What is Walmart Retail Link: A Complete Guide

Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, provides suppliers with Walmart Retail Link, a powerful online portal designed to manage and optimize supplier relationships. This system gives vendors direct access to sales, inventory, and performance data, enabling better decision-making across the supply chain.

For suppliers working with Walmart, understanding Retail Link is essential to monitor product performance, forecast demand, and respond quickly to customer needs. This guide explains what Walmart Retail Link is, its key features, benefits, and how vendors can use it to drive growth.

What is Retail Link?

Walmart Retail Link is Walmart’s proprietary online portal for suppliers. It provides vendors with direct access to detailed sales data, real-time inventory levels, and collaborative planning tools that support supply chain efficiency.

The platform allows suppliers to track product performance, analyze customer demand, and forecast more accurately. By offering this level of visibility, Walmart helps vendors align operations with its retail strategy and improve decision-making.

While Retail Link delivers significant benefits, it can also be complex to navigate. Its wide range of reports, dashboards, and tools may be overwhelming for new users, making training and familiarity key to getting the most value from the system.

Commonly Used Apps on Walmart Retail Link

Retail Link contains dozens of apps, each designed for a specific function. While it’s not practical to cover them all, here are some of the most commonly used apps in key categories that every Walmart supplier should know about:

1. Accounts/Finance

These apps help suppliers manage invoicing, payments, and deduction disputes.

• APDP (Accounts Payable Disputes Portal): Essential for deduction management, this app allows suppliers to dispute claims and settle Walmart deductions directly.
• APIS (Accounts Payable Inquiry System): Provides real-time visibility into financial transactions, invoice status, and payments. It can also integrate with ERP systems for easier tracking.

Want to learn how to dispute Walmart deduction codes effectively? Check out our detailed blog post.

2. Logistics

Logistics apps focus on managing the flow of goods and ensuring compliance with Walmart’s delivery requirements.

• Carrier Portal: Used to track shipments and manage logistics through carrier integrations, helping suppliers ensure on-time delivery.
• ASN (Advance Shipping Notice): Enables suppliers to provide Walmart with detailed information about upcoming shipments.

3. Merchandising

These tools support product management and sales performance.

• Supplier Profile: Ensures supplier information is accurate and up to date in Walmart’s system.
• SWAS (Store Within A Store) Report: Provides insights into how products perform at the store level, giving suppliers valuable retail data to guide decisions.

4. Data Analytics

Analytics apps provide sales and performance insights to help suppliers make informed business decisions.

• Decision Support System (DDS): A legacy tool that gave suppliers detailed sales data by timeframe, geography, and store location. (Being phased out.)
• Walmart Luminate: The next-generation analytics platform, offering richer data, ERP integration, and enhanced efficiency across the supply chain.

Walmart Deduction App- APDP

The Accounts Payable Disputes Portal is a key app within Retail Link, designed to simplify and modernize deduction management for Walmart suppliers. APDP replaced the older Settlement Disputing process, which was slow, inefficient, and often caused cash flow challenges for vendors.

By addressing these issues, APDP gives suppliers more control, transparency, and efficiency in handling disputes, helping protect profit margins and reduce delays in payment recovery.

Key Features of APDP:

• Dispute at Claim Line Level: Suppliers can now dispute deductions at the claim line level, rather than at a broad claim level. This allows for more precise dispute resolution and fewer partial settlements.
• Real-Time Updates: The app provides real-time status tracking for every claim, offering clarity on progress and bottlenecks.
• Improved Interface: With an intuitive layout and simplified navigation, APDP is easier to adopt and use effectively compared to its predecessor.

Is Walmart Deduction Recovery a challenge for your business? Here's something that might help.

Utilizing Automated Deduction Management Software for APDP with iNymbus

While Walmart’s APDP system offers significant improvements over the old Settlement Disputing process, many suppliers still find it complex and time-consuming to navigate. That’s where iNymbus comes in. By leveraging automation and RPA (Robotic Process Automation) technology, iNymbus simplifies and streamlines the entire deduction dispute process.

How iNymbus Enhances Your APDP Experience:

• Auto-Detect New Deductions: Automatically monitors APDP for new deductions as they appear.
• Fetch Supporting Documents: Gathers all the required documentation needed to dispute invalid deductions.
• File Claims Automatically: Completes descriptions, fills out forms, and submits disputes on your behalf.

With iNymbus, suppliers can shift from hours of manual work to a fully automated workflow, saving time, reducing errors, and accelerating recovery.

If deduction management is eating into your team’s productivity, consider scheduling a quick discovery call to see how iNymbus automation can transform your APDP process.