How Calyan Wax Co. Recovered $72,665.79 in Invalid Deductions with Glimpse

In less than five months after filing its first dispute on Calyan's behalf, Glimpse recovered $72,665.79 in distributor deductions and gave the team their time back.

Overview: Calyan Wax Co. was managing $200,000 in outstanding deductions manually across four stakeholders and a shared Excel sheet. Senior leaders were regularly pulled into deduction admin instead of the work they were hired to do. Since Glimpse filed its first dispute in February 2026, Calyan has recovered $72,665.79 and the finance team finally has their time back.

About Calyan Wax Co.

Calyan Wax Co. is a premium home fragrance brand that donates 5% of pre-tax profits to fund the fight against human trafficking. Founded nine and a half years ago by Jacob Johnson, Calyan employs 40 people and distributes through Whole Foods, Sprouts, Fresh Thyme, and regional grocery chains via UNFI and KeHE, the two largest natural grocery distributors in the country. Jacob runs the business and serves as its active CEO. This year, Calyan is on track to surpass $1 million in total charitable giving.

A $200,000 Problem and a Shared Spreadsheet

Deductions in CPG are a fact of life. For most brands, managing them means a designated accountant, a shared spreadsheet, and whoever has bandwidth that week.

At Calyan, that was Vivian. Every time a remittance came in, she processed it by hand, logging each deduction to the correct GL account, reconciling everything through a shared Excel sheet that accounting, sales, and ops all touched.

"I would make a whole spreadsheet every time a remittance came in and I would put all of that manually onto a spreadsheet," Vivian said. "This needs to go here and this needs to go here."

Disputes weren't much cleaner. 

"Our sales meetings turned into admin meetings for a hot minute and it was frustrating," Jacob said. "We should be looking through our pipeline right now, not going through this disaster sheet."

It derailed everyone from the work they were hired to do. Jacob was direct about what that cost.

"He's in charge of finding cost efficiencies in our supply chain. I want him doing that all day long," he said of his procurement director. "It's all about revenue growth and cost reduction. I want my staff doing high leverage activities."

All the while, outstanding deductions climbed toward $200,000. For a company where profit and purpose are the same thing, every dollar that leaked out was a dollar that wouldn't reach the cause.

"I've got to fight for the cash flow of this business," Jacob said. "That's a lot of profit gone."

The Search for a Specialist 

Calyan had recurring deductions they were confident were wrong, but didn't have the expertise to dispute: inventory disposed without approval, intro allowances charged on seasonal items UNFI had miscategorized.

"We have a high conviction that these deductions are incorrect, but the story behind them is fairly nuanced," Jacob said. "I really wanted someone with a little more expertise finding another angle."

His instinct wasn't to hire someone. "When I have a bandwidth issue from a personnel standpoint, I want to see if we can solve that with software, especially with AI," he said. He wanted depth over breadth, a focused tool with real expertise behind it, not a platform that claimed to do everything. He evaluated several solutions before landing on Glimpse.

Automated, End to End

Glimpse connects directly to the UNFI and KeHE portals, pulls deductions daily, codes each line item to the correct GL account, validates claims against BOLs and trade promotion calendars, and files disputes autonomously. A process that once required manual portal logins, spreadsheet management, and back-and-forth between four stakeholders now runs with minimal oversight.

When a more nuanced deduction requires human judgment, it escalates to a dedicated Glimpse Deductions Expert who handles the claim through the full dispute process without Calyan's team involved.

Jacob logs into the platform a few times a week and gets a weekly email from his account manager. The work is handled and the oversight stays.

Cash Application: The Unexpected Win

Glimpse also automated cash application, mapping remittances to invoices and posting directly to QuickBooks. For their accountant, the change was immediate.

"It comes in nicely into my bank feed in QuickBooks, and I just click match," she said. "I don't have to keep a spreadsheet of all the remittances and all the deductions."

Jacob hadn't seen it coming.

"I don't know how much of the cash application side I really understood would be happening," he said. "Those are bonuses that Vivian started to communicate to me. That was a pleasant surprise."

Vivian put it plainly: "When we started with Glimpse, it was more for the deduction disputes. But the cash app has just been tremendous. It's been a game changer for me."

What $72,665.79 Looks Like

Glimpse filed Calyan's first dispute on February 9, 2026. The first deduction was won 23 days later.

Managed manually, most of what's been recovered would have aged out, been written off, or never disputed at all. Instead, Glimpse's AI agents filed, tracked, and resolved disputes across UNFI and KeHE automatically. The largest single recovery — $11,643.89 — closed in 37 days. On May 5, six disputes closed in a single day, recovering $14,661. By the end of May, Glimpse had won 20 disputes in the month totaling $38,000.

Despite the direct financial returns, Jacob points to the operational shift as the real measure.

"Glimpse saved Calyan time and freed up people to go make impact," he said. "That's the real beauty from our perspective."

Vivian's workload dropped significantly, primarily from cash application automation. The procurement director is back on supply chain. The sales team is running sales meetings again. Jacob, who made deduction management his top priority entering Q4, now spends close to zero time on the function.

Glimpse's data also gave Calyan the visibility to fix the root cause. By correcting how their seasonal and in-and-out products were set up in UNFI's system, the volume of invalid deductions being taken in the first place has come down.

"It felt like a partnership," Jacob said. "And that is not necessarily unique, but it's definitely a delight."

Looking Ahead

Calyan is doubling down on premium grocery, expanding deeper with Sprouts and pursuing the regional independents underneath them. At the same time, they're taking select retailers direct — HEB and Central Market among them — where they can service accounts more reliably and profitably. As that footprint grows, expanding Glimpse's coverage to those direct channels is already on the table.

Most of that growth runs through UNFI, a distributor Jacob describes plainly: "It is a fight, not a partnership." Getting paid accurately on every order requires disputing your way through. Having Glimpse handling that fight matters as Calyan scales and protects the trade spend that makes growth possible.

Glimpse fights to recover margin so Calyan can continue the fight against human trafficking.

Start with a free deduction audit to find out how much of your backlog is recoverable.

About Glimpse

Glimpse is an AI-powered deduction management platform built for CPG brands selling through distributors and major retailers. Glimpse automates the entire process — from deduction coding and validation to dispute resolution — using AI agents trained on distributor and retailer-specific rules. Backed by a team of experienced deduction specialists, Glimpse helps finance and AR teams recover invalid deductions, eliminate manual work, and improve bottom-line performance without adding headcount. Glimpse processes over $1 billion in invoice volume and maintains a 91% dispute win rate across the platform.

Author bio: Anuj Mehta is co-founder and COO at Glimpse, where he oversees the customer journey from onboarding to ongoing success. He has worked with hundreds of retail brands to understand their pain points and deliver direct value with Glimpse's AI solutions.

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