Our freight bills are already audited!

When we speak to prospective customers, one thing we often hear is that they already have an outside firm review their bills prior to payment or that they review the bills themselves.  We explain that the majority of our audit of freight bills are done following audit and freight payment and that our audits still finds mistakes that have been overlooked.

Recently we received a refund from a carrier for one of our clients that is a great example of why there is value in having an additional audit after the bills have been paid.  Our client in Texas gave an LTL carrier a shipment going to Barbados.  This carrier is an multinational company with various operations including some that handle international shipments.  But their LTL operation only handles the domestic portion of a shipment destined to Barbados and those shipments show what port to move the freight to and the forwarding company that will handle the ocean freight.  The original bill of lading showed none of that information.  To further complicate matters, the B/L showed a third party billing address in Barbados (another no-no) and an account number for this carrier.

The shipment was picked up and moved into the carrier's system because the postal code used for Barbados is a five digit number exactly like our own ZIP code system.  So the carrier's computers routed this freight towards Virginia.  Ultimately the shipment was stopped in Pennsylvania and returned to our customer's plant in Texas, with  a note saying they could not deliver to Barbados.

The customer's freight payer originally rejected the bill asking the client to review the bill.  The customer, recognizing that they gave the shipment to the LTL carrier, authorized the payment of both the outbound bill and the return charges back to their factory.

With year's of experience, our auditor asked how the shipment even left the origin terminal since it should have been obvious at that point that they do not deliver to this foreign country. At that point, we expected to file a claim for refund for all of the charges less a fee they charge for returning shipments to a shipper from the origin point.  In speaking to a sales representative for the carrier, he learned that, in fact, the driver never should have picked the shipment up.  Had they noted the shipment was going to Barbados, their hand-held computer would have prevented the shipment from even entering their system.  Subsequently, we filed the claim for the total freight charges for both invoices.

Initially they refused to refund the bills, noting simply that someone at the shipper had authorized the charges both ways.  We again explained that the shipment never should have been picked up in the first place.  That brought about the refund check that we received.  Both the freight payment service and the customer themselves overlooked the driver's error that compounded the customer's own  mistake.  The customer had OK'd payment of the charges and the payment service acted accordingly.

We sent our customer the check for nearly $900.00; money they never would have recovered without our post-audit.

Give us a call today to discuss how we can begin recovering money you've overpaid to your carriers.  Our decades of experience can get to work for you too!

Learn more about our freight bill auditing service.

Transporation's New Frontier

My family has long been in the transportation business in some form or another.  My dad began in the railroad carloading business in the late 1940's (where small shipments were loaded on to rail cars, a dying mode still competing with the burgeoning Less Than Truckload business).  From there he went on to working for various trucking companies in sales, then to managing a manufacturer's traffic and purchasing departments and finally starting his own consulting company, Jayanel Associates.  I took over the auditing and rate quoting services of that company in 1979, beginning Traffic Services of Cinti.

Further my maternal grandfather worked for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company and my wife's maternal grandfather worked for the Missouri Pacific Railroad.  In doing genealogy work for my family, I learned that my great-grandpa, also Joe Metz, an immigrant from Germany, was a "teamster" back when that was the actual job, driving a team of horses.  Another great-grandfather was a clerk for a railroad firm (not sure which one).

With all that history, my family has lived the arc of transportation advancements for over a century; from moving goods by horse & wagon, on to trains that trekked across the country, to the trucking business.  Last week, I visited my dad, now in his 80's, and told him about the latest in the movement of cargo - a private rocket cargo company which will carry goods from here on Earth up to the International Space Station.  I asked Dad if he'd ever thought he'd see such a thing and he replied, "Yes, in my Buck Rogers comic books!"  But the future has arrived and a California company called SpaceX launched the first private rocket into space.  It still needs to run through various tests before it may dock with the space station, but so far so good.  It's an interesting day and the freight bill auditor in me would like to audit that freight bill!

On a more down to earth matter - check with us for your freight bill auditing needs.  We specialize in reviewing your bills after they've been paid (whether by your personnel or by an outside audit & payment service).  We continue to find mistakes routinely occurring on carriers' freight bills and they're often overlooked.  We bring that overpaid money to you. 

Contact us today to see how you can begin saving too.

Year End "To Do" List - Have Your Freight Bills Audited!

As the year ends, businesses are making their year end "To Do" lists.  A primary one is to pull this year's files to place into storage.  This is the perfect time to begin what should be a routine throughout the year - have your freight bills reviewed again.  I noted in my earlier blog post that many companies assume they don't need an audit after their bills have been processed by a freight payment company.   The fact is, most of our post-audit work is following freight payment firms and we continue to find mistakes that are overlooked.

I'm surprised during this difficult economic period that more companies are not utilizing our services to bring cash back to them that they've already spent - and at no direct cost to them.  Our fee is on a contingency basis, a percentage of the collected refunds.  If we find nothing, there is no charge.  We can review bills back 180 days unless you have a longer time period stated in your agreements with your carriers. 

Once we've done our initial audit, we recommend that your freight bills be sent to us on a regular basis, generally quarterly.  We do have some clients though who have their freight payment companies send the paid bills to us directly.  Following our audit, we place them in storage boxes they've provided us.  When we return them to our clients, there's no need for their employees to do any further filing.

Visit our website today and learn more about how we can begin saving you money with our freight bill audit.  Our satisfied customers are happy they have utilized our services.  I believe you will be too.  Contact us now.

