Get full control over your freight bills

In recent years, steadily increasing freight cost have become a major area of concern. This increase is mainly due to a unprecedented rise of world oil prices. With these fluctuations of fuel costs, low visibility of the future freight costs and high complexity of the freight quotes, freight bill audits are vulnerable to human and process errors. More than ever this requires proper auditing to ensure that the organization does not overpay for services it did not incur.

Forwarder freight rates are usually maintained in multiple spreadsheets and each forwarder uses a different freight rate format towards the customer. An organization is daunted with the task of calculating the freight rates manually. This task can be particularly challenging when the customer has hundreds or even thousands of consignments shipped each month.

Most organizations do not have the manpower to audit all freight bills issued to them. At best they perform random invoice checking to identify if the particular sample invoice has been billed correctly.

 

In order to deal with these challenges, ReturnPool offers a freight audit and payment service to provide an answer to all of your invoice control issues. This full service consists of the following elements:

• The Invoice Checking System (ICS) in which freight rates and e-bills are uploaded. Any discrepancies between agreed rates and invoiced amounts are automatically alerted.
• Human intervention (Rate review, credit chasing)
• Freight payment
• Freight cost benchmarking

The core service is ICS, the human intervention and freight payment by ReturnPool are optional services that can be added to the solution.

Invoice Checking System (ICS): Invoice Validation & Reporting

The Invoice Checking System ICS is at the heart of our service enabling each and every invoice line to be checked for the following criteria:

• Was the correct rate used?
• Were the correct volume dimensions used?
• Was this shipment actually requested?
• Has this shipment already been invoiced?
• Have these additional costs / surcharges actually been agreed?

The ICS-part of the ReturnPool Freight Audit and Payment solution will give you a 100% insight in the invoice accuracy of your logistics service suppliers.

Additional Services: Credit Chasing (Dispute Management)

The checking of invoices is an important step. However, the service of ReturnPool goes beyond the identification of billing errors. For many of our customers we deploy a low cost credit-chasing service from our Srilankan office to ensure credits are issued by the involved suppliers. At present, ReturnPool is handling these services for more than 125.000 invoice lines a month, which has led to attained credits in access of 3.000.000 Euros for our customers.

Additional Services: Freight Payment & Recharging

On top of freight invoice checking and credit chasing, ReturnPool offers freight payment services. This includes not only the actual freight invoice payment and periodical recharging, but can also include the contract negotiations and contract ownership. The freight payment service can be particularly useful in case fiscal reasons require freight costs to be re-invoiced to an entity different from the one where the transportation took place.

Additional Services: Payment Triggering

Based on the outcome of our validation process, we can update the invoice approval status in your own ERP system, including final payment triggering. By deploying our experienced resources from our offices in Sri-Lanka we are able to offer this service with the appropriate service levels at a competitive price.

Additional Services: RFQ Management

Do you have the manpower and competencies to successfully run transportation tenders? Based on our experience in the logistics environment and our involvement in the related financial processes, ReturnPool is ideally positioned to assist companies in their logistics sourcing. By using our RFQ Management services, you:

• Reduce risk of selecting inadequate partners
• Capitalize on our experience to get the best possible pricing offers
• Save time and use of your valuable resources
• Secure the performance and profitability of your business operations
• Can benefit from our knowledge and analyzing tools
• Reduce your outsourcing costs
• Improve the quality of your service through standardized processes

Additional Services: Freight Cost Benchmarking, Data Analysis

To ensure that you have competitive rates, ReturnPool offers a comprehensive Freight Cost Benchmarking service linked to our Freight Audit solution. In order to get a 100% accurate picture the, we re-process your actual historical transactions against the rates received from various potential transportation suppliers. The result of this analysis is published in a comprehensive report allowing you to take the necessary business decisions.  By doing so, we avoid situations whereby the rates you have received from your current supplier appeared to be cheaper than those of the competition, but turned out to be more expensive as:

• your voluminous goods are charged at different weight-volume ratios per supplier: A lower rate per kg can still turn out to be more expensive due to the volume-weight ratio factor.
• in majority the rates of your current supplier seemed overall to be the cheapest, but particularly in those weight brackets where you have most of your shipments, the rates are actually higher than those of the competition.

So, rather than just trying to compare rates of the various suppliers and estimating potential savings, the ReturnPool solution is actually basing its conclusion on your realistic facts and figures.

Visit our dedicated Freight Audit & Payment website

ReturnPool is one of the main players where it comes to Freight Audit & Payment. Not only do we have the tools and systems, but we have the operational knowledge of the transportation industry to properly do the job. So if you are serious about Freight Audit and Payment, go for the best in systems and in-depth industry knowledge rather than an IT provider lacking practical knowledge and offering systems that cannot cope with reality. Learn more about the ReturnPool Freight Audit and Payment solution. Visit www.invoicechecking.com and check it out.