Give your team one record for every supplier offer, and the time to plan each promotion with intention
If you run promotions for a multi-supplier retailer, you’ll know the routine. Offers arrive by email in a dozen formats. Funding is agreed on a phone call. The master spreadsheet sits in one category manager’s inbox, and the latest version is whichever one they saved last.
Every new supplier adds more emails to chase, more offers to re-key and more versions of the spreadsheet to keep track of.
In this article, Zooss Solution Architect and promotions planning specialist Timothy Kirby looks at the real cost of managing supplier promotions by spreadsheet and email – and what changes when every offer has one traceable record.
- What a spreadsheet-and-email process costs your team every promotional cycle.
- What your current process can’t prove about funding, pricing and compliance.
- Why the pressure builds as you add suppliers.
- What a governed supplier promotions process looks like, and how Zooss delivers it with Retail Promo Planner.
The cost your team carries
When the Zooss team mapped the promotions process at a leading Australian health and beauty retailer, each promotion passed through dozens of steps across several teams, most of them in spreadsheets or email. The same issues came up across the business:
- Supplier offers arrived in pieces. Details came in by email, phone and meetings, often incomplete or in different formats, so the team spent hours chasing and re-keying them.
- Every offer was checked by hand against product data and pricing rules.
- Changes didn’t always reach everyone. Marketing, supply and stores could end up working from different versions of the same promotion.
With so much held in individual inboxes, it was hard for anyone else to pick up a category manager’s deals when they were away.
What your current process can’t prove
For a CFO or managing director, the question is what happens when something needs checking.
- Supplier disputes. If a supplier challenges an offer or its funding, your position is only as strong as your paper trail.
- Funding left on the table. Funding that’s never confirmed is often found only at claim time.
- Clashing offers. Overlapping promotions on the same product go unnoticed until launch.
- Pricing compliance. A “was” price can be wrong, or a new line can go on promotion before its regular price is set.
In May 2026, the Federal Court found Coles misled shoppers with some of its “Down Down” discount claims, and a similar ACCC case against Woolworths is awaiting judgment. The Coles case is a useful reminder for any retailer that advertises a discount: be able to show how each promoted price was set, and who approved it.
Why it gets harder as you grow
More complex offers – such as member pricing and multi-brand deals – add more hand-offs between category, marketing, pricing and supply. A process that copes with twenty suppliers strains at fifty, and adding people to keep up adds cost without adding control.
What better promotion planning looks like: One record for every offer
Picture the same cycle with suppliers, category, pricing and supply working from one connected plan:
- Less chasing. Suppliers submit offers through their own secure portal, get automatic reminders when something’s missing, and can see where their offers are up to. Each supplier sees only their own offers and data, and you choose what’s shared with them.
- One traceable record. Every offer, funding agreement and change sits in one place the whole team can see.
- Clear approvals. Every offer follows approval pathways set up the way your business signs off, so nothing goes to market without the right people agreeing.
- Funding captured. Offers with missing scan funding are flagged before the promotion locks.
- Pricing checked before launch. Was/now and reference prices are checked against your price history, overlapping offers are flagged, and a new line can’t be promoted until its regular price is established.
- Changes reach the right people. When an offer changes, the people who need to act are notified.
- No re-keying. Approved offers flow straight into your ERP, POS and catalogue systems, so the team stops typing the same details twice.
“Every promotion is a commercial agreement with a supplier. One traceable record protects your margin and your reputation, and gives your team back the hours they spend chasing.”
– Timothy Kirby, Solution Architect & Retail Promotions Planning Specialist, Zooss Consulting
Start with promotions, grow from there
The Zooss team helps retail and consumer goods businesses improve planning across the organisation, from promotions and demand forecasting to merchandise and financial planning.
Retail Promo Planner is how we put that into practice. It’s based on a promotions platform already live at a leading Australian health and beauty retailer, and it gives you one connected process for supplier offers, funding and pricing checks that scales with your supplier base.
Retail Promo Planner can run in Anaplan or the planning software that suits you, connected to your existing ERP and POS systems. Once promotions are running, you can extend it into demand and merchandise planning.
Plan with intention, perform with confidence
About the author
Timothy Kirby is a Solution Architect at Zooss Consulting. He led the solution design of a new promotions planning platform for a leading health and beauty retailer. The platform brings offer planning, supplier submissions, forecasting and pricing checks into one connected process. Since 2019, Timothy has designed and delivered planning solutions across finance, sales operations and analytics, including setting up a global planning centre of excellence for a multinational pharmaceutical company. With a master’s in economics and a background in business process analysis, he starts with how teams plan and trade, then designs the tools to fit.
Find out more
- Retail Promo Planner – Plan with intention, perform with confidence
- Retail Insight – Use this peak season to plan better promotions next cycle
- Retail & Consumer Goods Planning – Our solutions
- Ready to transform your planning? Contact us.
Better Planning. Better Planet.