This Is a Good Time for a Year-End Freight Bill Review

As another year draws to a close it may be useful to review some of your supply chain protocols. A good place to start is a year end freight bill review. Things are a little quieter this time of year and there is plenty of recent data to review. Typically, this is a no cost exercise provided by your 3PL so there is every reason to have the review done. If for no other reason than knowing your fright payment protocols are working.

What is a Freight Invoice Audit?

As a concept, freight invoice auditing is simple to understand. The idea is to make sure you only pay the shipping charges you should, and nothing more. In most cases, software does the hard work. However, some auditing must be done by hand. All this happens once the invoice is received. The carrier only gets paid after it’s determined that the invoice is accurate.

Billing Errors Happen More Than You Think

Shipping charges can make up to 10 percent of a company’s total expenses. It’s not unusual for companies to spend millions or tens of millions of dollars annually to ship their products with trucking companies or parcel carriers like UPS and FedEx. But it’s common for major shipping carriers to overcharge by missing discounts or mis-classification of freight. Pricing in the shipping industry is complex, and in many cases, carriers make mistakes or do not meet service requirements. Billing in today’s logistics environment contains a myriad of charges and discounts, base rates, fuel surcharges and hundreds of accessorial charges. There’s a lot of opportunity for mistakes, and you need to protect yourself. That’s where freight invoice auditing comes in.

At Freight Payment, Inc., a subsidiary of Land Link, freight bill auditing is a big part of our business.  Most successful companies know the value associated with utilizing the services of a fully integrated freight bill audit and payment service. More than 80% of well managed companies, with operations in the US currently use and leverage the power of audit and pay solutions. Our solution takes the benefits of standard freight bill audit and payment to an entirely different level.

• Avoid carrier over charges and payments
• Avoid chasing over payments and a painstaking post audit process
• Eliminate short payments and hence past dues and balance dues
• Improve credibility and credit ratings with carriers
• Command better rates as a result
• Audit and validate 100% of all freight invoices
• Dramatically reduce the cost associated with the processing of freight bills in house
• Gain access to a meaningful monthly and year end freight accrual
• Leverage the related data through effective database management and the production of meaningful Key Performance Indicators.

If you are a company with higher shipping volumes, or several different pricing tariff agreements and negotiated rates in place, our program is essential for your company. If you believe that your company could benefit from using collected and well managed data to drive performance measurements and hence the making of sound business decisions, then you’ll want to strongly consider our solution. In simple terms, would you elect not to implement a strong internal control to help protect your company’s assets?

Contact us today http://www.fpinj.com to setup your complimentary review. We would also like to take this opportunity to wish you and your family a happy holiday season.