How Freight Bill Audit Can Save Your Money?

Posted by maxbpoblog Feb 15,2020

Traditional linear distribution chains were comparatively easy in implementation: moving goods from the producer to end-user. Now, supply chains are increasingly complex, representing a circular distribution chain, bending at countless angles, and meeting the requirements of omnichannel and e-commerce.

Meanwhile, the freight bill audit is growing more accessible and cheaper, and of course automatic notes Inbound Logistics. Auditing is a new best practice for the contemporary shipper, and failure to implement a program is only going to lead to greater freight spend. Regrettably, such sophistication contributes to greater freight investment, and all too often, carriers and logistics support providers may make mistakes in invoicing.

What’s Wrong with Not Conducting Freight Bill Audit?

Not conducting a freight bill audit program may seem to be a more straightforward solution. After all, cargo spend is inevitable. Moreover, today’s consumers expect quick, free shipping. This leads to the assumption that the current freight spend will grow unimpeded. However, errors continue to occur.

Carriers may double charge invoices, bill for incorrect classification of cargo , and even assess extra fees for incorrect weights. While shippers may have a paper trail of shipping data, contending using a carrier over billed charges can seem useless. In the end, shippers cannot fulfill customer requests without the carrier. The reality is simple; carriers understand these issues exist. A lot of the errors can be traced back to individual errors, and carriers have developed entire processes to handle invoicing errors. Obviously, it’s up to the shipper to determine such problems.

Freight bill audit is a complex process which permits shippers to recoup lost earnings deriving from mistakes and inaccuracies within freight invoicing. A robust auditing program has to go line by line inside the freight invoice in dispatch details to ensure the invoice aligns with the initial shipment data.

While shippers may make mistakes when classifying or tendering a shipment, the vast majority of data remains legitimate. As a result, auditing freight bills means looking beyond information accumulated by both the carrier and the shipper to spot potential difficulties and distribute charge backs. The real key to making freight carrier invoice audit successful lies in ensuring that the money spent on an auditing program doesn’t go beyond the revenue recovered.

Best Practices in Freight Audit to Increase Recaptured Revenue

To maintain freight bill audit in check, shippers should adhere to these best practices.

1. Weigh and reweigh all shipments to ensure true weights are used when tendering a shipment.
2. Calculate the correct measurements of each shipment. Again, a dimensional, although an upfront investment, can provide you nearly 100% precision on measurements, and allow you to more easily scale your company since cargo classes keep to move from the traditional 18 course chart to the newer 11 course, dimensional-based table. With new calculations for dimensions in LTL cargo, your staff may be unaware of the recent changes and may result in keying errors that are missed with no freight bill audit mechanisms set up.
3. Just take some opportunity to learn the individual carrier process for submitting requests for charge backs or bill corrections. Methods by carrier may vary broadly, and it’s challenging to keep up with these various processes by yourself. We’ve found at Max BPO our transport clients are conscious of the fact that our staff deals with many carriers, thanks to our dedicated carrier relations department, very frequently, and possess these processes documented and commonly as known like the back of one’s hand.
4. Review each bill to make sure all information matches with initial shipment details, such as mode, date, delivery verification, exceptions and resolutions, weight, dimensional weight, classification, and much more. Double-checking can slow down the processing of imports ; however, using a TMS that is integrated into your ERP your capacity to have those details accurate only increases. When added together with the previously mentioned dimensionaliser, you won’t need to double-check often, because the tech gets the particulars accurate each time.
5. Compare a statement to all other bills to ensure the bill is unique rather than a copy. Invoice duplications assessing is another time consuming practice to get a busy freight store that doesn’t have additional bodies set up to conduct these exercises. An outsourced freight bookkeeping service, especially when included with the use of a TMS, such as what we offer with our technology and solutions in the Max BPO, will automatically detect if you have a replica with our pre- and post-audit functions.
6. Leverage automated auditing services that knowingly examine digital invoices to recognize potential issues.
7. Connect your auditing software or process to your transport management system (TMS).
8. Outsource your logistics bpo services to Max BPO.