Ace: Honoring Online Promotions Everywhere (HOPE) Requirements

Summary/Description

Ace introduced a high‑priority 2026 initiative called HOPE (Honoring Online Promotions Everywhere).

Note: For more information on Ace HOPE, refer to the Ace: Honoring Online Promotions Everywhere (HOPE) KBA.

Two major changes:

1. Automated back‑end funding credits for Sale Retail (MIP).
   • Vendor funding (rebates/credits) will be automated instead of issued manually.
   • Stores must upgrade POS systems to remain eligible for credits.
   • No more manual credits issued after Nov. 1, 2026.
2. Removal of item‑level barcode scanning for online-only offers (No POS changes, only Ace changes).
   • Item‑level online promotions will be recognized via hotsheet data instead of cashier‑scanned barcodes.
   • Some global/threshold offers (e.g., Type 6/7) will still use barcodes.

Why This Matters/ROI

Ace HOPE provides the following:

• Reduce time for retailers to receive credits for promotions from 6 – 8 weeks post promo to weekly.
• Improve Paladin’s ability to be competitive with our promotional strategy by eliminating the current credit process limits (Business impact of ~$7.8M).
• Remove roughly 90K hours for corp/retailer totaling close to $1.8M in cost savings by eliminating manual credit processing for MIP promotions.
• Streamline the promotions experience on acehardware.com.

Retailers will receive the credits weekly vs months (manual credits).

Store vs. Online Behavior

The behavior is as follows:

• High‑level explanation of how promotions, pricing, and rules should behave in-store compared to online (e.g., promo stacking, priority logic, effective date handling).
• Consumer will not see anything.
• No changes in checkout.

Hotsheet API Overview (Ace -> POS)

• TYPE CD = P($ off) and C(%off).
• Only Promo Detail record/API. No changes to Header API.
• Rebate_AMT = This is the amount of Back End Funding TOTAL (Vendor and Ace)

POS ACE Data Requirements

The following two fields give info regarding the credits:

• Adding 2 new fields to D records
  • Hold Sale Retail rebate amount
  • Sale Retail promo ID

<a:MIPVendorRebateAmt>9999.99</a:MIPVendorRebateAmt>

<a:MIPPromoID>12602131</a:MIPPromoID>