What is a trade promotion budget?
A trade promotion budget is the money a manufacturer plans for channel schemes and spend — how it is allocated, tracked as budget vs actual, and used in ClaimDS.
A trade promotion budget is the money a manufacturer plans, allocates and tracks for its channel schemes and trade spend — slab and quantity schemes, secondary schemes, display and visibility deals, dealer incentives, and market development funds. In Indian channel businesses it is often called the scheme budget.
The budget is usually allocated top-down (a share of revenue) or bottom-up (summed from planned schemes), then split by region and by channel, and tied to a promotion calendar so spend lines up with the selling season.
Utilization and budget vs actual
The two questions a trade promotion budget has to answer are how much has been committed or settled against each allocation (utilization) and how actual spend compares to plan (budget vs actual). Tracking both prevents silent overruns and shows which allocations are burning too fast or sitting unused. (In an Indian context, a fund utilization certificate usually refers to government-grant reporting — a different thing from trade-scheme budget utilization.)
How ClaimDS helps
Because ClaimDS accrues every scheme as sales happen and settles claims against those accruals, the committed and settled value of each scheme is already in one place — so budget-versus-actual and utilization can be read from live data rather than reconstructed in a spreadsheet after the fact.
Read the full guide: trade promotion and scheme budgeting — allocation, utilization tracking and budget vs actual.
Still stuck?
Book a demo and we'll walk through it on your own data — or just talk to us.