Trade promotion accruals you can defend to auditors.
Trade promotions create the most ASC 606 variable-consideration risk on your balance sheet. The accrual is an estimate; the settlement is months later; the gap is where restatement risk lives. Aurgus collapses the gap by computing every promo accrual against the actual contract, the actual sales lift, and the eventual settlement — with the lineage your auditor accepts on first ask.
Promo accrual estimates and reality never quite tie.
The gap shows up months later as P&L surprises, deduction disputes, and audit conversations nobody wants to have.
- Accrual estimates drift from actual settlement reality. The gap shows up as a P&L surprise quarters later — sometimes by 7-figures on a single promo.
- The original promo terms, the executed orders, the actual lift, and the eventual deductions all live in different systems. Reconciling them takes weeks per quarter.
- Auditors flag variable-consideration estimates as "requires significant judgment" and ask for the supporting calc — which can't be reconstructed without the analyst who built it.
- Trade-promotion spend rolls up to a single GL line that nobody can decompose by program, customer, or period.
- Co-op and slotting deductions arrive late and undocumented. Your team approves them because saying no costs more time than they save.
Estimate. Compare. Adjust on the same chain.
Aurgus is the calculation substrate where the promo terms, the qualifying sales, the actual lift, and the eventual settlement all meet — and the chain between them is the audit trail.
- 1
Compose the promo from contract terms.
Upload the promo brief or describe it in plain English: eligibility cohort, mechanic (off-invoice / billback / slotting), accrual rate, expected lift, settlement window. Aurgus parses it into structured primitives.
- 2
Per-event Accrual against actual sales lift.
Each qualifying order produces one Accrual event with lineage to the promo rule, the cohort match, and the underlying sales row. No more "estimate the whole quarter then true-up at the end."
- 3
Adjustment events when actuals diverge.
When the settlement (or the deduction) comes in different from the original accrual, Aurgus posts an Adjustment event that supersedes — never overwrites. The full history of estimate, why, and correction lives on the log.
- 4
Settlement reconciliation with full lineage.
Period close emits per-promo Settlement events with lineage to every contributing Accrual + Adjustment. Auditors get a queryable chain instead of a binder.
- 5
Promo ROI reporting CFOs actually trust.
Per-promo, per-customer, per-period margin impact after deductions, billbacks, and adjustments. Calculated against actual events, not estimates.
Each existing tool solves a narrower problem.
Honest comparison.
Plans promotions. Doesn't accrue them.
Trade promotion management tools handle promo planning, partner alignment, and pre-event modeling. They typically don't compute audit-grade accruals or write the per-event lineage Finance needs.
Batch-based. Opaque.
Native rebate modules in SAP / Oracle / NetSuite compute accruals on a batch cadence, with limited per-event traceability. The lineage exists somewhere — usually in a custom report nobody maintains.
Reports what already happened.
BI shows you Q2 promo spend was 12% over plan. It doesn't tell you which promos drove it, which deductions are still pending, or why the original accrual was wrong.
The governed calc + lineage layer.
Per-event accruals against actual lift, supersession on adjustments, full-chain settlement, CFO-grade promo ROI — all on one event log. The ASC 606 defense your auditor accepts.
Trade promotion accruals, honestly answered.
- What are trade promotion accruals?Trade promotion accruals are the estimated liability a manufacturer records for promotional spend (deductions, billbacks, slotting, co-op marketing, off-invoice discounts) that has been earned by trade partners but not yet settled. Under ASC 606, these are variable consideration and must be estimated with reasonable certainty — and the supporting lineage is increasingly what auditors ask for.
- Why are trade promotion accruals an ASC 606 risk?Because the accrual is an estimate at the time of sale, settled months later. The gap between estimated and actual is variable consideration that has to be defensible. PCAOB-inspected firms increasingly require reproducible lineage from the original promotion terms to the qualifying sales to the eventual settlement. Reconstructed-from-spreadsheets defenses are no longer reliably accepted.
- Does Aurgus integrate with TPM (trade promotion management) systems?TPM integration is engagement-scope custom work today — no pre-built TPM connectors ship. The universal ingestion pipeline accepts TPM exports as CSV or spreadsheet, and the architectural pattern complements TPM cleanly: TPM systems are typically strong on promotion planning and weak on accrual lineage; Aurgus is the calculation + audit-trail layer. Pre-built TPM connectors are on the roadmap pending design-partner demand.
- How does Aurgus handle the gap between estimated and actual?Adjustment events. When actuals come in different from the original accrual estimate, Aurgus posts an Adjustment event that supersedes the original — but never overwrites it. The full history of the original estimate, why it was made, and what corrected it lives on the event log. See also rebate audit trail.
Where else your commercial numbers break.
See where your trade promos are actually leaking.
Thirty minutes. No pitch. A discovery conversation about your promo accrual process — and whether Aurgus is the right architectural fit.