Strategic Freight Audit and Payment to Protect Your Margins
Our clients identify and recover up to 7% of their total freight spend through our comprehensive, multi-point audit and automated payment platform.
Trusted by leaders across industries
Why Manual Freight Auditing Puts Your Budget at Risk
Limited Spend Visibility
Opaque processes make it impossible to forecast accurately, benchmark carrier performance, or identify cross-modal savings opportunities.
Invoice Discrepancies
Overcharges, duplicate invoices, and misapplied accessorial fees inflate costs and demand extensive manual reconciliation.
Inefficient Workflows
High-touch processing and approval cycles increase administrative overhead and late payment risk.
A Comprehensive Freight Audit Solution for High-Volume Shippers
Automated Invoice Auditing
We audit every invoice against your carrier contracts, automatically identifying and flagging over 150 potential error types for recovery and correction before you pay.
Recovery & Dispute Management
We manage the entire dispute and recovery lifecycle. Our experts handle claims, carrier communication, and credit tracking to maximize your cost recovery and save your team valuable time.
GL Code Allocation
Streamline your accounting by automatically allocating freight costs to the correct general ledger codes and business units, saving your finance team hours of manual work.
Unified Carrier Payments
Consolidate all freight payments into a single weekly process. We pay your carriers accurately and on time, protecting your reputation and eliminating late fees.
Convert Freight Shipping Data Into Strategic Financial Insights
Recover 3-7% of Your Total Freight Spend
Our multi-point audit goes beyond basic rate checks to find savings others miss. The result is a direct and immediate improvement to your profit margins, validated by our clients’ experiences across all industries.
Strengthen Carrier Negotiations with Data
Our platform transforms your invoice data into a powerful negotiating tool. Track carrier performance, analyze lane rates, and model the financial impact of contract changes to secure more favorable terms and reduce future spend.
Achieve 100% Budgetary Visibility
Get a precise, real-time view of your transportation accruals and spend. This allows for more accurate financial planning and eliminates end-of-quarter surprises, giving you full control over your logistics budget.
Automated Freight Audit & Recovery
Our platform is engineered to find savings that other systems and manual processes miss. We combine powerful automation with customizable logic to give your team unmatched control and visibility over every dollar of your freight spend.
Accessorial & Surcharge Validation
We go beyond simple rate checks to scrutinize every accessorial fee and surcharge—like fuel, residential, and liftgate—automatically flagging incorrect or misapplied charges that inflate your freight spend.
Customizable Audit & Payment Logic
Implement your specific internal logic for GL coding, approval workflows, and cost center allocation to prevent incorrect payments and fit your unique business needs.
Integrated Dispute & Recovery Workflow
Flagged errors automatically generate claims within the platform. Track the status of every dispute from submission to resolution and credit confirmation in one central place.
Savings & Performance Analytics
Visualize your recovered savings, track carrier invoice accuracy, and identify recurring error trends through customizable dashboards to drive continuous improvement.
Seamless Integration and Enterprise-Grade Security
Our expert-led onboarding is designed to be fast and light on your IT resources. We manage the entire integration process, establishing a secure connection to get you from kickoff to cost savings in as little as 4-6 weeks.
Core System Integrations
We connect with your core business systems, from major ERPs like Oracle and SAP to your WMS, TMS, and order management platforms.
Seamless Data Exchange
Our platform supports multiple data transfer methods to ensure a smooth connection, including API, EDI, and SFTP.
Certified Enterprise-Grade Security
Your data is protected by our SOC 2 Type 2 certified and GDPR compliant platform.
Our Freight Audit Process
1
Discovery & Integration:
We connect with your systems and carriers, a process that typically takes 2-4 weeks. We handle all the technical setup on your behalf.
2
Go-Live & Automation:
Your invoices begin flowing through our platform. Auditing, exception handling, and payment processing are immediately automated for accuracy and efficiency.
3
Realize Savings:
Within the first 30 days, you will see identified savings and gain full visibility into your freight spend through our analytics dashboard.
4
Ongoing Optimization:
We meet with you quarterly to review performance, identify new savings opportunities, and ensure the solution evolves with your business goals.
The Zero Down Advantage: A Complete Solution
Capability
Traditional BPOs / Manual Services
Self-Service Software
Audit & Recovery
End-to-end, automated audit, claims management, and payment processing.
Manual audit and error flagging; recovery is often a separate effort.
Provides software tools for your team to perform audits and chase recoveries.
