Freight Payment
Outsourced freight audit and payment for shippers, 3PLs, and importers
Freight audit and payment is the work between a carrier's bill and the money leaving your account. We run it for shippers, 3PLs, and importers as a managed service. Every freight bill is checked against your contract, tariff, or rate agreement before it is approved, with accessorials matched to their backup and duplicates stopped at intake. Disputes get worked with the carrier until they close as a credit. What clears is coded to your ledger and scheduled on your payment terms, and your team releases the funds.
Freight Bill Audit
Freight bill audit and payment processing
The audit covers every bill: linehaul against the contract or rate agreement, fuel surcharge against the index week your agreement names, each accessorial against its approval and backup, and LTL class and weight against the BOL. Approved bills are coded, batched to your payment calendar, and returned as a payment file your team releases.
The charge definitions behind every check are published in the accessorial charge reference. For how accuracy is measured, see how we measure it.
- Contract and tariff rate audit
- Duplicate and overbilling holds
- Disputes worked to credit
- GL coding and payment files
99%
Accuracy Target
Every Load
Audited, Not Sampled
Where do freight bill errors happen?
Freight bill errors happen wherever a charge on the bill was set somewhere other than your contract. A carrier keys a rate by hand, applies last month’s fuel table, or adds an accessorial nobody approved, and the bill arrives looking routine.
Rates and fuel
Linehaul billed at a spot or tariff rate instead of the contracted one. A fuel surcharge calculated on the wrong base, the wrong percentage, or a different week of the diesel index than the agreement names.
Accessorials
Detention with no arrival and departure times behind it. A lumper fee without the receipt. Liftgate or inside delivery on a shipment that never needed it. A TONU on a load that was cancelled in time.
LTL class and weight
A reweigh or reclass after pickup that moves the shipment into a higher bracket, with no inspection certificate attached. A class on the bill that does not match the class on the BOL.
Ocean and drayage
Demurrage and per diem billed past the free time the container actually used. Chassis days that do not line up with the gate records.
Duplicates
The same shipment billed twice, once by EDI and again by email, or sent again under a new pro number after a short pay.
No single error is large. Across a year of freight spend they add up, and they are far easier to stop before payment than to recover after it. The accounts payable overpayment calculator puts a range on what that looks like for your spend.
What does freight audit and payment cover?
Freight audit and payment covers every step from the moment a carrier bill arrives to the moment the payment file is ready to release. Handing off only the audit leaves the rest of the leaks in place, so the desk runs the whole cycle.
Bill intake
Freight bills arrive as EDI 210s, carrier portal downloads, emails, and paper. We capture each one, match it to the shipment record and the BOL, and screen it against payment history so a duplicate is stopped at the door.
Freight bill audit
We check each bill against the contract, tariff, or rate agreement that governs the lane: linehaul, the fuel surcharge for the right index week, and every accessorial against its approval and backup. On LTL that includes class, reweigh certificates, and the discount off the base tariff. On ocean and drayage it includes demurrage and per diem against free time.
Exception handling
A bill that does not match is held. We assemble the contract terms and the shipment evidence, dispute the charge with the carrier, and follow it until the bill is corrected or credited. You see every open exception and where it stands.
GL coding and cost allocation
Approved bills are coded to your chart of accounts and allocated by customer, location, cost center, or mode, with accrual support for freight that moved but has not billed by month-end.
Freight payment processing
We batch approved bills to your payment terms and approval thresholds and prepare the payment file and remittance detail for each run. Your accounts payable (AP) team releases the funds from your own accounts, so your cash stays with you until you send it.
Freight spend reporting
Weekly, monthly, or quarterly, per your SOP: spend by carrier, lane, and mode, exceptions by carrier, and what was held and credited before payment.
Software, an enterprise provider, or a managed desk?
