Every year a chunk of co-op money goes unclaimed. The brand set it aside, the dealers were entitled to it, and it expired anyway. From headquarters it looks like dealers did not want the help. Up close it is almost never that.
Dealers do not skip co-op money because they do not want it. They skip it because claiming it is more work and more risk than it seems worth, and that is a fixable problem hiding as a motivation one.
The real reasons funds go unclaimed
Ask dealers who left money behind and the answers rhyme.
The rules were unclear, so they were not sure what qualified and did not want to spend against a maybe. The approval was slow, so by the time they would have heard back, the campaign window had passed. The paperwork was heavy, so a small claim was not worth the hours it would take to assemble. Or they tried once, got denied over a missing receipt, and quietly decided it was not worth trying again.
None of those is a dealer who does not care. Each is a dealer doing the math and deciding the juice is not worth the squeeze.
The denial that does the most damage
The single most expensive thing a program can do is deny a claim on a technicality. A dealer who did the campaign, got results, and then lost the reimbursement over a formatting issue or a missing screenshot does not just lose that claim. They stop bothering with the next three.
That is the quiet killer of participation. Not the money involved in any one denial, but the dealers who conclude the whole thing is rigged against them and opt out for good.
Making the money easy to claim
Participation goes up when claiming stops feeling like a gamble. That comes down to a few things:
- Rules a dealer can actually read and understand before they spend, not after
- Approval fast enough that a yes still leaves time to run the campaign
- Evidence captured as the campaign runs, so nothing has to be reconstructed months later
- A claim process short enough that a small reimbursement is still worth filing
Sizle exists to make this path clear, from a plan the brand can approve quickly to evidence collected in the moment and a reimbursement that follows the approved plan. The tooling matters, but the mindset matters more. Unclaimed funds are usually a sign the process is too hard, not that dealers are uninterested.
If your program has money expiring every year, resist reading it as dealers leaving free money behind. Read it as feedback. Somewhere between setting the funds aside and paying them out, the process is asking more of dealers than the money is worth, and that gap is where your unclaimed budget is going.