Promised credit, reship or replacement not received

When a shipment arrives damaged, short or wrong, somebody promises to make it right. This Watch remembers the promise and tells you when it was not kept. In Settings → Workspace → Watches it sits under Financial as FI-5.

What it watches for

• A damaged, short or wrong shipment where the promised credit, reship or replacement never arrived — or arrived and was never applied to your account.
• A shipment the supplier's own records show as short, with no claim opened against it.
• A claim window closing with no claim filed.

Why it matters

A credit that was promised in an email and never issued is real money that nobody is tracking, because the moment the customer was made whole, the problem stopped feeling urgent. The reship went out, the customer is happy, and the credit is a line in a thread from three weeks ago. Claim windows make it worse: suppliers and carriers put deadlines on damage and shortage claims, and the deadline is usually reached before anyone thinks about it again.

This Watch books as Collected on the Found ledger.

What it needs connected

• Required: a mailbox — the promise itself almost always lives in an email.
• Helpful: your accounting system, a supplier feed. Accounting is what shows whether the credit was ever actually applied; the supplier feed is what shows the shortage independently and, where the supplier publishes credit memos, can close the point deterministically.

What the point looks like

A point is one item Scout raises with the proof behind it. This one arrives in the Inbox as a recommendation:

Alpha Apparel's promised credit on the Suds & Fluff order has not arrived — Suds & Fluff Grooming · promised Aug 19

Dana Whitfield wrote on August 19: "We'll credit the 40 short units on your next statement." Twenty-five days later there is no credit memo from Alpha Apparel in QuickBooks Online and nothing on the current statement.

Evidence: the supplier's promise, quoted from the Gmail thread with its date · the absence of a matching credit in QuickBooks Online · the shortage on the shipping notice.

The settings that tune it

None. Its settings block reads No adjustable thresholds. The deadline this Watch works to is the claim window the supplier or carrier set, not a number you choose.

When it arrives

This is a second-wave Watch. It is not raising points today — its row in Settings reads Coming soon. You can turn it on now; there is nothing else to configure. We do not publish a date for it.

Good to know

• Scout never files a claim and never asks a supplier for a credit on its own. It shows you the promise, the date and the gap.
• Where the supplier publishes credit memos, the point closes itself when the credit appears, and Scout writes a receipt saying the evidence resolved it.
• The promise is quoted, not paraphrased, so you can see exactly what was said before you follow up.
• A supplier invoice that was wrong in the first place is FI-4, invoice reconciliation. This Watch is about what happens after the dispute.
• A short or partial shipment while the order is still in flight is SI-3, production delay.