Control your shipping bills and reduce costs by 10 %

Managing a ship cost reconciliation project I noticed that carriers frequently miscalculated accessorial charges (liftgate, residential charge etc.). An analysis shown that even though incidents were rare - our total bill was inflated by 10 %. To address this issue we set up an invoice verification and price adjustment processes.

Setting up an account, negotiating better discounts and converting everyone to ship on your account is a great first step, however not the last. Here are a few advices I would like to share:

1. Understand your pricing. Each service type can have a different discount rate.
2. Subscribe to weekly invoicing file in XLS or CSV format.
3. Verify all your invoices, look for anomalies (pivot tables and Excel macros make miracles).
4. File a weekly price adjustment request specifying each erroneous invoice.
5. Work closely with the carrier - prevention is the best medicine.

In conclusion, a comprehensive invoice verification process requires 8-10 hours a week of a trained person. We kept it internally and did quite well. Nevertheless, outsourcing invoice verification would be a smart move as it is a laborous work and results are easy to measure.

Time to start saving is now! Happy Savings.