What is Sales Verification?
April 2009
Historically, Recipient Agencies (RA's) received commodity products either directly from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), through a state warehouse, or directly from a processor of their choice. Now, RA's have the option to receive processed commodities from a commercial distributor by choosing the Net Off Invoice method (NOI), also called Indirect Sales Discount. Under NOI, a RA's commodity values are passed on in the form of a discount "off the invoice" for every case of eligible product delivered. Data on these sales is then transmitted to the manufacturer (ex: through K12Foodservice.com) to support billbacks and deductions, as well as reporting to the State. The reason sales verification is necessary is because the commodity discounts are passed on to the school by the distributor, not the manufacturer. Therefore, USDA requires the manufacturer to confirm that the school districts received the full value of their entitlement. The following is from the Code of Feral Regulations, Chapter 7, Section250.19, Part 2: "Each distributing agency shall design and implement a system to verify sales of end products to all recipient agencies under that distributing agency's authority in instances when a processor transfers end products to a distributor and the distributor sells the end product to the recipient agencies at a discount and the distributor receives a refund from the processor." Manufacturers are required to submit sales verification reports to the States they process in twice a year, at the end of December and at the end of June. Manufacturers who use K12Foodservice.com to display commodity data for their school customers, have also chosen to use K12foodservice.com to meet the sales verification requirement. When data from a certified commercial distributor is received and processed, invoice-level sales data is viewable at K12Foodservice.com by the manufacturer, the distributor, the broker, the Recipient Agency (school), the Sate DA, and USDA. To fulfill their sales verification, Recipients Agencies are asked to sign in to K12Foodservice.com and compare their online account information with the information on the hard-copy invoice they received from their distributor. They are then asked to submit for each of their manufacturers whether or not the distributor gave them the correct case amounts and discounts on their commodity purchases. Although Sales Verification is only required twice a year K12 Services, Inc. asks that RA's complete their verification every month, always checking the previous months information. The reason for this is that if a problem is found, it is more easily fixed if it is found sooner rather than later. Monthly verification keeps RA's aware of the commodities they have left to "spend" and helps to catch problems with distributors as they happen.
Completing Sales Verification through K12Foodservice.com for Recipient Agencies Log on to K12Foodserice.com. Compare your hard-copy invoice, from your distributor, with the invoice data in K12foodservice.com. There are two ways to do this: Option 1:(Invoice Data Lookup) - Enter the invoice number of your hard-copy invoice into the "Invoice Number Lookup" and select "Search". The page that appears will display all transactions that were sent to K12foodservice.com with that invoice number. Compare the commodity products, discounts, and case amounts that are on your hard-copy invoice, with the transactions that are displayed in K12Foodservice.com. (For further details on this option, please read the "Invoice Number Lookup" section of this userguide.) Option 2: (Transaction Summary) - Select a manufacturer to view from the drop-down bar in the navigation meno on the left side of the screen. Click on "Balance" to see your current balance, then click the 3rd icon on the top right of the report to review the transaction summary. Select the previous month from the list of months that run across the top of the report. Compare the commodity products, discounts, and case amounts that are on your hard-copy invoice, with the transactions that are displayed in K12Foodservice.com. (For further details on this option, please read the "Transaction Summary" section of this userguide.) Once you have compared the data, select "Verification" from the menu section on the left. For each manufacturer, select "Yes" or "No", enter comments if desired, and click submit Select "Yes" if the data on the transaction summary fairly reflects the discount and cases received as shown on your invoices. If you find a discrepancy, click "No" for that manufacturer and write a brief message describing the problem. This message will be sent to your broker and/or the manufacturers sales representative for your account. Someone will contact you shortly to resolve the problem. You can also contact the commercial distributor, broker, or manufacturer directly.
DON'T FORGET TO COMPLETE YOUR SALES VERIFICATION AND REVIEW YOUR ACCOUNTS
If you are having trouble logging into K12foodservice.com please contacts us at 301-251-5515 or email us at info@k12servicesinc.com