Each one does a different job, and the right one depends on who works the exceptions. Software rates each bill against your contracts and flags what does not match. An enterprise freight audit and payment provider runs that process for you at scale and pays the carriers on your behalf. A managed desk does the audit and the follow-through inside your own systems, and leaves the payment release with you.
| Audit and payment software | Enterprise audit and payment provider | ClearLane managed desk | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | Exception flags and spend dashboards | Audit, carrier payment and spend analytics | Audited bills, worked exceptions and a payment file |
| Who works the exceptions | Your team | The provider, on its own process | Our team, inside your approval thresholds |
| Where payments run from | Your accounts | The provider pays carriers on your behalf | Your accounts, released by your team |
| Systems | A new system to implement and maintain | The provider’s portal and data formats | Your TMS, ERP and accounting system |
| Cost basis | License and per-bill fees, plus staff time | Per-bill fees or a share of spend | Scoped to the functions you hand off |
| Fits best | A team with room to work a queue | Very large freight spend across many carriers | Shippers and 3PLs that want the function handled |
The real question is not software against people but who owns the outcome when a bill does not match. If your AP team has room to chase carriers, freight audit and payment software makes them faster. If the queue is already the problem, a flag is one more task on the list, and a managed desk takes the task off it.
How do freight audit companies differ?
Freight audit companies differ on three things: when they audit, whether they touch the payment, and which side of the freight they work for.
Before payment or after it
A pre-payment audit checks each bill before money moves, so an error is a correction. A post-payment audit reviews bills that were already paid and files recovery claims, usually on contingency. Recovery still works, but asking a carrier to return money it already holds is slower and less certain than holding a bill that is wrong.
Audit only, or audit and payment
Some freight bill audit companies stop at a list of exceptions. Audit and payment providers also handle the coding and the payment run, which is where most of the administrative time goes.
Shipper side or broker side
Freight audit and payment is bought by the company that owns the freight contract: a shipper, an importer, or a 3PL paying carriers for its clients. A freight broker checking a carrier’s bill against the rate confirmation before paying it does related work for a different buyer, and we run that as a separate AP desk for brokers. The checks overlap. The contracts, the systems, and the reporting do not.
What should you ask freight audit providers?
Ask how a provider handles the bills that do not match, because that is where the difference shows. Lists of the top freight audit companies compare features. These questions compare what happens to your money.
- What happens to a detention charge with no departure time? Listen for free time, and for who contacts the carrier.
- Do you audit every bill, or a sample above a dollar threshold?
- Where do carrier payments run from, and who controls the release?
- Do you work inside our TMS and accounting system, or do we send our data to yours?
- How are LTL reweighs and reclasses checked, and what proof do you ask the carrier for?
- What does reporting show, and how often does it arrive?
- How is pricing set, and what changes it?
The strongest answers name a process and the people who run it. ClearLane scopes pricing to the functions you hand off and the team that work needs, and resizes it as volume changes. The pricing page sets out how engagements are scoped.
How we run freight audit and payment
- 1
Discovery
We map how freight bills reach you, the contracts and tariffs they are checked against, and your payment calendar.
- 2
Onboarding
We connect to your TMS, ERP, and accounting system. No migration, no new software to learn.
- 3
Ongoing operations
Your dedicated team audits every freight bill, works the exceptions with carriers, and prepares each payment run.
- 4
You scale
Freight spend grows without adding headcount to your AP team. The desk keeps pace.
What does clean freight payment do for your spend?
A clean freight payment process means you pay what you agreed to, on time, and can show why. Every bill held before payment is money that never has to be recovered, and every carrier paid on its terms keeps taking your freight at the contracted rate.
What good looks like: every freight bill audited before it is paid. Exceptions credited instead of written off. Carriers paid on the terms in their agreements. Freight costs landing in the right accounts at close, so cost per shipment by lane and customer is a number you can use.
Who feels it first?
The logistics manager, whose phone stops ringing about short pays nobody can explain, because every held bill has its reason and its backup on record.
The controller, who gets freight coded and accrued before close, with a reconciled record behind every payment run.
The CFO, who sees freight spend by carrier and lane in the weekly report, with what was held and credited beside it.
