As the largest parcel carrier in the United States, UPS delivers an estimated 15.8 million packages every day. With so many deliveries, it’s almost impossible for them to not make mistakes on UPS shipping charges.
However, when the UPS billing center makes a mistake, your business shouldn’t have to foot the bill, which is why having regular, recurring audits on UPS packages is a must-have function for businesses. In fact, having your UPS invoices audited regularly makes dollars and sense — literally. Let’s take a closer look at why your business should have regular recurring UPS audits on shipping costs.
What Is a UPS Parcel Audit?
Before we dive into the key benefits of a UPS audit, it’s important to first discuss what it is. Very simply, a parcel audit involves reviewing all of your shipping bills and UPS invoices. This strategic auditing process involves identifying service failures and overcharges by UPS, FedEx, DHL, USPS, and other small parcel carriers.
In addition to auditing parcel carriers, there are also freight post-bill audits. Similar to the parcel audit, the freight post bill audit involves auditing bills of lading, freight bills, contracts, invoices, and more from less-than-truckload, full-truckload, rail, sea, and other cargo carriers.
Whether it’s a parcel audit or a freight audit, the goal is the same — to review invoices, shipping documents, and delivery dates to find service failures and errors. Common examples of service failures and errors from UPS and other parcel carriers include:
- General incorrect charges
- Duplicate charges
- Address corrections charges
- Erroneous large package surcharge
- Incorrect weight charge
- Shipping charge corrections
- Billing mistakes
- Violations of service guarantees
- Additional handling charges
- Unnecessary additional surcharges
- Late deliveries
- Misapplied or unapplied discounts
- And more.
Most importantly, UPS billing errors are a lot more common than you could ever imagine. And for the most part, there should be no upfront UPS audit fee cost. Most auditors will conduct the UPS invoice audit with no out-of-pocket costs.
But the auditor will charge an audit fee as a percentage of the monies recovered. Now that we’ve discussed what a UPS invoice audit is, let’s explore why it makes dollars and sense to have a recurring system established.
The UPS Invoice Audit Makes Dollars
As you can imagine, the top and most prevalent benefit of the UPS freight audit is to reduce expenses, lower costs, and ensure shipping charge corrections are properly applied. Post bill freight and parcel audits are notorious in their ability to reduce logistical expenses by preventing overbilling as well as other financial discrepancies.
Billing inaccuracies are extremely common in the logistics world, especially with UPS shipping. This is mainly due to the sheer volume of deliveries, the complexity of contracts and rates, and the involvement of several other carrier companies. At the same time, human error contributes to billing errors on a consistent basis.
Many businesses never learn they have been overbilled, while other business owners view these issues as a simple cost of doing business. However, there is no reason you should ever settle for less or pay for services you don’t receive. This is bad for business and isn’t very cost-effective.
The UPS Audit Makes Sense
In the world of business and e-commerce, intelligence is priceless. In fact, most of today’s businesses are driven by data. Because of this, when you partner with the best post-bill parcel audit technology firm for a UPS audit, you will gain valuable data and insight to help you better understand your own operations.
The insights from your UPS audit are just as important and valuable as the refunds and credits recovered. In fact, sometimes the data is even more valuable because it can shape decisions for several years to come and empower you to enter future UPS invoice negotiations from a position of privilege.
At Trans Audit, we leverage an unsurpassed proprietary cloud-based claims analytics system, TransPortal™, to view and analyze claims activity online. This world-class system is updated on a daily basis, allowing you to easily view key data, such as:
- Claim status,
- Claims aging,
- Types of errors
- Claim distribution by carrier (UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc) and mode,
- And other pertinent claim information.
TransPortal™ identifies the type of claims filed (the reason for the claim) by the carrier and allows you to effortlessly drill-down and query by claims status, mode, carrier, and claim error type.
While the primary goal of a transportation post audit is to identify errors and ascertain refunds for miss billings and overcharges, Trans Audit’s cutting-edge technology offers insight that allows you to:
- Reshape your business practices,
- Bolster carrier relations,
- Accurately evaluate carriers,
- Reduce recurring errors, and
- Improve your bargaining power with carriers.
Gain Knowledgeable Intel for Shipping Cost Optimization and Reduction
With the best freight auditor, you will move far beyond the basics with data that helps create a competitive advantage. For example, at Trans Audit, we employ state-of-the-art technology and software to process and track volumes of data. Through our human experts and modern IT, we often provide data to help customers understand:
- Clear paths toward logistics optimization
- Solutions to old problems
- Shipping opportunities
- And more
Trans Audit’s comprehensive transportation post audit services also result in the identification of cost reduction methods and contract improvement opportunities.
Contact Trans Audit for UPS Audit Solutions
At Trans Audit, we make UPS audits, parcel audits, and post-freight bill audits easy. From start to finish, we handle everything with minimal input from your or your team. Instead, we work directly with your carriers, providers, and internal staff to facilitate a streamlined implementation.
When our system detects any error, we will automatically initiate the refunds or credits your business is due. Best of all, you can gain oversight of the entire process through our innovative, customer-friendly TransPortal™ portal.
With no out-of-pocket costs to you or an upfront UPS audit fee, you have nothing to lose and refunds and valuable intelligence to gain. Very simply, partnering with Trans Audit for UPS Audits makes dollars and sense.
Contact Trans Audit today to learn more about our no UPS audit fee service.
