Celonis and Valence Intelligence have launched an AI-powered tool aimed at helping finance teams resolve invoice deduction disputes far faster, as businesses continue to grapple with a labour-intensive process that can tie up cash and absorb significant administrative effort.
The new product, Celonis Deductions & Disputes Manager by Valence, is designed for situations in which suppliers are short-paid and must work out whether the missing amount is justified. Typical deduct...
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ions can stem from damaged goods, promotional allowances, late deliveries or billing mistakes. In many companies, those cases are still handled by staff manually checking emails, retailer portals, shipping records and internal systems before deciding whether to accept or challenge the claim.
According to Celonis and Valence, the software pulls together information from enterprise resource planning systems, retailer portals and carrier websites into a single view. It then automates tasks such as classifying deduction reasons, validating claims and collecting supporting documents, including remittances and proof of delivery. The companies say the system is meant to give finance teams a live picture of outstanding deductions, guidance on how to process claims and tools for pursuing resolutions more quickly.
The launch comes as deduction management remains a costly problem for large enterprises, particularly in consumer packaged goods, where such claims can account for 5% to 15% of gross sales. In that environment, even modest improvements in dispute handling can have a material effect on working capital and collections.
Liam Mawe, global vice president of AI and industries at Celonis, said finance teams were still burdened with repetitive operational work, including reconciling line items and chasing proof of delivery. He said the new application was intended to turn a slow, reactive workflow into a more streamlined digital process that protects cash flow and profitability.
Valence, which focuses on extracting and structuring hard-to-process data from retailer files, carrier documents and remittance records, is part of the Celonis Platform Apps Program, which offers pre-built software from partners on the Celonis platform. Kevin Cunnigham, chief executive of Valence Intelligence, said the product tackles long-standing data problems in deduction workflows by turning unstructured documents such as PDFs into usable information fed directly into Celonis.
The broader move reflects a growing push among software vendors to apply AI to back-office finance work that still depends heavily on manual reconciliation. For consumer goods suppliers in particular, disputes can involve several counterparties and systems, with evidence scattered across logistics records, retailer portals and internal invoices, making automation difficult. Celonis and Valence say their new tool is intended to bring those fragments together, help teams decide faster whether a deduction should be contested and improve the chances of recovering revenue that might otherwise be lost.
Source: Noah Wire Services