Accuracy & Depth
150+ point automated audit engine combined with expert human oversight.
Dependent on the individual auditor’s expertise and manual process.
Platform accuracy is limited by your team’s ability to configure carrier rules.
Financial Visibility
A single source of truth for real-time accruals, analytics, and reporting.
Delivers static, historical reports, often with a significant time lag.
Requires your team to consolidate data and generate insights.
The Human Element
A dedicated strategic partner for continuous process and cost improvement.
Functions as an outsourced transactional team for a defined scope.
Standard technical software support for platform users.
Capability
Traditional Service Providers
Self-Service Platforms
Audit & Recovery
Fully Managed Recovery
Standardized Rules
Requires Manual Config
Contract Negotiation
Expert-Led Negotiation
Client-Led Process
Data Only
Claims Management
End-to-End Management
Limited Involvement
Full Burden on Client
Business Intelligence
Actionable, Strategic Insights
Standard Reporting
Raw Data Dashboards
Capability: Packaging Optimization
Proactive Analysis
Identify DIM weight and surcharge drivers to lower costs and improve sustainability.
Overlooked
Packaging inefficiencies and dimensional charges are often ignored.
Not Included
Your team must manage packaging analysis separately.
Trusted by High-Volume Shippers
VP, Supply Chain / Manufacturing / Supply Chain
500M – 1B USD
Intuitive Dashboard And Effective Data Analysis To Support Business Needs
Chief Financial Officer / Manufacturing / Finance
<50M USD
Zero Down Revolutionizes Transport Management With Cost-Effective Pricing And Support
Director Account Management / Transportation / Management / Business Consulting
3B – 10B USD
Zero Down's Solution Has Improved Visibility And Resulting In Net Savings
CFO / Manufacturing / Finance
<50M USD
Fantastic Service, Great Company To Work With
VP, Operations / Consumer Goods / Operations
500M – 1B USD
Better With Them Than Without
Frequently Asked Questions
A freight audit and payment service reviews carrier invoices for accuracy, ensures all charges comply with contracted rates, and processes payments on time. This prevents overbilling, reduces administrative workload, and gives finance and logistics teams complete visibility into transportation costs — protecting your bottom line.
Unlike manual or post-payment audits, Zero Down uses a multi-point, automated pre- and post-payment audit that catches over 150 potential error types before invoices are paid. Traditional providers often rely on limited checks or delayed recovery, while our platform integrates directly with your ERP/TMS for real-time visibility and immediate savings.
Freight audits commonly identify:
- Duplicate invoices
- Incorrect accessorial charges (fuel, liftgate, residential delivery)
- Dimensional weight (DIM) errors
- Misapplied surcharges
- Service-level guarantee failures
Catching these discrepancies can recover 3–7% of your annual freight spend.
Our platform audits all transportation modes including parcel, LTL, truckload, ocean, and air freight. This gives you a single solution to manage complex carrier billing across your entire global supply chain.
Yes. Zero Down conducts both pre-payment audits (to prevent incorrect charges before payment) and post-payment audits (to recover missed savings retroactively). This dual approach ensures maximum cost recovery and compliance.
Most shippers recover between 3–7% of their total freight spend through audit-driven savings. In addition, automating the audit-to-payment lifecycle reduces invoice processing costs by up to 85%, freeing your team from manual work.
Zero Down goes beyond rate checks. We audit compliance with carrier contracts, flag misapplied accessorials, and analyze performance data to uncover long-term savings opportunities, such as lane optimization, carrier mix improvements, and better contract negotiations.
Clients typically see measurable savings within the first 30 days of going live. Because implementation is quick (4–6 weeks), ROI is realized fast, and savings compound over time as additional optimization opportunities are identified.
Yes. Zero Down integrates seamlessly with major ERP and TMS platforms, including Oracle, SAP, and Manhattan, as well as WMS and order management systems. This ensures all freight data flows into your existing workflows without disruption.
We offer multiple secure data transfer options, including API, EDI, and SFTP. This flexibility ensures smooth integration with your current IT infrastructure while maintaining data accuracy and timeliness.
Yes. The Zero Down platform is SOC 2 Type 2 certified, GDPR compliant, and undergoes regular third-party audits. Your sensitive transportation and financial data are protected with enterprise-grade security protocols.
See What You Could Be Saving
Stop overpaying for shipping. Let our team provide a complimentary, no-obligation analysis of your recent freight invoices to identify your potential savings. Schedule a brief introductory call to get started.