Ops & Supply

How to track broker and distributor performance as CPG Founders

Ops & SupplyFor CPG Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

You're paying brokers 4–6% of gross sales to get your SKUs into retail accounts, and your only visibility into what they're actually doing is a monthly check-in call and whatever PowerPoint deck they show up with. You don't know which territories have voids that haven't been filled, which new store authorizations fell through after the meeting, or whether the field visits your broker invoiced actually happened. You're reconciling distributor depletion reports in Excel against your own Shopify and wholesale data, manually trying to figure out whether your broker in the Southeast is pulling weight or just collecting a check. You have no consistent scorecard. You have no benchmark across brokers. And you find out about execution failures weeks after the fact, when a retailer tells you your product hasn't been on the shelf for a month.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

Ops & SupplyFor CPG Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live broker scorecard that tracks new store authorizations, distribution void closures, and field activity by territory — tied back to actual sales movement, not broker self-reporting

A retail analytics dashboard that shows sell-through velocity by account and SKU, so you can see exactly where your distribution gaps are before your next buyer review

An automated trade spend tracker that maps every promotional dollar to a broker, account, and measured sales lift — so your next broker review is built on your numbers, not theirs

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Broker Scorecard Retail Analytics Trade Spend Tracker

Data sources & config

Connect your Shopify store from Starch's integration catalog (the agent queries it live when your dashboards run) and connect your Stripe account (Starch syncs your Stripe data on a schedule). For distributor portals and broker reporting platforms that don't expose a direct API — like KeHE Connect, UNFI Retail Link, or your broker's field activity tracker — Starch automates those through your browser, no API needed. POS data feeds from retail accounts (Whole Foods, Sprouts, regional co-ops) are pulled via browser automation where portal access exists. QuickBooks is synced on a schedule to tie trade deductions to your actual P&L.

Prompts to copy

Build me a broker scorecard that shows new store authorizations, distribution voids filled, and field activity by broker and territory for the last 90 days, and flag any broker whose authorized door count hasn't grown month-over-month

Show me sell-through velocity by SKU and store for all my retail accounts, highlight stores where velocity has dropped more than 20% week-over-week, and group by distributor so I can see which distribution relationships are underperforming

Track my trade spend by promotion event and account, compare planned spend to actual scan-back and off-invoice deductions, and calculate the sales lift for each promo so I can see which promotions are worth running again

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect Shopify from Starch's integration catalog so the agent can pull direct-to-consumer sell-through data and compare it against wholesale channel performance by SKU.

2 Connect QuickBooks — Starch syncs your QuickBooks data on a schedule, pulling invoices, payments, and vendor records so trade deductions and broker commission payments are visible in the same view as sales.

3 Connect Stripe on a schedule so any DTC transactions and subscription revenue are available for cross-channel revenue reconciliation.

4 For each distributor portal you have access to (KeHE Connect, UNFI Retail Link, DPI, etc.), Starch automates the login and data pull through your browser — no API required — pulling depletion reports, void reports, and account-level movement.

5 Tell Starch: 'Build me a broker scorecard that shows new store authorizations, distribution voids filled, and field activity by broker and territory for the last 90 days, and flag any broker whose authorized door count hasn't grown month-over-month.' The Broker Scorecard app (currently in beta — request access) is the starting point; describe any territory-specific customizations you need.

6 For each broker's self-reported field activity logs — usually sent as PDFs, emails, or entries in a shared spreadsheet — Starch pulls from Gmail (synced on a schedule) or Google Sheets (queried live from the integration catalog) to cross-reference claimed visits against actual store-level velocity changes in the same period.

7 Open the Retail Analytics app (currently in beta — request access) and tell Starch: 'Show me sell-through velocity by SKU and store for all my retail accounts, highlight stores where velocity has dropped more than 20% week-over-week, and group by distributor.' This becomes your buyer review deck's backbone.

8 For accounts reporting through retailer portals (Whole Foods Market vendor portal, Sprouts vendor hub), Starch automates the data extraction through your browser on a schedule so you're not manually downloading reports each week.

9 Set up the Trade Spend Tracker (currently in beta — request access) by telling Starch: 'Track my trade spend by promotion event and account, compare planned spend to actual scan-back and off-invoice deductions, and calculate the sales lift for each promo.' Wire it to your QuickBooks sync so deductions are matched automatically.

10 Build a weekly automation: 'Every Monday morning, pull last week's depletion data from my distributor portals, update the broker scorecard, flag any new distribution voids, and Slack me a summary with the three biggest velocity drops by account.' Starch runs this automatically — browser automation for the portal pulls, Slack for the delivery.

11 Before each broker QBR, ask Starch: 'Generate a performance summary for [broker name] for the last quarter — new door authorizations, voids opened vs. closed, field visits claimed vs. velocity-correlated lift, and total commission paid against incremental revenue attributed.' You walk in with the data; your broker can't reframe it.

