Retail Link credentials.

At a high level, the idea is the same as the old Direct Commerce portal - APDP is a portal where you submit disputes for AP deductions. However, there are some key differences to the way Walmart has gone about this.

To submit a dispute in APDP, users first start by searching for a claim record. This is a different process because Direct Commerce had no tie to the underlying claim data, thus the user could key in any information they wanted. In APDP you look up the underlying record first, then select it to create a dispute. The claim and invoice data here should match what is available in the other Retail Link AP app - APIS.

Not seeing a claim record to dispute? It's possible that there is no claim available in APIS, even though you see the money deducted from a check. In these scenarios you'll need to file a claim directly against the invoice. APDP provides a similar workflow as described above, where you search for an invoice, select the record showing where that invoice was deducted for the amount in question, then submit a dispute against that invoice record.

One perk of starting a dispute from a claim or invoice record is that APDP pre-fills some of the information that a user would have had to key in manually in Direct Commerce, like dispute type. However, there are still several manual entry fields to consider like freight carrier, shipping method, load number, dispute comment, and of course attaching proof documents. When starting a dispute from an Invoice the user must also select the dispute reason code.

One of the most impactful differences between APDP and the old Direct Commerce process is that Walmart is changing what is technically being disputed. In Direct Commerce, a user would submit a single dispute for an entire deduction (a grouping of like reason codes from a single claim). That dispute would then be either Approved or Rejected, and that was that.

In APDP, a separate dispute is created for every claim line under a claim. This means that each claim line can be disputed with different information, though there would rarely be any actual need for that.

Naturally, since disputes are submitted per claim line, that means that each claim line can be approved or denied individually. Where previously you would have had one dispute to keep up with, now APDP creates a unique dispute for every claim line you disputed within the claim.

Given that it's not uncommon for claims to have dozens of claim lines, you can see where this is going. Keeping track of what was actually disputed and approved or rejected on an invoice has become more challenging than ever.

Though it was adapted to account for the differences of APDP, Deductions Navigator will continue to offer a familiar workflow for quickly submitting disputes in one click and giving best-in-class visibility of your deductions and disputes. Here's how:

Within Deductions Navigator you will continue to see information organized by the familiar grouping of like claim codes within a claim - what we've always called a "deduction." For example, this means that all reason code 22s within a claim are grouped into a deduction for code 22, while a code 13 within the same claim would be a separate deduction for code 13. By maintaining visibility at the deduction level rather than at the overall claim or by each claim line, it's simple to keep track of what was deducted from an invoice and for what reason.

This deduction format also is important to the disputing process, since in almost all scenarios the proof documentation needed for the claim lines within a deduction is the same, thus there is rarely a need to get more granular when disputing.

Some (but not all) of the familiar names of dispute statuses from Direct Commerce have changed with the launch of APDP, and Deductions Navigator has followed suit. This means that with Deductions Navigator both your older Direct Commerce disputes and new APDP disputes will have names that match what you would see in APDP. Here's how the mapping works:

There are several sub-statuses within APDP, but they all roll into one of the buckets listed above, and these buckets match the high level groupings across the top of the homepage of APDP. Deductions Navigator will follow this same bucketing logic so the status you see in our app will be one of the 5 in the list above.

Because APDP allows for disputing at the claim line level, Deductions Navigator's dispute process has been updated to allow this same functionality. However, since in the vast majority of deductions that we see all claim lines are either valid or invalid, the workflow for submitting disputes through Deductions Navigator has been tailored to keep things fast and simple by disputing all claim lines by default. This means that the dispute process (and bulk dispute process!) within Deductions Navigator will be just as speedy as you remember.

Want to get down to the claim line level and pick which lines to dispute? No problem, you can do that within Deductions Navigator too.

The dispute process in APDP allows for disputes at the Claim or Invoice level, depending on how the money was deducted. Deductions Navigator has always displayed and disputed both types of deductions, and it will continue to do so. When submitting a dispute to APDP, we'll automatically detect if it should be submitted against a Claim or Invoice, and file it accordingly. And tracking of either type of dispute will be automatic as well.

Perhaps the biggest change with APDP is the reality that now a single deduction can have multiple dispute statuses across its underlying claim lines. For example, two claim lines under a deduction could be Approved, while a third claim line is Denied or sent back to you needing more information.

Deductions Navigator will offer high level visibility into this reality at the overall deduction level, as well as detailed visibility for each dispute against each claim line. For each deduction you can quickly see if multiple statuses exist.

And within a deduction you can drill into the details of the different disputes for each claim line.

We'll also offer summary information when it applies to the whole deduction, so you don't have to drill into each claim line only to read the same information again and again.

When some or all claim lines are sent back to you and need you to take action, we'll continue to allow you to take action on them by resubmitting from Deductions Navigator with just one click.

Walmart has announced that they will not be migrating dispute data from Direct Commerce into the APDP platform. That means that visibility into what has or has not been disputed is now split across two platforms.

The stated plan is that Direct Commerce will continue to be accessible, though in a view-only state, for an undetermined period of time. This will give suppliers the ability to track their existing in-progress disputes while they work their way through Walmart's approval process. If a dispute is rejected or cancelled, then any resubmission of that dispute would go through the new APDP app.

For suppliers using Deductions Navigator, your dispute information from both Direct Commerce and APDP will continue to be tracked and viewable within Deductions Navigator. This means you will not have to bounce between two systems for tracking disputes.