You have a choice.
You can accept that 22% of freight bills (nearly one out of every four) contain an error. Just pay them. Write it off as a cost of doing business. Move on.
Or you can systematically audit invoices, identify errors, and recover the money.
Most shippers choose the first option because they don’t have the infrastructure for the second. So they lose money every year and don’t even realize it.
On a $1M annual transportation spend, that is $30,000–$70,000 sitting in billing errors most operators never chase.
The choice is yours. But the cost of inaction is real.
What’s Actually Being Billed Incorrectly
If you’ve never audited your freight invoices, you probably don’t know what errors look like in practice.
Common billing errors include:
- Overcharges on base rates: Carriers apply rates that exceed your negotiated contracts
- Duplicate invoices: The same shipment appears on two separate invoices (sometimes with different numbers to avoid detection)
- Misclassified freight: Shipments categorized into higher freight classes, resulting in higher charges
- Incorrect weights or dimensions: Carrier systems use heavier weights or larger dimensions than actual shipment specifications
- Fuel surcharges on wrong weights: Fuel surcharges calculated based on incorrect dimensions rather than actual shipment data
- Unauthorized accessorial fees: Residential delivery charges, handling fees, and other accessorials applied to shipments that don’t qualify
- Misapplied discounts: Volume discounts or contract terms not honored in the billing system
Each error alone might be $50 or $200 or $500. Across thousands of shipments per year, they aggregate to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Why You Don’t Know This Is Happening
Most shippers operate with a basic payment approval process:
- Receive invoice
- Check if it matches bill of lading
- Verify carrier insurance and DOT compliance
- Pay invoice
This process catches nothing about billing accuracy.
It doesn’t compare rates to contracts. It doesn’t check for duplicates. It doesn’t verify freight classifications. It doesn’t cross-reference weights. It just verifies that a carrier exists and the invoice looks normal. It’s essentially a big fat rubber stamp.
The result? Freight invoice error rates across enterprise shipping programs typically account for between 3-7% of total freight spend, with most errors favoring the carrier and most going unrecovered.
The Two Paths Forward
Path 1: Keep doing what you’re doing
Accept that billing errors are inevitable. Don’t audit invoices. Pay them as received. Write off the losses as a cost of logistics.
Cost: 3-7% of annual freight spend in unrecovered billing errors.
Path 2: Implement systematic invoice auditing
Audit invoices against contracts and shipment records. Identify errors. Dispute charges and recover refunds. Work with carriers to fix root causes and prevent future errors.
Cost: Time and infrastructure to set up the process. Or outsource to a 3PL that already does this.
Benefit: Recover 3-7% of annual freight spend. Improve cash flow. Reduce overpayment risk. Build visibility into what you’re actually spending on freight.
Why 3PLs Can Deliver This Better Than Internal Teams
If you try to audit invoices internally, you’ll run into three obstacles:
Resource limitation: Systematic auditing of thousands of invoices requires dedicated staff time. Most companies don’t have this. Auditing becomes a background task, done sporadically, missing most errors.
System limitation: Manual invoice auditing is slow and error-prone. You need software integration with your TMS, carrier billing systems, and shipment records. Most self-shippers don’t have this connectivity.
Data limitation: You don’t know what market rates are for your lanes. You don’t see billing patterns across carriers. You don’t have benchmarks for what “normal” pricing looks like. Without this visibility, you can’t identify when a carrier is overcharging.
A 3PL like Supply Chain Solutions operates at scale. We audit invoices for dozens or hundreds of shippers. We see patterns. We have market data. We have integrated systems. We have dedicated expertise.
Through our managed transportation services, we systematically audit invoices, identify errors, recover refunds, and work with carriers to prevent future mistakes.
For you, it’s invisible. You just see recovery credits flowing back to your account and knowing your invoices are being verified before payment.
The Decision
You’re leaving money on the table. That’s industry fact.
You can accept that and move on. Or you can do something about it. The cost of doing something is far less than the cost of doing nothing.
Ready to recover your freight spend?
At SCS, we conduct complimentary freight audit assessments. We’ll review recent invoices, identify errors and patterns, and show you exactly how much you’re overpaying.
No obligation. No cost. Just data.
Call 763.400.8025 or email sales@supplychainsolutionscorp.com to schedule your assessment.
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