Stacking, Braiding, & Pairing Rebates and Incentives

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Posted On: October 15, 2024

Last week, we were asked to define a braided incentive rebate program, and we thought the topic of tethered incentive program management offered great blog content. So, here we go!

Let’s start with stacked rebates. Stacking is where there are multiple sponsors to the rebate payment and where the money flows down through a channel. This is common for energy services rebates where a wholesale power or gas supplier pays their incentive down to their retail utility partner, who then contributes their own rebate amount with the total redeemed to the customer in a single payment. We also see stacking in the channeled products area where manufacturers and distributors both contribute to a dealer rebate or end-customer rebate, credited down through the distribution channel.

Now, braided incentives also have multiple sponsors but, unlike stacking, there are different payment flows. For energy services rebates, a single rebate claim event creates two distinct and separate claim records which are processed by each sponsor separately and ultimately redeemed in their own unique payment.  In the channeled products area, braiding creates the opportunity to manage spiff and dealer rebates through the same sales data upload. Spiffs are claimed against invoice numbers and dealer rebates are calculated against total invoiced amount.

A third category is paired incentives, and we tend to see these only in the energy services area. One method of pairing is by offering both a rebate and a loan. A single claim is filed that is both a rebate application and a loan application, and the loan principal is net of the rebate awarded. Another method of pairing is where installers and dealers are permitted to file a claim on behalf of a customer and to receive a bonus for themselves. This method pairing creates two incentive records with two payment flows, but only one if which is has reportable energy savings.

The Incentit platform currently supports all these tethered incentive programs for both our energy services and channeled products clients.

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