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Process file · Logistics Logistics

What’s inside: output checking · savings measurement

Who checks the liftgate and waiting-time lines, against what?

The question this file answersDo we pay the extras on a carrier invoice because nobody can see whether the event actually happened?

Fits: shippers and forwarders auditing hundreds to thousands of carrier invoices a month.

Typical day

What the desk looks like today

Typical, from the logistics playbook. The freight-audit desk handles carrier invoices by the hundred or thousand a month, and the extras — liftgate, waiting time, extra stop, redelivery — are lines the booking never showed. Each becomes an e-mail thread. It hurts when a new carrier arrives with an unread tariff.

What changes

What Monday looks like after

When the weekly invoice batch lands, the auditor’s list is the extras with no event behind them or a rate off the tariff — each with the tariff line and the POD note already attached — instead of every liftgate line in the batch. Finance can see which carriers bill extras that do not match, and how often.

Typical, not a measured client result. Every figure here comes from the playbook source named below.

~50–70%

less manual audit effort on the carrier-invoice desk — freight-audit studies (2023); extras are inside that desk, not measured alone

Before: every liftgate and waiting-time line becomes a thread. After: freight-audit studies (2023) report 50–70% less manual effort on the carrier-invoice desk — payment still waits when the event log disagrees.

Where this number comes from

Ardent Partners (2023) puts best-in-class freight audit at 75%+ touchless; Transporeon/project44 cases: 50–65% less manual audit effort; the logistics playbook uses 50–70%. Accessorial lines are part of that desk — no study isolates them, and none of this is our measurement.

What we install

What we put in front of the systems you already run

Your TMS and your AP ledger stay as they are — Dynamics, SAP, CargoWise, whichever you run. Built on our carrier-invoice audit file, applied to the surcharge lines:

  1. accessorial lines are pulled off each carrier invoice with their code and quantity
  2. each is checked against that carrier’s tariff and against the event log — the POD note, the driver’s wait time, the tracking events — for that shipment
  3. extras that match tariff and event inside your tolerance go into the payment run as drafts, and the rest go to the auditor with the tariff line and the event evidence on one screen.
What stays human — and what this will not do

New accessorial types. The driver’s story. Customer refusals. Gaps in the contract.

What can go wrong — and what we do about it

If accessorial rates are only in contract PDFs, the first task is turning them into a rate table — that is audit work before it is a saving. An event that nobody recorded — the driver did wait, but no one wrote it down — looks like an overcharge and needs a person; the list will show you gaps in your own event capture. The Ardent and Transporeon/project44 figures describe the freight-audit desk as a whole; surcharges are inside them, not measured alone.

What it costs to get there

The path: free 60-second estimate → free 20-minute review → paid audit of this one process (€1.5–3K, typically two weeks) → pilot with your people in the loop (€10–20K, weeks, not quarters). No transformation programme. Prices are public, on the services page →

Scoped in the audit — the playbook has no estimate for this exact desk.

This is about you if…
What does this mean in euros?

That depends on your volumes and wage costs — this page will not invent the number. The free 60-second estimate runs that calculation from your answers, with every multiplier sourced.

Get your free savings estimate 60 seconds · no sales call Or write first → Map a logistics process like this one — free, 60 seconds →

Not a named Aperanda client. Process file · Logistics.

Short process file. Same build as its parent file; the playbook has no separate volume or benchmark for this desk.

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