Why Should I Have My Freight Bills Reviewed Again?

Many businesses have their freight bills processed and paid by freight payment companies; reviewing the bills for errors, verifying Bill of Lading terms, and providing an accounting of the freight costs for them. Prospective customers often ask us why they should have the bills reviewed again since these processors have done the work already.

I respond that there is a dramatic difference between a pre-audit of the bills and our audit after the bills are paid. The constraints of processing a great volume of bills in a short period of time, necessitated by the limits imposed by carriers for paying bills, leaves little time for gathering information that may show that a bill is incorrect and an overcharge. Sometimes the pre-audit firm hasn't been given updated information that we subsequently receive. That leads to overcharges that have been overlooked because the pre-auditor is unaware of the change. And sometimes, it's just that people are fallible and miss mistakes that are there.

We point out to companies that they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. If the bill has been paid and overcharges exist, that money is rarely coming back without our audit. As we noted in an earlier blog post, money recovered for you goes straight to your bottom line. You know what your profit margins is and that money goes directly to your bottom line.

A carrier representative once asked if computers wouldn't put us out of business. I noted that as long as human beings were pressing the keys, mistakes will be made. And every time I think we have seen every way possible for errors to occur, someone comes up with another one.

Contact us today to learn more about how we can begin recovering overpayments you may have made.

Updated Website Launched!

Yesterday, we launched our updated website, http://www.tscinti.com/. We look forwarded to the new site being a gateway for introducing more businesses to the valuable service we offer.

The Check Was in the Mail!

I explain to clients that our freight bill auditing service is often a roll of the dice. We never know what we're going to find in an audit, nor do we know how quickly we will receive the refund check from their carrier. Most handle our overcharge claims routinely and are prompt in sending the client's refund or explaining why they disagree with our claim. When a carrier does decline a claim, we review it and if we disagree advise why they're mistaken.

I received a check this morning for nearly $7000 for a client for a claim we filed back in February. The customer had sent out some product without a proper description for the goods and mentioned the word "display" on their Bill of Lading. The shipment wasn't a display. It was their main product and merely had some additional corrugated cardboard they called a "wedge" that permitted the item to angle up on the store shelf.

The carrier replied that they had a rule about product shipped in cartons that are for display (much as you might see at a warehouse club). But that's not what these were. The carrier parried back, sending some photos of some of my client's shipments which were such displays. There was only one problem. The photos were not of these shipments, but some other unrelated item. The claim languished until we spoke with our client a few weeks ago and I went over the reasons their carrier was wrong.

Lo and behold, the check arrived in the mail! My client told me he knew about it a week ago, but wanted me to be surprised, and it was a nice one at that. At times, some of our work can be like a chess match and it's fun occasionally to match wits with a carrier and to prevail. This was one of those times.

And we got to send almost $7000 over to our customer, money they had already spent and now has come back to them. We're always looking for new bills to audit, and most of the bills we check are after they've been processed and paid by another outside payment and audit service. Give us a call if you'd like to start receiving refunds back on your freight bills too.

You can read more about our services here: http://www.tscinti.com/

Auditing EDI freight bills

Another big change in the thirty years I've been in business is the presentation of freight bills by EDI (Electronic Data Interchange). EDI came on the scene in the early 1990's and it's only been over the last several years that we've had more clients move to receiving their freight bills via EDI. Initially the few clients who had EDI bills, a number had their freight payment companies print out the bills, perhaps two or three to a page and we would audit from those printed pages. This wasn't something we had requested, it just happened to be what their procedure was.

Of course, printing the bills out defeated one of the advantages of using EDI; eliminating the use of paper. Some years ago, we had a software developer create an EDI bill reader for us that would permit us to see the data in a freight bill format. We could then audit the bills from the screen and print a "freight bill" to submit an overcharge from that copy. For those clients who sent us EDI bills, we would find mistakes, just as we do with actual paper freight bills. For a while, we did hav one client send us an Excel spreadsheet of their EDI bills and found mistakes on those bills as well.

We have talked with some clients to get their EDI data, but unfortunately, as is the case these days, it's not a priority.

This week though, in reviewing the payment info on the freight payment firms site for one client whose bills had dwindled down to just a few paper freight bills that we could audit. In checking payment information on a bill, we saw that we could run a report of the bills presented as EDI bills. We could sort them by carrier, by month. And so we did and started checking the bills for overcharges.

It was a tedious process that took the better part of the week, but we found a series of shipments which the carrier had inspected and misrated. In fact, they decided eleven of the shipments were class 200, eleven were class 92.5 and the rest they left at the class 50 shown on the bill of lading. We received photos of the inspection and determined that the class 200 was not correct, but decided the class 92.5 was probably correct. For this customer, they get an FAK rating of class 60.

On another EDI bill, it was rated as an expedited freight bill although such service was not requested on the bill of lading. Likewise, we noticed that the bill of lading said the first item was nine cartons weighing 4065 lbs on one pallet. Being familiar with this client's freight, we didn't think they had freight that heavy. Sure enough, the shipment only weighed 406 lbs. We've now filed a claim to get more than $1100 back for this client and their sales representative concurred and sent a note to their Overcharge Claims Department clearing the bill for a refund.

EDI is a tremendous tool for receiving freight bills quickly and allow for an audit, but such audits should always be follow up with a post auditing such as we perform. I always tell prospective clients that every time I think I've seen every way possible for a mistake to happen, we see a new way. And we've been doing this for thirty years now.

Give us a call to talk about how we can recover such overcharges for you!