What Does it Mean to do a Parcel Audit?
The word “audit” tends to cause the majority of people anxiety. Normally it’s associated with taxes and loss of money. In this instance being audited is a positive thing that can save your business a ton of money every year.
Parcel invoice auditing is a fairly basic business practice of examining your shipping bills in order to see exactly what and how you’re being charged for shipping. During parcel auditing the objective is to analyze shipping invoices in order to locate billing mistakes, invalid shipping charges, and entitled refunds. Using this data you’ll also be able to negotiate better rates with carriers.
Why Bother Auditing Your Shipping and What Does a Parcel Auditing Company do?
As much as one would hope that reputable shipping companies like FedEx and UPS would do all that they can to save you money, that’s not their main priority. Even when carriers guarantee delivery within a certain window of time or your money back, there isn’t a system put in place that tracks late deliveries in order to automatically process your refund. This would be far too convenient for you and the carriers would lose money. There are even times when a business might not know that a shipment was late. The carrier isn’t going to inform that business and so a refund would never be filed in these instances. This could be the case with hundreds of shipments a year and a business might never know.
In order to receive a refund for a late parcel delivery you have to deal with filing paperwork. This is something most people don’t want to take the time to do for one shipment let alone hundreds, and shipping carriers are banking on this. They’re hoping that businesses would rather eat the costs then go through the extra steps to file for a refund.
This is just one reason why parcel auditing companies are so useful. Not only will a parcel auditing company analyze your invoices and shipping history to find all of the instances where your business is entitled to refunds they will also discover billing mistakes, invalid fees and better shipping practices in order to help your business save money.
How much does Parcel Auditing Cost?
Traditionally parcel auditors receive a percentage of the amount that they saved your business. For example, let's say your business shipped 10,000 packages last month, each with a $15 average base shipping cost. If the parcel auditing company discovered that the carrier failed to deliver 5% of your packages within the guaranteed delivery window that’s 500 instances where your company should have received a refund. 500 packages at $15 per package equals $7,500 in refunds which is then split with your auditing company.
Using a parcel invoice auditing service is just good business. They only get paid if they find you savings and it’s money that would have been forgotten about otherwise! There’s nothing to lose and everything to gain. At ShipSigma we use our proprietary software to help you get back as much of your hard earned money as possible. Our cutting edge technology will help you find every cent of yours hidden under the proverbial couch cushion. Contact us today for a free evaluation.
