FREIGHT FORWARDERS
Every international shipment generates documents across multiple legs, carriers, and currencies. We run the invoicing, carrier AP audit, and document management that keeps your billing accurate across the full origin-to-destination chain.
THE FORWARDER BACK OFFICE
Freight forwarding billing is not single-move billing repeated across legs. Each shipment can touch ocean, air, rail, and truck carriers, each with its own invoice, accessorial structure, and documentation. Terminal handling charges, customs duties, storage fees, and carrier surcharges all need to be reconciled against the customer contract before the final invoice goes out.
The documentation volume per shipment is higher than any other freight segment. Commercial invoices, packing lists, bills of lading, airway bills, certificates of origin, ISF filings, and customs entry records all need to be tracked, matched to the billing file, and available when the customer or customs authority needs them. We handle the post-booking workflow: carrier AP audit across all legs, customer invoicing with complete documentation, AR follow-up, and document management.
DSO Reduction
Reporting
POD Chase
When ocean, dray, and domestic carrier invoices come in at different times, they get paid against the booking rather than audited against the rate confirmation and tariff. Duplicate charges, rate discrepancies, and unauthorized surcharges slip through when nobody reconciles each leg individually.
Terminal handling charges, destination charges, and storage fees at CFS or bonded warehouses are often passthroughs to the customer. When the forwarder pays them but does not match them to the customer billing file, they become cost instead of revenue.
A single shipment may have ocean freight, origin handling, destination drayage, customs clearance fees, and domestic delivery. If any leg’s cost is not captured on the customer invoice, the margin on that shipment shrinks. The more legs, the more places for a charge to get lost.
Customers often will not pay until the full document set is attached: commercial invoice, packing list, bill of lading, customs entry summary. A missing document delays the entire invoice, adding days or weeks to the billing cycle.
We catalog your trade lanes, carrier and vendor relationships, customer billing rules, and documentation requirements. The focus is on which legs carry the most accessorial complexity and where the billing chain has the most moving parts.
The onboarding team learns your trade lane structure, customer contracts, carrier relationships, and documentation standards. Timeline is typically two to three weeks.
Carrier AP audit across all legs, customer invoicing with full documentation attached, AR follow-up, and document management run on every shipment.
New trade lanes and higher volumes get absorbed without new hires. The operational capacity scales with you.
The result is a back office that handles the complexity your freight demands:
Forwarder billing does not end when the invoice goes out. Collecting on it across countries and currencies is its own job. Overseas clients pay on their own terms and through their own banking channels, so a USD invoice can sit for weeks while the payment clears through intermediaries. Revenue recognition adds another layer, because the point where a shipment is billed, earned, and collected can fall in three different periods.
ClearLane runs the AR side of the forwarding desk: following up on open invoices by client and currency, reconciling partial and short payments against the shipment file, and keeping the billing records clean so your accountant can recognize revenue on the right timeline. Every shipment you bill actually gets collected, and the books reflect it correctly.
We work inside the forwarding and TMS platforms you already use, with no migration and no new software to learn.
Yes. We reconcile costs across all legs of a shipment, ocean, air, rail, and truck, and build the customer invoice with every charge captured. Each leg’s carrier invoice is audited individually before the costs roll up to the customer billing. The result is an invoice that reflects the actual cost of the shipment, with documentation to support every line item.
We manage the document lifecycle for each shipment: tracking commercial invoices, packing lists, bills of lading, airway bills, certificates of origin, and customs entry records. Documents are matched to the billing file and attached to the customer invoice so payment is not delayed by missing paperwork.
Yes. Each carrier and vendor invoice is audited against the rate confirmation or tariff for that leg. We catch duplicate charges, rate discrepancies, unauthorized surcharges, and terminal fees that do not match the booking. The goal is that nothing gets paid without verification, regardless of which carrier or mode.
Yes. Some forwarding shipments bill different parties for different legs or cost components. We configure billing rules per customer account and per trade lane, so the right charges go to the right party on the right invoice.
Freight forwarder back-office support covers carrier and vendor AP audit across all transportation legs, customer invoicing with multi-leg cost reconciliation, document management for the full shipment file, AR follow-up and collections, and terminal and storage fee passthrough billing. The goal is that every shipment generates accurate billing with complete documentation, regardless of how many carriers and modes are involved.
It depends on your shipment volume and how many legs each move carries. Most forwarders start with carrier AP audit and documentation, then bring on customer invoicing and AR as the workflow proves out. Book a 20-minute call and we will walk through the numbers for your trade lanes.
Get Started
Most forwarding clients start with multi-leg carrier AP audit and document management, then grow into full back-office support.
