8 Tips For Understanding The Freight Audit Process

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If your company started growing relatively quickly in the last couple of months, all of your daily tasks might have become more complex to complete. Because of this, a lot of people choose to make some tasks a priority, while they neglect others. One of those neglected tasks might be examining and making sure that the freight invoices are correct.

But, a lot of business owners neglect the fact that it’s quite necessary to check the freight invoices for mistakes, especially since if they aren’t resolved, they could end up causing a lot of issues that could easily impact their business quite a lot. To help you understand why it’s important, here are some tips that you should keep in mind:

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  1. First Things First – What is it?

In order for you to understand it better, you must learn what freight invoices are. If your organization works with different carriers that’ll transport your goods between your warehouse and your partners, you’ll most likely receive freight invoices, ones that’ll highlight the services you hired, as well as how much each of them costs. Of course, all that you need to do is to actually pay for the services you used. Yes, this does sound extremely simple, however, there are things that could influence the overall cost.

This means that mistakes could happen, and when they do, your company might be overpaying. Thus, a freight auditing process is when you or someone else goes through the invoices to ensure that they’re accurate. Each of the services and their costs need to be examined, and by doing so, you can easily determine whether or not the extra expenses are reasonable. If they aren’t, these mistakes can be corrected, thus, you could end up saving money.

  1. It Isn’t Always The Carriers Fault

Before you assume that a particular carrier might be ripping you off, you need to know that according to various studies, only 17 percent of the freight invoices are accurate. Keep in mind, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the carrier’s fault, which is especially true if complex contracts are involved, thus, there is always some room for mistakes. Nonetheless, over a period of time, these mistakes can become extremely expensive, and in most situations, you won’t be capable of getting your money back.

  1. It Can Help With Other Things as Well

By choosing to partner up with a company, you won’t only guarantee that the freight invoices are corrpreciseect, but you’ll also be able to improve your logistics, cut the expenses you have, increase the efficiency of your business & employees, and most importantly, you’ll be able to improve your revenue. This means that by implementing and working with freight auditing organizations, you could help your business thrive.

Visit https://ctglobal-freightaudit.com/ in case you are struggling to find a reliable company.

  1. Say “Goodbye” to Duplicate Invoices

Another thing that you have to ensure is that you don’t receive duplicate invoices for a particular job. After all, there are situations where a carrier might make a mistake while creating a bill, which can lead to you getting a bill for the same shipment twice. If you don’t have an auditing system in place, you might not notice this common mistake, thus, your company will lose money. But, if there is an auditing system within your business, you won’t need to avoid being double-charged.

  1. The Delivery Address Needs to Be Checked

If there is one thing that you must take away from this article, it’s the fact that you must double-check your delivery address. Why is this important? Well, the costs for residential and commercial locations tend to be different, which is why you must check the address and determine whether or not the charges are accurate. Will this really cost me a lot of money and is it necessary to check the address each time I receive an invoice? Yes, it’ll cost you extra and you must check each invoice individually.

We also need to mention that if the delivery location isn’t correct on the bill, it could lead to a lot of delays for the shipment, and sometimes, it might not get there at all – which can cause problems with your partners! Thus, to avoid this from happening to you and to avoid paying additional fees for not making the delivery on time, ensure that all the information, including the address, is correct.

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  1. The Approvals Are Mostly Automated!

By implementing a freight auditing system for your organization, you could also make the entire analyzing process less time-consuming! How? Well, it’s quite easy, most of these programs are completely automated, which means that they could automatically approve invoices instead of you. Of course, if there are some mistakes, it’ll send an alert, thus, the mistakes can be corrected as soon as possible.

  1. Outsourcing is an Option

Since there is a wide range of auditing companies out there, you won’t have to have a department that’ll check your invoices, instead, you can simply choose to outsource them. By doing so, you’ll ensure that all the information on your bills is correct and at the same time, you could end up saving a lot of money, mostly because you won’t have to hire and train additional staff members that’ll examine the bills you receive from your carriers.

  1. Your Relationship With The Carriers Will Be Improved

Last on our list, but equally important as everything else we’ve mentioned is the fact that your relationship with your carriers will be improved because of the freight auditing system. After all, you’ll be capable of correcting all of the errors on it, thus, instead of, for example, cutting ties with a carrier, you could correct the mistake and simply continue working with them. Naturally, if the errors occur every time you receive an invoice, you might want to change the carrier.

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Conclusion

Although a lot of business owners fail to go through all of their freight bills, this is one of the biggest errors they could make, especially since it could end up costing their business hundreds – or even thousands – of dollars if the mistakes in the invoices aren’t corrected on time.

Since you now understand the freight auditing process better and since you know what benefits it can provide you with, don’t waste your free time. Instead, you might want to go through our article one more time and then determine whether or not you’ll need it for your organization.