12 Review the scorecard monthly to rank brokers by cost-per-door and cost-per-case, and use those numbers to decide which broker relationships to expand, renegotiate, or end.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

Try it on Starch →

Worked example

Q1 2026 Broker Review — Natural Snacks Brand, Two Distributors

Sample numbers from a real run

Broker A commission (Southeast territory, 3 months)	18,400
Broker B commission (Mid-Atlantic territory, 3 months)	11,200
New store authorizations — Broker A (claimed: 14, verified: 9)	9
New store authorizations — Broker B (claimed: 11, verified: 10)	10
Distribution voids closed — Broker A	3
Distribution voids closed — Broker B	7
Promo scan-back deductions Q1 (total)	22,100
Measured sales lift on promo events with positive ROI	34,800

Heading into the Q1 broker review, this brand was paying Broker A $18,400 in commissions for the Southeast territory. Broker A's self-reported activity logs showed 14 new store authorizations and 12 field visits. When Starch pulled depletion data from the KeHE Connect portal via browser automation and cross-referenced it against Shopify and QuickBooks invoice data synced on a schedule, the real number was 9 verified new authorizations — and only 3 of the 22 existing distribution voids in the territory had been closed. Broker B, covering Mid-Atlantic at $11,200, showed 10 verified authorizations and had closed 7 voids. On a cost-per-door basis, Broker B was delivering at $1,120 per new door versus Broker A's $2,044. The trade spend analysis surfaced separately: of the $22,100 in Q1 scan-back deductions, only the promotions run at Sprouts and a regional co-op chain generated measurable lift ($34,800 in incremental revenue). The two end-cap events at a conventional grocery chain showed flat velocity during the promo window. The founder walked into the QBR with a one-page Starch summary showing broker cost-per-door, void closure rate, and promo ROI by account. Broker A's contract is up for renegotiation. The conversation is now about performance, not anecdotes.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Cost per new door authorized (broker commission ÷ verified new store authorizations, by broker)

Distribution void closure rate by territory (voids resolved ÷ total voids identified, trailing 90 days)

Sell-through velocity by SKU and account (units sold per store per week, compared to category average)

Trade spend ROI by promotion event (measured sales lift ÷ total promo spend, by account and event type)

Broker-attributed incremental revenue vs. total commission paid (trailing 12 months)

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Spreadsheets + distributor portal manual exports

Free, but you spend 4–6 hours per broker review manually downloading depletion reports, reformatting them, and trying to match voids to commission invoices — and the data is always 2–3 weeks stale by the time you act on it.

Byzzer or SPINS syndicated data

Gives you category benchmarking and competitive share data that Starch can't match, but costs $12,000–$40,000 per year, covers syndicated retail channels only, and gives you no visibility into broker behavior or trade spend efficiency.

GoSpotCheck or Repsly (field execution platforms)

Purpose-built for field execution tracking and broker visit verification, but requires your brokers to actually use the app, costs $300–$600/month per rep, and doesn't tie field activity back to your financial data or trade spend.

TradeInsight or Promomash (trade spend management)

Dedicated trade promotion management with deeper deduction workflow tools than Starch offers today, but typically priced for brands doing $20M+ in revenue, with implementation cycles measured in months, not days.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — broker scorecard, retail analytics, trade spend tracker all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

My distributor portals (KeHE, UNFI) don't have APIs. Can Starch actually pull data from them?

Yes. Starch automates your distributor portals through your browser — no API needed. You give Starch your portal credentials, and it logs in, navigates to the depletion and void reports, and extracts the data on a schedule. It works the same way you'd do it manually, except you're not the one doing it. This is how most Starch users connect their distributor data today.

The Broker Scorecard, Retail Analytics, and Trade Spend Tracker apps are listed as 'in development.' When do they launch?

All three are currently in beta. You can request beta access from the app pages and you'll be notified when they're available. While you're waiting, you can describe what you need to Starch in plain language and it will build you a custom app or dashboard using your connected data sources — it won't be as polished as the finished product, but it works today.

My brokers send me field activity reports as PDFs in email. Can Starch use those?

Starch syncs your Gmail on a schedule, so those emails and attachments are accessible. You can tell Starch to pull broker activity reports from Gmail and cross-reference the claimed visits against actual store-level velocity data from your distributor portals. It's not a perfect verification layer, but it's a much faster way to spot mismatches than doing it by hand.

Can Starch handle deduction management — disputing invalid chargebacks from distributors?

Starch can surface deduction data from QuickBooks (synced on a schedule) and flag deductions that don't match an authorized promotion in your trade calendar. Building a full dispute workflow — generating backup documentation and filing it through your distributor's portal — is possible using browser automation, but it's a custom build, not a pre-built app. Tell Starch what your dispute process looks like and it can scope what's buildable.

Does Starch store all my sales and distributor data permanently?

Data from scheduled-sync connections (QuickBooks, Stripe, Plaid) is stored in Starch's database and refreshed on a schedule. Data pulled live from your integration catalog apps is queried in real time and not stored. Starch is built for live operational surfaces, not long-horizon data warehousing — if you need multi-year archived analytics, you'd want a separate data warehouse layer. That's worth naming honestly.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? I'm cautious about connecting distributor portal credentials.

Starch is not currently SOC 2 Type II certified. There's no self-hosted option. If your security policy requires SOC 2 certification before connecting operational systems, that's a real constraint to weigh. For most early-stage CPG operators, the tradeoff is acceptable — but it's worth knowing upfront.