MDF Claims and Proof of Execution: Getting Reimbursed

Why claims are where MDF leaks

The claim is the final step of the MDF cycle — and the one where the most funding quietly disappears. A partner can win an allocation, get a proposal approved, and run a genuinely good activity, then never see the money because the claim was late, under-evidenced, or didn't match what was approved. When claiming feels like more effort than the funds are worth, partners stop bothering, and the budget achieves nothing. Getting claims right is therefore not an accounting detail; it is central to whether an MDF programme delivers.

This guide explains what proof of execution is, the documentation vendors require, the deadlines that catch partners out, and the common failures that delay or void reimbursement. It is the closing companion to our pillar guide on how to run an MDF programme — where claims and proof of execution are one of the five decisions that determine whether funds turn into pipeline.

What proof of execution means

Proof of execution (PoE) — sometimes called proof of performance — is the evidence a partner submits with a claim to show the funded activity actually took place, and ideally what it produced. It exists to protect both sides: it gives the vendor confidence that funds were spent as agreed, and it gives the partner a clean, defensible basis for reimbursement.

PoE has two halves. The first is financial proof — that the money was spent: invoices and receipts for the costs claimed. The second is execution proof — that the activity happened and reached its audience: the tangible artefacts and data the activity produced. A claim needs both. An invoice with no evidence the campaign ran is as incomplete as a stack of screenshots with no supporting costs.

The documentation you need

Exact requirements vary by vendor, but a well-evidenced claim almost always draws from the following:

• Financial documents. Supplier invoices and receipts that match the claimed amount and tie back to the approved budget line items.
• Activity evidence. Proof the activity ran — for a webinar or event, registration and attendance data plus the invitation and agenda; for a digital campaign, screenshots of the ads, the landing page URL, and platform reporting; for email, the creative and a send/deliverability report; for telemarketing, the call summary and outcomes.
• Vendor branding.Evidence the vendor's products were promoted — the logo, product messaging, or co-branding visible in the assets, since activity with no vendor presence is usually ineligible.
• Results, where possible. The leads, registrations, meetings, or pipeline the activity generated — captured against the campaign identifier agreed in the proposal. Increasingly, vendors want outcome data, not just proof the activity occurred.

The single most effective habit is to capture this as you go. Save the screenshots when the ads are live, export the registration list the day after the event, and log the leads against the tag as they arrive. Reconstructing evidence weeks later — after platforms have cycled and reports have expired — is how good activity ends up unclaimable.

Proof of execution by activity type

Because “evidence the activity ran” means something different for each tactic, it helps to know what good proof of execution looks like activity by activity:

• Events and webinars— the invitation and agenda, the registration and attendance lists, photos or a recording, and post-event follow-up. For webinars, the platform's attendance report is usually decisive.
• Paid digital campaigns— screenshots of the live ads, the destination landing page URL, and the platform's reporting export showing impressions, clicks, and spend across the flight dates.
• Email marketing — the creative as sent, a description of the target segment, and a deliverability report showing volume, opens, and clicks.
• Telemarketing and lead generation — the call script or brief, a summary of dials and connects, and the qualified leads or meetings booked.
• Content and syndication — the published asset with vendor branding visible, where it ran, and the leads or downloads it generated.

Notice the pattern: in every case the strongest proof pairs an artefact (something you can see) with data (a number the activity produced). Claims that supply only one of the two are the ones that stall.

Deadlines and windows

Every programme sets a claim deadline: the date by which a claim must be submitted after the activity completes, often tied to the same activity window that governs when the activity itself must run. Miss it and even a perfectly evidenced claim is usually void — deadlines are one of the few rules vendors enforce strictly, because finance has to close the books.

Two practical rules follow. First, read the deadline at approval time and diarise it, not at quarter-end when it's already tight. Second, don't leave claims to the last day; a claim submitted with a buffer leaves room to fix a missing document before the window closes. Compressed, unrealistic windows are also a leading cause of unspent MDF — if you are the vendor, giving partners a realistic runway to execute and claim protects your own utilisation.

Common claim failures

Nearly every rejected or delayed claim comes down to one of these:

• Missed deadline. Submitted after the claim window closed.
• Insufficient proof. No evidence the activity actually ran, or evidence too thin to validate.
• Mismatch with the proposal. Costs or activity that differ from what was approved.
• Ineligible line items. Entertainment, internal costs, or hardware slipped into the claim.
• Invoices that don't reconcile. Claimed amount doesn't match the supporting documents.
• Vanity evidence. “500 emails sent” with no branding, targeting, or outcome to show for it.

Almost all of these are prevented at the proposal stage. A proposal that specifies the activity, budget, and measurement up front (see how to write an MDF proposal that gets approved) becomes a checklist for the claim: you evidence exactly what you said you would do, against costs you already broke down.

Reimbursement without the paperwork pain

The paperwork pain is real, but most of it is self-inflicted by process design. Vendors can lighten it dramatically: require proof that is genuinely useful rather than exhaustive, accept digital evidence, set clear and realistic deadlines, and — best of all — capture proof automatically where the activity is already tracked. When claiming is easy, utilisation rises and partners keep coming back.

For partners, the equivalent discipline is a simple evidence folder per activity — costs, artefacts, and results collected in one place as the campaign runs. It sounds trivial, but it is the difference between a five-minute claim and an afternoon of chasing expired reports. Treat proof of execution as something you assemble alongside the activity, not a task that begins once it ends, and reimbursement stops being painful.

That is one reason the MDF Intelligence Platform ties funded activity to its results as the activity runs: much of the proof of execution and the outcome data a claim needs is captured automatically, which both speeds reimbursement and feeds straight into ROI measurement (see how to measure MDF ROI). If your claim process is costing you utilisation and goodwill, redesigning it — lighter proof, clear deadlines, automatic evidence — is exactly the kind of fix our MDF programme optimisation service delivers.