Generally, the broad category can be divided into three sub-categories: promotional/advertising/ pricing strategy expenses, the detailed breakdown of which needs to be made according to the specific management needs:
I. Promotional expenses (also known as offline expenses):

1. Store-based promotional expenses: anniversary promotional fees, festival promotional fees (such as May 1 Labor Day, October 1 National Day, etc.), new store opening promotional fees, DM promotional fees (also known as express news fees), shelf promotional fees, TG promotions fees, mass display promotional fees, admission fees, distribution fees, sponsorship fees, free of charge for the first order, etc. Such expenses are various and too numerous to mention. While the suppliers suffer from such expenses, people also deeply admire the super creativity of the store owners.

Such expense is typically the largest part of promotional expenses; therefore, the focus of management is how to grasp the reasonableness of expenditures. For example, the price for mass display with different sizes in different stores in different locations at different times is different, which brings difficulty in expense approvals. Of course, there are solutions. There also exists a management difficulty, i.e., the settlement of expenses between different stores. Different stores have different habits. Some stores collect the promotional expenses separately, whereas others settle the expenses with the payment for goods, either on the monthly basis or quarterly basis. The cardinal number of calculation will be negotiated each time; some will be calculated according to the proportion of the purchased amount during the whole year, which would include the tax or not, or the amount specified in invoice. In short, it is very troublesome.

2. Staff-based promotional expenses: wages for promoters (including wages for long-term promoters and temporary promoters), promoter management fees (the content of which is rather substantial, including management fees, wardrobe rent, badge fees, training fees, stationery fees, deposits, etc. Deposits are generally not being paid. Therefore, we often include the deposits in the one-time expenses). Some kind enterprises may also have some social security costs for the promoters. In fact, the promoters are sometimes the voluntary workers of the stores, who have to do many unpaid work, but the suppliers need to pay the management fees to the store, somewhat unfair… Some aspect of this phenomenon is rather interesting. For instance, some suppliers, due to the restriction on the establishment of institution, determine to recruit the employees in the name of promoters for office management work, which, at some point, is positively meaningful.

The core of the management of such expenses is how to prevent freeloading, or how to prevent someone from withholding promotional rewards.

3. Article-based promotional expenses: conventional promotional items produced by the company, local gifts temporarily purchased, products of small sized company, freight and storage fees of promotional items and so on.
The management of such expenses should focus on two aspects: one is the efficient use of resources (wastage and corruption of promotional items is quite common), and the other is how to solve the timeliness of promotional items, including the development, production, logistics and distribution of promotional items.
4. Channel-based promotional expenses: empty container rebates, bottles redemption, purchase incentives, point reward, unpack reward, display reward, etc.
Because it targets at other channels rather than stores, the features of such expenses is large amount, covering wider range and longer time, with monitoring difficulty. Sometimes a single expense account is as large as A4 paper, 1 meter thick. It is no exaggerated to say that there is even thicker expense account.
5. Other promotional expenses: outdoor site costs, street show costs, production costs, and other costs.

II. Advertising expenses (also known as online expenses): the amount of such expenses, when dealt with, is rather large. Although their management is not as troublesome as the promotional costs, how to evaluate the effectiveness of advertising expenses has been a tricky problem.
1. Media-based advertising expenses: television (subdivided into CCTV, local TV, phoenix TV, other satellite TV), newspapers, magazines, radio, Internet, etc.
2. Outdoor advertising expenses: bus body, self-use car body, outdoor stores , outdoor signs, outdoor light boxes, indoor light boxes, indoor signs
3. Article-based advertising expenses: promotional materials, KT board, banner, hanging flags
4. Other advertising expenses: cooperation costs of advertising companies, design fees, production costs, creative fees, printing costs

III. Pricing strategy expenses: a kind of special expenses aiming at the distributors and stores to promote positive purchase for the ultimate purpose of price discounts. Include: unconditional discounts, conditional discounts, welfare sheet, sale price, and rebates.