Freight Invoice Audit & Payment
Freight Invoice Audit & Payment
Manual invoice audits and vendor settlement is laborious and prone to human error. This old way is inefficient and often results in misplaced invoices and delays in payment. Delayed payments make it difficult to accurately forecast monthly cash requirements.
Automate mundane, repetitive tasks
Transportation carriers are typically great at hauling or shipping but they are slow to invoice and the invoices are often incorrect or incomplete, creating delays and unnecessary communication breakdowns. This is an industry-wide pain point.
Manual invoice review is time-consuming. Errors and omissions are high. Disparate systems lack a single pane of glass view. An automated freight invoice and payment system can overcome these problems on both ends of the payment cycle.
Marex takes an automated approach to invoice audit and settlement. We leverage modern-day back-office automation tools to process invoices in minutes versus days or weeks.
Automated systems effectively perform tasks and free employee time for value-added activities;
- Shipment-level audit – automate shipment weights, mileage, discounts, and pricing verification.
- Invoice & delivery settlement
- Automated general ledger coding
- Configurable & flexible business rules
- Online summary payment options
- Purchase order compliance reporting
- Shipper and carrier payment visibility
Freight audit and payment (FAP) challenges
Why are freight audit and payment systems so complex?
- – many companies deal with large numbers of freight invoices, all requiring careful review and verification
- – creates a significant paper flow, further complicating the process.
- – differ from one provider to the next.
- – documents moving through approval stages are lost or delayed.
- – results in a large volume of inquiries via phone or email all of which delay the process.
A well-designed FAP system eradicates these problems, automating many of the mundane tasks, and checking against computerized data as approved by management. A FAP automatically promotes digital documents along to the next step of the approval funnel.
The consequences of failed or delayed freight audit and payment systems
The consequences of failed or delayed payment are severe.
- A manual system is as good as the people running it. Failure to pick up errors or check invoices thoroughly before payment could cost your business in overpayments. A FAP avoids this problem as agreed parameters are set on the system for automatic checks.
- Late payment could result in poor carrier performance or a denial of service.
- Late payment could affect your business credit score if the supplier reports it. A poor credit score may affect your ability to find efficient cost-effective carriers in the future.
Freight Auditing and Payment (FAP) Solutions
Your business can benefit enormously from the installation of an automated freight auditing and payment solution. Off the shelf or specifically designed for your business a FAP offers you the following advantages:
- Simplified and streamlined freight audits and payments through automated processes
- Automatic verification of all relevant shipment checks, including weight, mileage, agreed to shipping rates, insurance freight classification, and discounts
- No duplicate invoice payments
- Remove human error and improve human resource utilization by automating mundane and repetitive tasks
