As a business owner, you must keep costs as low as possible and find savings where they exist. However, if you’re assuming your customers are receiving their packages on the day you’ve paid for them, you may be leaving money on the table. Fortunately, a parcel audit can help.
At Trans Audit, we offer robust post-bill parcel carrier audits to help recover thousands of dollars in erroneous or overpayments. When you partner with Trans Audit for a parcel audit, we will do the heavy lifting by automatically auditing your shipping invoices and other documentation.
And when we find an error, we will secure the full refunds that you are entitled to without requiring any additional action from you. Let’s take a closer look at the parcel audit and why partnering with Trans Audit could be the key that unlocks immense savings.
What Is a Parcel Audit?
Also known as a small parcel audit, a parcel audit is a process of reviewing shipping invoices to potentially uncover billing inaccuracies or other invalid charges. The majority of the major parcel carriers, such as DHL, UPS, and FedEx, typically offer service guarantees.
If those guarantees are not met, you may be entitled to a refund or service credit that can be used on future shipments. Parcel audits are designed to meticulously sort through previous bills to determine if the carrier has met their part of the agreement.
Common Types of Billing Errors Remedied Through Parcel Audits
Anytime your shipping partner fails to hold up their part of the agreement, it costs you money. However, finding the errors isn’t just complex, it can be extremely tedious. And when you consider the amount of time it would take someone to sift through all shipping invoices and run down delivery statuses, it’s virtually impossible.
Fortunately, savvy business owners often turn to Trans Audit for our state-of-the-art parcel audit system. With little to no input from you or your team, we will establish an ongoing audit of all parcel invoices. We will systematically review your parcel invoices to protect you from errant costs associated with the following:
- Late payment charges. Certain carriers charge late fees and surcharges when the shipper submits a late payment.
- Late deliveries. This explains anytime the carrier delivers the package past the guaranteed delivery time or date.
- Surcharge errors. This is when an extra charge is incorrectly assessed.
- Duplicate billings. This explains when a single parcel shipment is billed more than one time.
- Invalid address correction charges. Carriers may levy an extra fee to correct an address that may not be wrong.
- Shipment manifested but not sent. Some carriers will charge you for a shipment that has been manifested but not shipped
- Incorrect Saturday charge. The parcel was supposed to be picked up on a Saturday, but the carrier didn’t do so.
- Dimensional weight errors. Carriers may assess a higher dimensional weight incorrectly.
- Incorrect rates charged. Carriers may not always apply the rates you’ve negotiated.
Why Are Small Shipping Parcel Audits Important?
While one late delivery may not seem like a lot, several late deliveries or misbillings over a period of time will add up. Anytime you find a problem with a shipment, you must submit a request that has the tracking number and other relevant information to the carrier.
If and when the carrier approves the request for a refund, the cost of the shipment should be credited to your shipping account with the carrier. Performing parcel audits are critical if you ship any volume of products through DHL, UPS, FedEx, or other parcel carriers.
Properly catching and submitting refund requests can result in a significant reduction in your organization’s shipping costs. In addition to substantial shipping cost savings, a parcel audit can empower you to better understand where your carriers are not meeting your needs.
How to Conduct Parcel Audits on a Company’s Carriers?
Conducting an audit manually is extremely time-consuming, costly, and will interrupt several workflows. In fact, a manual parcel audit can equal a net loss due to the amount of labor required compared to the amounts recovered.
Essentially, an employee would need to go line by line to identify all billing errors. This would involve the processing of thousands of documents, paperwork, and spreadsheets for various carriers.
Instead, savvy business owners turn to Trans Audit for automated post-bill parcel audits. Our experienced logistics professionals will work directly with your carriers to establish recurring feeds of paper and electronic invoices and payment information.
Once established, our state-of-the-art software will automatically review each document for errors, misspellings, or overpayments. When we discover an error or over billing, we will work directly with your carrier to ascertain funds.
From start to finish, we establish, perform, and complete parcel audits with minimal input from you. And — thanks to our cutting-edge solution — you can always log into the easy-to-use client portal to track claims progress and gain insight.
Contact Trans Audit to Start Saving Today
At Trans Audit, we are the world’s most successful and largest parcel post audit specialists. To date, we have performed parcel audits and freight audits for several of the world’s largest and most profitable firms.
Over our 40-year tenure, we have grown to have a global presence in Singapore, Europe, China, and the US. No matter where you are or your method of shipping, we are proven to deliver bottom-line changing results.
Contact Trans Audit today.
