With rising transportation rates, fuel surcharges, and an increasingly complex supply chain, freight costs are having a greater impact on businesses almost every year. There are costs you can’t control, but there are also costs that you can reduce through freight bill auditing. 

Catching freight bill errors is one of these ways to reduce your costs. Yet too many businesses either overlook freight bill auditing or don’t have the tools and bandwidth to do it properly. The result is lost money, operational blind spots, and missed opportunities for negotiating better shipping rates. 

If you’re not regularly auditing your freight bills, it’s time to reconsider. Freight auditing matters when you understand the types of errors and hidden costs to look for.  

What Is the Purpose of Freight Auditing?

Freight auditing is the process of reviewing and verifying freight bills to ensure that you’re being charged correctly for the transportation services you’ve used. This process compares invoiced costs with contracted rates, shipping documentation, and service-level agreements (SLAs) to catch discrepancies and billing errors. 

At its core, freight auditing is about three critical goals: 

• Accuracy: verifying that invoices match agreed-upon rates and services. 
• Accountability: ensuring carriers and 3PLs adhere to contract terms. 
• Optimization: identifying trends, inefficiencies, and leverage points for future negotiations. 

It’s not just about catching the occasional typo, nor is it always about finding something nefarious. When done consistently, freight auditing becomes a cost-control and performance optimization tool, and it’s one that can bring predictability to your supply chain and shipping costs. Finding the right accessorial fees that you are consistently being charged is one common example we find that businesses fail to predict, which results in unexpected costs that cause sticker shock and disruption. 

What You Can Catch Through Simple Freight Bill Auditing

Even the most reliable carriers and partners can make mistakes. Whether human or system-generated, these errors happen more often than you might think. Freight bill auditing should always be a part of your regular shipping process, as it can help you catch: 

• Duplicate invoices 
• Incorrect rates or charges 
• Unapplied discounts or fuel surcharges 
• Billing for services not rendered 
• Accessorial fees (liftgate, residential, etc.) applied in error 
• Incorrect freight classification or weight charges 
• Late delivery charges when delivery was on time 

Each of these errors can increase the total cost of your invoice. Multiply that across hundreds or thousands of shipments per year, and businesses can easily experience serious increases in their freight costs. 

The Most Common Freight Billing Errors That Are Easy to Miss

Some freight billing errors are blatant. Others are buried beneath layers of paperwork, rate tables, and fine print. Some of the most commonly overlooked errors: 

Accessorial Fees

Charges like liftgate usage, re-delivery, residential delivery, and limited access fees are easy for carriers to apply. They are often hard to dispute if you’re not tracking them closely. 

Freight Class Discrepancies

LTL shipments can often assign the wrong freight class (based on weight, density, and value) and drastically inflate your shipping costs. Carriers sometimes misclassify items or rely on systems that often have errors without human intervention. 

Rate Mismatches

Your negotiated rate isn’t always the rate that shows up on your invoice. This is especially true if you have multiple lanes, rate tiers, or minimum charges. Even small mismatches can add up quickly. 

Incorrect Fuel Surcharges

Fuel surcharges are often updated weekly. If your invoice is delayed or the wrong rate is applied, you could be overcharged. This can especially happen during periods of fluctuating fuel prices, which is common given the uncertain cost of diesel fuel. 

Duplicate Charges

Without a centralized invoice management system, it’s easy for a carrier to submit the same bill more than once, or for your team to pay it again by accident. If you deal in hundreds of freight bills, it’s easy for an accounts payable team to double pay on an invoice that has been submitted twice. 

Freight Auditing Can Save You Money

The most obvious benefit of freight auditing is cost recovery. Specifically, getting back the money you were overcharged. But the real value goes deeper. When you identify recurring billing issues, you can work with your carrier or 3PL company to fix them at the source. That prevents ongoing losses. 

With clean data and correct invoices, you also gain visibility into your actual freight spend, making it easier to forecast, plan, and budget. This historical data from audits can also show which lanes are consistently problematic or overpriced, giving you leverage when it’s time to renegotiate contracts. 

Freight Auditing Is Hard to Do Alone

Freight auditing sounds straightforward, but it’s not easy to do right. Many companies struggle because: 

• They don’t have access to accurate contract rate files. 
• Their internal systems can’t match invoices to BOLs or shipment records. 
• They lack the time or expertise to dig into discrepancies. 
• Carrier billing systems are opaque or inconsistent. 
• Audits happen too late and after payment has already been issued. 

At King, We Help You Audit Smarter

At King Solutions, freight bill auditing is just one of the end-to-end logistics solutions we bring to our customers. We help you audit freight bills to catch issues early, save money, predict costs, and build more a efficient supply chain. 

We match every invoice against the contracted rate, shipment documentation, and service-level terms to catch errors before payment is made. When discrepancies arise, we help resolve them with the carrier, so you don’t have to. You also get clear visibility into your freight spend and carrier performance. That means better planning, fewer errors, and less headaches when it comes to moving your products. 

Beyond just catching errors, we help you identify patterns and areas for improvement whether that means changing lanes, adjusting service levels, or re-negotiating rates. 

Stop Leaving Money on the Dock

If you’re not auditing your freight invoices, you’re leaving money on the dock. With rising freight costs and shrinking margins, every overcharge matters. Whether you’re looking to take control of your freight costs, improve operational visibility, or offload the headache of freight audits, we’re here to help. Contact our team today to learn how we can help.