Freight Audit & Pay

Freight audit identifies a wide range of errors including: incorrect base rates that don't match your contract; duplicate invoices (even when invoice numbers differ slightly); fuel surcharges calculated on outdated indexes or applied to incorrect shipment weights; accessorial charges that exceed negotiated caps or don't align with service performed; residential delivery fees applied to commercial addresses; detention and waiting time charges that contradict delivery records; dimensional weight miscalculations; incorrect freight class assignments; and unauthorized charges for services you didn't request or receive. Many of these errors are difficult to spot manually because they require cross-referencing contract terms, shipment data, and historical billing patterns across thousands of transactions.

The system checks more than invoice numbers. It looks at combinations of shipper, consignee, ship date, weight, and product details. Even if two invoices have different pro numbers, a potential duplicate gets flagged and reviewed before payment.

When an error is identified, it depends on whether it's pre-payment or post-payment. For pre-payment errors, the invoice is automatically flagged and routed to the appropriate stakeholder with clear documentation of the discrepancy, supporting contract terms, and recommended resolution. Payment is held until the error is corrected. For post-payment errors, the platform automatically generates claims and routes them through the carrier dispute process. Experienced freight audit providers manage the entire dispute lifecycle - submitting documentation, following up with carriers, and tracking recovery through resolution - maximizing recovery rates while freeing your team from dispute management.

Yes. You define the thresholds. If a discrepancy falls below your tolerance, it processes without flagging an exception. Only the variances that matter to your business get surfaced.

AI and machine learning analyze patterns across millions of freight transactions to identify anomalies that rule-based audits and manual reviews consistently miss. Machine learning models recognize subtle billing discrepancies - like fuel surcharges calculated on outdated rates, accessorials that violate negotiated caps when combined across multiple shipments, or duplicate invoices with altered reference numbers. The system learns from every correction, improving accuracy over time. AI also enables predictive freight accruals, automated GL code mapping based on shipment attributes, and conversational analytics that let you query your freight spend data in natural language to uncover hidden cost drivers.

You provide your business rules and GL structure during implementation. Every invoice is coded before payment data is generated, so Finance gets clean, ready-to-use data whether it’s uploaded into SAP, your ERP, or sent as a report. 

Most shippers recover between 3-7% of their total freight spend through audit-driven error detection and correction. Beyond direct error recovery, automated freight audit and payment reduces invoice processing costs by up to 80-85% by eliminating manual review, accelerating payment cycles, and reducing disputes. The bigger strategic value comes from the intelligence freight audit provides: visibility into carrier performance, cost trends by lane and mode, and verified execution data that strengthens your position in contract negotiations. This intelligence often leads to 10-20% additional savings in subsequent carrier contracts.

You'll need carrier invoices (which can be received electronically via EDI, API, email, or carrier portals), your negotiated carrier contracts and rate agreements, and shipment data from your TMS, ERP, or warehouse management system (including BOLs, purchase orders, and delivery records). Most freight audit platforms integrate directly with major ERP systems (SAP, Oracle, Manhattan) and TMS platforms via API, EDI, or SFTP so data flows automatically without manual file transfers. The platform normalizes data from different sources and formats into a unified structure for validation and analysis.

Yes, we maintain enterprise-grade security standards including SOC 2 Type 2 certification, GDPR compliance, and regular third-party security audits. Your transportation and financial data is encrypted in transit and at rest, with role-based access controls, audit trails of all system activity, and secure data exchange protocols (API, EDI, SFTP with encryption). These security measures protect sensitive rate information, shipment details, and payment data throughout the audit and payment lifecycle.