Why Companies Buy Freight Audit
Shippers face the complex task of managing freight costs, and many turn to freight audit companies like TLI to simplify the process. By automating the General Ledger (GL) coding, we help companies reduce the time and effort needed to ensure accurate invoices. Our customers value the tolerance we build into the system, which ensures that carriers are invoicing correctly, avoiding unnecessary overcharges. Unlike competitors, we don’t just flag issues; we actively mitigate them with the carriers, ensuring that discrepancies are resolved before they impact your bottom line.
Many of our clients also want us to go a step further by handling payment to the carriers on their behalf. Others prefer us to build accruals and reports, leaving them to handle payments. Either way, our solution is flexible and tailored to meet each customer’s specific needs. However, the biggest reason businesses choose to partner together with us is data optimization. By leveraging historical data, we run simulations against your contracts to optimize pricing, identify cost-saving opportunities, and streamline the entire process.
Our approach ensures that you get the most accurate and cost-effective rates, leveraging both dynamic rating and mode optimization. We simplify the complexities of freight auditing so you can focus on growing your business, while we manage the invoicing and disputes on your behalf.
How Our Freight Audit Process Works
Our freight audit process is designed to scale your business. The first step begins when we receive your carrier invoices. Whether through EDI or file uploads, our system automatically reviews the invoices against your contracted rates. Our advanced Audit Engine checks for any discrepancies, ensuring that you’re not paying more than necessary.
Once flagged, our expert auditors take over. They inspect each discrepancy, using their extensive knowledge of the freight industry to identify and resolve issues quickly. This proactive approach saves you time and money by preventing overpayments. Finally, we consolidate all the invoice data into a single, easy-to-understand summary, making the payment process simple and efficient for you.
We also schedule monthly or quarterly meetings with you to review ongoing results. These meetings allow us to continuously refine the process, ensuring that the freight audit and payment service remains aligned with your business goals.
Benefits of Freight Invoice Audit
Freight invoice auditing offers several key benefits that can transform how you manage shipping costs. One major advantage is the ability to recover cost savings. By catching discrepancies early, we ensure that you’re not overpaying for freight services, and we help you reclaim overpaid amounts. This leads to significant cost recovery, improving your overall profitability.
Another key benefit is the visibility it provides into your shipping processes. Our auditing service allows you to track and analyze freight costs in real-time, helping you spot inefficiencies and areas where you can optimize your logistics operations. By gaining this insight, you can make informed decisions to improve your supply chain management.
Finally, freight audit services simplify your invoicing process. Instead of dealing with multiple invoices and lengthy reconciliation, our system consolidates everything into one easy-to-read summary. This reduces administrative work, freeing up your team to focus on more critical tasks, such as managing your core business functions.
Invoice Disputing and How It Saves Time and Money
We take invoice disputing seriously. When our auditors spot discrepancies in your carrier invoices, they don’t just flag them—they actively manage the dispute. Using their deep industry knowledge, our team researches the shipments and locations to gather evidence that supports your case. Then, we provide this proof to the carrier and work to get the invoice corrected.
This process saves you both time and money by ensuring that you’re only paying the accurate charges. Without our proactive approach, many companies would be left handling disputes themselves, spending countless hours negotiating with carriers and tracking down the correct charges. By outsourcing this process to TLI, you reduce your administrative burden and control your freight spend more effectively.
Our expert team works with over 30,000 carriers across more than 50 industries, giving us a proven track record of resolving disputes quickly and efficiently. We don’t just rely on software to flag errors—we use human expertise to resolve the issues before they become a problem.
Benchmarking and Reporting: Optimizing Freight Costs
Cost benchmarking is another area where our auditing process also stands out. Our rating engines analyze your shipping data, generating pricing scenarios that help you keep your freight rates competitive. Whether you’re dealing with LTL or truckload freight, we provide in-depth analysis that ensures your rates align with the best industry standards.
Our cost allocation summaries and business intelligence reports give you a clear picture of where your money is going. These reports help you make smarter decisions about your logistics strategies, ensuring that your shipping costs remain under control while still meeting your service level requirements.
What sets us apart from just leading freight audit software is our team of experts. While technology is essential and will be provided, we believe in the value of human intervention. Our team handles the cost mitigation for you, researching and disputing charges before they even reach your desk. This allows you to start recovering savings immediately without lifting a finger.