Walmart Chargeback Code 90: Unauthorized Charge Removed

Executive Summary & Quick Answer

Executive summary: Code 90 is Walmart's accounts payable team acting as an invoice editor. You billed a charge — freight, handling, a fuel surcharge — that isn't in your agreement, and Walmart simply removed it and paid the rest. Unlike shortage or labeling codes, nothing went wrong in the warehouse; the failure is contractual. The invoice claimed money the agreement never granted. That makes Code 90 unusual: it's fully controllable at the moment your billing system generates the 810, and it's one of the hardest codes to dispute, because "we always charge this fee" is not the same as "Walmart agreed to this fee in writing."

Quick answer: Walmart Chargeback Code 90 is an accounts payable deduction taken when a supplier adds a charge Walmart has not approved — an unagreed fee or surcharge on the invoice. Walmart removes the unauthorized charge, deducting its full amount. Prevention means invoicing only charges explicitly written into the agreement.

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Deep Dive: What Triggers Code 90

Every charge on your invoice gets compared against one reference: the cost structure Walmart has on file from your agreement. Line items that match get paid. Charges that don't appear in that structure — an added freight fee, a handling surcharge, billing terms that drift from the agreed cost — get removed, and the removal is documented as Code 90.

Where it lives in the EDI flow — the 810 invoice:

The 810 is where suppliers get into trouble. Charges and allowances ride in their own segments, separate from item pricing, and each one is either backed by the agreement or it isn't.

810 element	What it carries	Code 90 exposure
IT1 (line items)	Item, quantity, unit cost	Priced wrong → that's Code 10 territory
SAC (charges/allowances)	Freight, handling, surcharges, fees	Any charge not in the agreement → Code 90
TDS (total)	Invoice total including added charges	Inflated by unauthorized SAC lines

The mechanics are blunt: Walmart's AP match doesn't negotiate with a SAC segment. If the charge type or amount isn't authorized, it's deducted — equal to the unauthorized charge that was removed. There is no penalty multiplier in the record; the deduction is the charge.

The trap for suppliers is that these charges usually aren't dishonest. They're defaults — a billing system configured for your general customer base that appends a standard fuel surcharge or handling fee to every invoice, including Walmart's, where no such fee was ever agreed.

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Business & Financial Impact

• Deduction = the removed charge, in full. Not a percentage, not a flat fine — the exact amount you added.
• Recurring by design: if your billing system appends the charge automatically, every invoice generates a fresh Code 90 until the template is fixed. One misconfiguration becomes hundreds of deductions.
• Low dispute odds without paper: the only winning evidence is written approval of the charge. Custom, habit, or "other retailers pay it" carries no weight.
• Relationship signal: a steady stream of removed charges reads to Walmart's AP team as sloppy billing at best, fee-padding at worst.
• Reconciliation drag: every removed charge creates a payment-vs-invoice gap your AR team has to research, even when Walmart is right.

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Root Causes (Ranked)

1. Billing-system defaults — freight, handling, or fuel surcharges auto-appended to all invoices, never carved out for the Walmart account.
2. Unagreed surcharges — cost pressure gets passed through as a new fee without Walmart's written approval.
3. Terms drift — the invoice reflects your current price list or fee schedule, not the cost structure actually agreed with Walmart.
4. Verbal "approvals" — a buyer conversation treated as authorization; AP matches against the system of record, not phone calls.
5. Agreement amnesia — the person who negotiated the terms left; the billing team invoices from tribal memory.

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Step-by-Step Prevention Workflow

AGREEMENT ──► BILLING TEMPLATE ──► 810 PRE-CHECK ──► INVOICE SENT
 (cost file)   (Walmart-specific)   (SAC lines vs        (clean)
                                     approved list)

1. Build a Walmart-specific charge whitelist. Extract every approved charge and allowance from the agreement into a single list. If it's not on the list, it doesn't go on an invoice.
2. Isolate the Walmart billing template. Kill inherited defaults — no global surcharge logic may touch Walmart invoices.
3. Pre-check every 810. Before transmission, validate each SAC line against the whitelist. One unauthorized charge type should block the invoice, not ship with it.
4. Written approval or nothing. New fee? Get it added to the agreement and to the whitelist before the first invoice carries it.
5. Audit quarterly. Compare a sample of paid invoices against the agreement. Terms drift silently; audits catch it before AP does.

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The Dispute Path

1. Pull the deduction detail: which charge was removed, on which invoice.
2. Locate written authorization — the agreement clause or documented amendment covering that exact charge type and amount.
3. File in APDP (Retail Link) with the authorization attached.
4. No written authorization? Don't dispute — fix the billing template instead. An undocumented charge is a valid Code 90, and repeat disputes without evidence burn credibility you'll want for winnable codes.

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Code 90 in the Invoicing Family

Code	The story
90	You billed a charge that was never agreed — Walmart removed it
10	The price or allowance on the invoice doesn't match the file
13	You substituted an item and billed it at a higher cost

Code 90 is about charges that shouldn't exist; Code 10 is about prices that don't match. Same invoice, different failure.

Related: Code 10 · Code 13

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Supplier Checklist

• Walmart charge whitelist extracted from the agreement, kept current
• Walmart billing template isolated from global surcharge defaults
• 810 pre-check: every SAC line validated before transmission
• New fees enter invoices only after written approval lands in the agreement
• Weekly: Code 90 deductions traced to the template line that caused them
• Quarterly: paid-invoice sample audited against agreed cost structure

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FAQs

What is Walmart chargeback Code 90? A deduction taken when a supplier adds a charge Walmart has not approved — an unagreed fee or surcharge on the invoice. Walmart removes the unauthorized charge and deducts its amount.

How much is a Code 90 deduction? Equal to the unauthorized charge that was removed. There's no separate penalty in the record — the deduction is the charge itself.

Can I dispute a Code 90? Yes, through the APDP in Retail Link — but only with written authorization for the exact charge. Without documentation in the agreement, the deduction is valid and the fix is your billing template.

What causes most Code 90 deductions? Billing-system defaults: freight, handling, or fuel surcharges appended automatically to every invoice, including Walmart's, where they were never agreed.

How is Code 90 different from Code 10? Code 10 deducts a price or allowance difference on items Walmart agreed to buy. Code 90 removes an entire charge that was never in the agreement at all.

Does a buyer's verbal OK protect me from Code 90? No. AP matches invoices against the documented cost structure. Get charges added to the agreement in writing before invoicing them.

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