Once freight bills are approved and paid, those transactions land in your books. Add outsourced bookkeeping to keep them reconciled.
Works inside the systems you already run
We work inside the systems you already run, with no migration and no new software to learn. That covers your TMS and your ERP or accounting system, so approved freight bills land coded where your books already live.
McLeodTMWAljexMercuryGateTaiTurvo
QuickBooksXeroSageNetSuite
Frequently asked questions
What is freight audit and payment?
Freight audit and payment is the process of checking every carrier freight bill against the agreed rates before it is paid, then coding it and preparing the payment. A provider receives the bills, audits linehaul, fuel surcharges, and accessorials, works any discrepancy with the carrier, and hands back approved bills ready to pay, with reporting on what was held and why.
Should you outsource freight audit and payment or run it in-house?
The question is volume against consistency. In-house works when someone can check every freight bill line by line, every day, including vacation weeks and peak season. The audit is the first thing deadline pressure skips, and skipped audits do not announce themselves: they show up later as freight spend that quietly ran over contract. Outsourcing makes the check run the same way on every bill, whatever the week looks like. Most engagements start with one slice of the flow, one mode or one carrier group, so you can judge the work before widening it.
Does freight audit and payment include a freight bill audit?
Yes. The freight bill audit is the first half of the service: every bill checked against the contract before money moves, which costs far less than recovering an overpayment later. Freight audit and payment adds what comes after the audit: exception handling with the carrier, GL coding, the payment file, and reporting. Buying the audit alone leaves those steps with your team.
Does ClearLane pay carriers from its own account?
No. We prepare the payment file and remittance detail on your terms and approval thresholds, and your team releases the payment from your accounts. Your cash does not pass through ours, and you keep control of every payment run.
What does a freight bill audit check?
Linehaul against the contract, tariff, or rate agreement. Fuel surcharge against the index week the agreement names. Every accessorial against its approval and backup: timestamps for detention, a receipt for a lumper fee, the cancellation record for a TONU. On LTL, class, reweigh and reclass certificates, and the tariff discount. On ocean and drayage, demurrage and per diem against free time. And every bill against payment history, so nothing is paid twice.
Do you audit LTL, ocean, and drayage freight bills?
Yes. LTL bills are checked for class against the BOL, reweigh and reclass proof, minimum charges, and the discount off the base tariff. Ocean and drayage bills are checked for demurrage, per diem, and chassis charges against the free time the container actually used. The process is the same across modes. The charges being checked are what change.
Do you work inside our TMS and ERP?
Yes. We work inside the TMS, ERP, and accounting system you already use, so approved bills are coded where your books live. There is no migration and no new software for your team to learn.
How is a managed desk different from freight audit and payment software?
Software flags a bill that does not match your contract. A managed desk also works it: pulls the backup, disputes the charge with the carrier, follows it to a credit, and codes the bill once it is right. If your team has time to work the exception queue, software can be enough. If it does not, the flags pile up and bills get approved to keep carriers paid.
How is freight audit and payment priced?
Pricing is scoped to the functions you hand off and the team that work needs, and resized as volume changes. It is not a fee on each bill processed or a share of your freight spend. The pricing page explains how engagements are scoped.
Who buys freight audit and payment?
Companies that own the freight contract and pay the carriers: shippers, importers and exporters, and 3PLs paying carriers for their clients. A freight broker checking carrier bills against rate confirmations before paying them needs a related service built around the rate confirmation, which ClearLane runs as a separate AP desk.
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Learn more →Verify carrier authority and insurance, then keep monitoring both.
Bookkeeping
Learn more →Reconciled books and clean month-end close.
AR Management & Collections
Learn more →Work every open receivable on a set cadence and apply cash daily.
Explore all back-office services
Learn more →See how POD, AP audit, billing, AR, compliance, and bookkeeping fit together.
Get Started
Start with one mode, expand from there
Most engagements begin with one mode or one carrier group, so you can judge the audit before handing off the full payment run.