Freight Audit and Payment

Automated freight audit and payment services tailored to streamline your financial workflows and ensure every charge is accounted for accurately.
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Freight Audit and Payment

Automated Invoice Auditing and
Payment Optimization Solutions

Automated Invoice Verification

Let your employees focus on more important things while our solution examines every invoice for billing errors, discrepancies, contract violations.

On-Time Carrier Payments

Don’t damage carrier relationships with late payments. We send payments on-time, every time, and according to your carrier contract.

Seamless Refund Recovery

Don’t leave money on the table. Our automated tool removes the risk of human error, uncovering more refund opportunities to save you money in a fraction of the time and cost.

Identify Cost-Effective Improvements

Our auditing program provides easily digestible data to help you make logistical improvements that improve service quality and negotiate with carriers who fall short.

How Our Audit and Payment Process Works

Freight audit and payment begins the moment you receive a freight invoice and ends
when the payment for a valid invoice is confirmed.

Ingest & Normalize Data

We receive carrier invoices from multiple file formats (EDI, CSV, etc.), integrating them seamlessly into our audit system for accurate analysis.

Automated Audit & Invoice Matching

FreightOptics™ automatically parses and matches invoices, identifying discrepancies and verifying rates, surcharges, and discounts.

Exception Management

Any exceptions are identified, corrected, and/or submitted for client review, ensuring that necessary approvals are obtained before proceeding with corrections.

Cost Allocation

We apply accurate GL codes to ensure costs are properly allocated across departments or business units for greater visibility and control.

Payment Processing & Refunds

We finalize invoices, recover any refunds, and manage or provide remittance for carrier payments.

Contract Compliance and Financial Operations Optimization

Analyze contract terms to ensure they meet your shipping needs and align with market rates.
Automatically allocate every expense based on your GL coding rules, extending to the SKU level as needed for detailed financial tracking.
Rigorously compare and reconcile carrier charges against expected amounts, with comprehensive reporting to identify and understand any discrepancies.

Multiple forms of data capture, including OCR scanning, increase data accuracy and integrity over manual entry.

Meticulously review each invoice to prevent costly billing errors, duplicate charges, and other discrepancies before processing payment.

Monitor and analyze operations to look for improvement opportunities that increase service levels, reduce shipping costs, and inform decisions about carrier management.

Automatically process payments on time and through the designated payment method to keep carriers happy and improve negotiating power.

Covering All Modes of Transportation

By Sea

Ocean freight is naturally complex, generally using multiple modes of transportation for a single shipment and incurring accessorial fees throughout transport.

Our solution organizes linked invoices to avoid duplicate charges, ensures shipments are being consolidated correctly, and increases visibility throughout the entire process.

By Road

Road freight is one of the most common modes of transport, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

We’ll help you secure favorable LTL and FTL rates, ensure service levels are fulfilled, and recover incorrect accessorial fees that come from deliveries.

By Rail

Rail freight is cost-effective, but it’s less flexible than other methods, so you need the right partner to avoid costly mistakes.

Our FAP solutions help effectively plan your shipment’s timing, ensure the carrier has the capacity to fit your shipments, and monitor the shipment's progress from start to finish.

By Air

Air freight can get costly without effective air rates and monitoring for unnecessary accessorial fees.

We constantly work to find the best rates to keep your costs down while ensuring your shipments arrive on time.

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Automated Invoice Auditing and Payment Optimization Solutions

Automated Invoice Audits

Let your employees focus on more important things while our solution examines every invoice for billing errors, discrepancies, and contract violations.

Carrier Payments and Cost Allocation

Ensure timely payments and precise cost allocation in full compliance with your carrier contracts. We help protect your carrier relationships while streamlining your payment process.

Seamless Refund Recovery

Don’t leave money on the table. Our automated tool removes the risk of human error, uncovering more refund opportunities to save you money in a fraction of the time and cost.

Identify Cost-Effective Improvements

Our auditing program provides easily digestible data to help you make logistical improvements that increase service quality and negotiate with carriers who fall short.

Client Success Stories & Proven Results

Ocean freight is naturally complex, generally using multiple modes of transportation for a single shipment and incurring accessorial fees throughout transport.

Total Savings

$ 0 B+

Cost Savings
Potential Up to

0 %

Parcel and
Freight Carriers

0 +
“ We have always tried to manage our transportation needs based on our success or failures with different carriers. Zero Down has shown that they have much more visibility and understanding on the inner workings of the local carriers that we could have ever imagined. We thank you for the valued service that you are able to provide us. “
T.W., Purchasing AgentLighting Manufacturer
T.W., Purchasing Agent
Due to the overwhelming success of Zero Down’s FreightOptics audit and optimization platform, our parcel carrier actually tried to sway us to one of their less effective competitors.
C. C., Vice President of Plant OperationsCruise Line Vendor
C. C., Vice President of Plant Operations
Thank you for all your help and patience in the last couple of years to make this happen. Your advice during COVID and the inflationary environment was key in getting us a good deal.
S.T., Head of StrategyPromotional Products Distributor
S.T., Head of Strategy
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Why Should Zero Down Manage My Freight Audit and Payment?

Cost-effective shipping means protecting your bottom line. Billing errors can cost you 15% or more in shipping costs, so an effective auditing solution is essential for finding and recovering overcharges as well as negotiating better rates.

Shipping is a complex process that’s difficult to optimize without operational visibility. Our transportation management systems identify improvements to things like packaging and shipping routes that make your operations more efficient.

Carriers dictate your shipping costs and customer experience. Keeping them happy means better rates, reliable service, and flexible accommodations – and that starts with our timely payment services.

FAQs

Freight audit and payment is the process of analyzing, reviewing, and paying freight invoices. During this process, you’ll look for billing errors, compare the invoice to your carrier contract terms, collect and analyze data about the shipment to look for cost savings, and pay freight carriers accordingly.

Freight audit providers help lower shipping costs by identifying billing errors and recovering refunds. They’ll also simplify the freight payment process, which helps keep carriers happy for better rates and terms.

The insights gained from auditing even uncover cost-effective improvements you can make to your shipping process to lower freight spend.

Freight audits work by collecting your invoices as they come in, capturing the data into an online system, and scrutinizing each field against your carrier contract and package details to ensure the charges are valid.
Freight audits find incorrect rates, unnecessary surcharges or accessorial fees, incorrect dimensions and weight, service failures like late deliveries, duplicate invoices, and much more.
A freight audit provider can save you 15% or more on your shipping costs while improving service quality.
Yes, our FAP solutions work with each carrier. You can sort invoices by carrier or other fields to simplify organization in a centralized resource.
At Zero Down, our FA&P solutions save you time, money, and stress. You’ll save money on labor costs associated with manually auditing invoices and gain more valuable insights from the data-rich reports our tools generate about your supply chain efficiency

You can also enjoy peace of mind knowing that every mistake and error will be identified, fixed, and recovered to keep your freight costs down. Our payment solutions will also keep your carriers happy so you can benefit from consistent, reliable service quality that creates high-quality customer experiences.

Take Control of Your Transportation Spend

We audit your freight invoices for accuracy and manage payments, ensuring full compliance with your carrier agreements.
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