Freight Invoice Inaccuracies Are
Too Common

Retailers, brands and manufacturers rely on a large network of trusted transportation service providers to move goods from source to shelf. While the physical movement of goods is typically straight forward, the associated invoice structures and charge types are not. Oftentimes invoicing is rolled up by a bill of lading with a myriad of charge line items with minimal reference information to support review and reconciliation with agreed upon contract terms and conditions. When combined, the complexity of charges and the structure of invoices becomes a time-consuming, difficult lift that only increases work on the transportation and accounting resources. Advanced collaboration, data management, alert notification and visibility technologies offer a proven path to control and optimize freight spend.

Challenges

Second, only to the cost of goods, freight expenses are the largest direct cost impacting both import and domestic supply chains.
Carrier billing systems loosely conform to any standard, are often complicated and configured to satisfy internal needs rather than providing ease of use or clarity for the customer.
Manual, un-automated audits to qualify each invoice prior to authorization for payment require a lot of recurring work and are time consuming for already constrained operating staff.
Invoice charge structures frequently change with the additional of unapproved or outside of contract line items difficult to identify and dispute.
Third-party audit service firms are an expensive option when compared to software enabled solutions.

Automated Freight Audit and Approve to Pay for Transportation Services

Clarity™ Freight Expense Management software-as-a-service application, a hosted module on the ClearTrack® Global Trade Management network platform, addresses the industry’s challenges by replacing offline, manual methods with the latest cloud-based collaboration and application techniques for freight audit and payment approval. The Freight Expense Management application provides a systematic way of validating freight charges with verified shipment activity and contract terms all displayed through an online, secure portal for review and authorization and approve to pay advice for the organization’s accounting function.

Benefits

Streamline the review of freight invoices

Best practices audit process standardization and rules-based approval or dispute recommendations for each freight invoice line item charge.

Create a unified invoice and audit ledger

Capture and record presented charges, audit and approve to pay details for every invoice creating a master system of record for analysis, insight and planning.

Automate approve to pay processes

Export and distribute detailed, line item level payment authorizations for your accounts payable team

Create a unified invoice and audit ledger

Capture and record presented charges, audit and approve to pay details for every invoice creating a master system of record for analysis, insight and planning.

Features & Use Cases

Clarity™ Freight Expense Management module highlights

On-demand or automated upload of electronic invoices with confirmation of receipt and recording in the system.

Business rules driven analysis of each invoice configured to the organization’s contract terms with systemized recommendation.

A secure, easy-to-access, centralized repository of all inspection and lab test work requests, results and re-work supporting review, analysis and planning activities.

Business intelligence reporting for review, analysis and decision support.

Optional – Advanced analytics for visualization, analysis and insight into trends and opportunities.

Online, secure dashboard to view the status and detail of every freight invoice easily filtered by carrier, shipment details, dates and status.

Flexible on-demand or automated extracts for loading into the organization’s accounts payables system.

Automated e-mail alert notifications distributed to pre-selected recipients within the organization, as well as across the supplier and service provider communities.

Optional – Automated reconciliation with recorded freight activity history to prevent mis-billing and duplicate billings (requires Shipment & Order Visibility module)