Accruals & Deductions Demystified: How Ava Brings Confidence Back to Finance Teams

I’ve spent my whole career in the CPG and FMCG world, with the last nine years laser-focused on Trade Promotion Management (TPM). My journey has taken me from starting as a data nerd at Nielsen, to leading trade marketing at Arla, and then six years at UpClear where I worked across sales, implementation, and consulting for BluePlanner.

Now at Aforza, I’m excited to continue this 5-part series where I share the experiences, lessons, and best practices I’ve learned along the way: alongside practical examples of how Ava, Aforza’s Vertical AI, helps companies solve these challenges in the real world.

In part one, I explored the 7 Deadly Sins of TPM and how Ava helps companies avoid them. In part two, I looked at how teams can move From Chaos to Clarity: How Ava Transforms the Planning Process. In part three, I focused on the role of the Key Account Manager and why intuitive tools like Ava are essential to help them plan smarter and faster. In part four, I turned to the critical subject of Budgets: how they’re traditionally set top down but consumed bottom up, and how Ava helps transform budgeting from a reactive cap into proactive guardrails that guide smarter decisions all year long.

Here in part five, I dive into one of the most persistent pain points for finance teams: Accruals & Deductions. From inaccurate balances to unresolved payments, these challenges have long undermined confidence in financial accuracy. I’ll show how Ava brings speed, clarity and over 90% matching accuracy, giving finance leaders the confidence to clear items faster, free up funds sooner and align sales and finance teams around a single version of the truth.

This is the fifth and final article in my 5-part series on Trade Promotion Management, where I’ve shared lived experiences, best practices, and how Ava, Aforza’s Vertical AI, helps consumer goods companies transform their approach to TPM.

So far, we’ve explored the 7 Deadly Sins of TPM, how to move From Chaos to Clarity: How Ava Transforms the Planning Process, Why KAMs Deserve Intuitive Tools, and how to Optimise Trade Promotion Budgets from the Top Down.

Now we turn to one of the toughest challenges in TPM, accruals and deductions, and how Ava finally brings clarity and confidence back to finance teams.

The Core Pain Point

Every finance leader in CPG knows the drill.

At month-end, significant energy goes into tracking and projecting accruals. Teams pore over spreadsheets, cross-check invoices, and chase down deductions. The goal is accuracy: but the reality is delays and frustration.

Unresolved deductions and clearance payments often sit in limbo. It’s not because teams don’t care, but because there’s no fast or confident way to match them with precision. As a result, accrual balances matter but rarely feel exact until weeks or even months later.

This isn’t just an administrative nuisance. It’s a systemic issue that ripples across the business.

Why This Matters

When accruals and deductions are left unresolved, financial accuracy and agility suffer.

Accrual numbers drive some of the biggest decisions in a CPG business: from budget releases to investment sign-offs. But too often, they remain “approximate until proven true.”

The consequences are serious:

Where Ava Comes In

This is exactly where Ava, Aforza’s Vertical AI, changes the game.

Unlike manual reconciliation or traditional TPM tools that only look at financial transactions, Ava contextualises all system data. That means not just claims, invoices, deductions and payments, but also shipment records, store-level data, POS feeds, agreements and contracts.

She can even track against contractual obligations such as:

With this breadth of context, Ava can automatically match open payments with over 90% accuracy, and do so at speed, with a confidence that manual processes simply can’t achieve.

The difference is night and day. Instead of chasing paperwork, finance teams can rely on Ava to clear claims quickly, accurately and transparently.

The Business Impact

When Ava is part of your accruals and deductions process, the impact is immediate and measurable:

This isn’t just about saving time. It’s about unlocking funds faster, reducing risk, and giving leadership confidence that financial decisions are built on solid ground.

Final Thoughts

For too long, accruals and deductions have been treated as a necessary evil, frustrating, time-consuming, and always a little less accurate than anyone would like.

I’ve seen finance teams work late nights at month-end trying to reconcile balances that never quite added up. I’ve seen sales and trade teams frustrated when funds were locked up unnecessarily. And I’ve seen leadership hesitate to act because they didn’t fully trust the numbers.

With Ava, that cycle ends. By contextualising data, automating matching, and clearing claims with speed and accuracy, Ava turns accruals from a pain point into a source of clarity.

For finance teams, that means confidence. For sales teams, that means agility. For leadership, that means decisions made on a foundation of truth.

With Ava, you’re not just managing accruals and deductions. You’re transforming them into a competitive advantage.