Invoice Reconciliation

Invoice reconciliation in freight is the act of comparing what a carrier billed against what was agreed and what actually happened. It's the detail work behind freight audit – lining up the invoiced rate with the rate confirmation, verifying that the shipment weight and class match the bill of lading, and confirming that any accessorial charges were legitimate and pre-approved.

A proper reconciliation checks several data points: origin and destination zip codes, freight class, weight, number of handling units, fuel surcharge percentage, and any accessorials like inside delivery, liftgate, or detention. Each of these fields represents a potential billing discrepancy. A carrier might invoice at a higher freight class than what was tendered, or include a detention charge for a delay the shipper has no record of. Reconciliation catches these before payment.

The challenge is volume. A shipper processing 200 loads per week might receive hundreds of invoices monthly, each with multiple line items. Manually reconciling every invoice against rate confirmations and BOLs is time-intensive and prone to fatigue-driven errors – exactly the kind of work where mistakes are easy and expensive. Even small per-shipment overcharges accumulate into meaningful losses over a quarter.

Automated reconciliation tools match invoices to shipment records programmatically, surfacing only the mismatches that require human judgment. This shifts the logistics team's role from data entry and cross-referencing to exception management and carrier negotiation – higher-value work that actually improves the bottom line.