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Concepts

Reclaim models outbound warranty as one connected chain, from the promise made at sale to the cash recovered from the supplier at fault. Each link is useful alone; the value is that they are one system of record.

Coverage: the promise, registered​

Everything starts when you sell a warranted product. Reclaim registers warranty terms and coverage against the serialized products you sell: what is covered, for how long, and what the customer is entitled to when something fails. Because coverage is registered per serialized asset, entitlement is a fact the system can check, not a negotiation reconstructed from paperwork.

The claim lifecycle​

A customer claim moves through defined stages:

  1. Intake. The claim is recorded against the serialized asset, which links it to the customer, the product, and the coverage in force.
  2. Validation. Entitlement is checked automatically: is this unit covered, for this failure, at this time? Claims that fail entitlement are resolved early, with the reason on record.
  3. Adjudication. A validated claim is decided on its merits and driven to a disposition.
  4. Disposition. Every claim ends in a defined outcome: repair, replace, credit, refund, goodwill, or reject. There is no ambiguous end state, and each disposition carries the record that backs the decision.

The discipline of a defined lifecycle is the point. Claims adjudicated by feel drift toward whoever argues loudest; claims driven through entitlement and adjudication produce consistent outcomes and a defensible record.

Supplier recovery: closing the loop upstream​

When adjudication finds that a defective causal part produced the failure, the cost of honoring the claim should not stop with you. Reclaim raises a supplier recovery claim, linked to the originating customer claim, and charges the cost back to the vendor who supplied the failed component.

Handled manually, this step is the one that quietly gets skipped when people are busy, which is exactly when claim volumes are highest. Handled as a linked record in the same system, it becomes routine, and it is where the product pays for itself in recovered cash.

Recalls, field actions, and campaigns​

Some failures are not one unit but a population. Reclaim runs recalls, field actions, and service campaigns across the affected serial numbers, with returns, RMA, and quality linkage, so a systemic response uses the same records as the individual claims it supersedes.

Reserves: the liability on the books​

Selling a warranty creates a financial obligation, and accounting standards (ASC 460, IAS 37) require reserving for it. Reclaim accrues the warranty provision at sale and draws it down as claims are paid, posting natively to your ledger. The reserve stops being a periodic estimate in a spreadsheet and becomes a balance driven by the same claim records your service team works every day.