Freight Invoice & Bill Audit Services
Carrier invoices checked line by line against contracted rates, accessorial schedules and actual free time — with every discrepancy pursued through to credit.
What it is
Most freight billing errors are small. That is why they survive.
A freight audit is a line-by-line check of carrier invoices against the contracted rate, the rate confirmation and the shipment record. It identifies duplicate billing, rate discrepancies, incorrect fuel surcharges, accessorial charges applied outside the agreed schedule, and detention or demurrage billed beyond actual free time.
An invoice forty dollars over contract does not get queried. It gets approved, because querying it costs more attention than it is worth. Repeat that across a year of volume and the amount stops being small — but by then it is spread across thousands of invoices nobody has time to reopen.
Auditing works because it is systematic. Every invoice, every charge, every time — which is only economical when someone is doing it at scale. Infinity IPS has audited freight billing for logistics companies since 1998.
What an audit finds
The same errors, in the same places.
Freight billing goes wrong in predictable ways. Knowing where to look is most of the work.
- Duplicate invoices submitted through different channels
- Linehaul rates that do not match the contract or confirmation
- Fuel surcharge calculated on the wrong index or week
- Accessorial charges never agreed in the rate schedule
- Detention and demurrage billed against unexpired free time
- Weight, class and dimensional misclassification
How it works
Findings first, in writing.
Every audit comes back the same way — what we found, by error type, by carrier, traced to a specific invoice line. Nothing is estimated or extrapolated, because a finding you cannot evidence is a finding you cannot recover.
Pre-payment audit
Caught before the money leaves. Always cheaper.
- Every invoice checked before approval
- Discrepancies held rather than paid
- Clean invoices released on your thresholds
- Runs alongside your existing AP process
Retrospective audit
Invoices already paid, examined for recovery.
- Historical invoice review by period or carrier
- Recovery assessed against the dispute window
- Claims prepared with supporting evidence
- Pattern reporting on recurring causes
All modes
Each has its own charge structure and its own errors.
- Truckload, LTL and intermodal
- Ocean, including CFS and port charges
- Air freight and courier
- Rail and multimodal movements
Free Freight Invoice Audit
Send 100 invoices. See exactly what we find.
Written leakage report in 5 business days. No cost, no obligation, NDA signed first.
Recovery & disputes
Finding it is half. Recovering it is the other half.
A discrepancy identified and never pursued is worth nothing. We compile the rate proof and shipment evidence, raise the dispute with the carrier, and follow it through the weeks of silence that usually come next — while you see every open item and its status.
Audit findings also feed back into accounts payable so recurring errors get stopped at source rather than caught repeatedly.
Comparing providers? Freight audit and payment providers differ considerably in scope, pricing model and what they actually do with a finding. Our guide to selecting a freight audit provider covers the questions worth asking — including of us.
By sector
Where the errors hide differs by business.
Each of these covers the wider back office scope for that segment.
Freight Forwarders
Multimodal audit, co-loader invoices, accessorial validation.
NVOCC Operators
CFS and terminal charges, demurrage against free time.
Trucking Companies
Purchased transportation, fuel and detention verification.
3PL Providers
Carrier audit across TL, LTL and parcel, margin protection.
Freight Payment Companies
Audit at volume, EDI ingestion, GL coding on findings.
Custom House Brokers
Duty, fee and disbursement verification.
Platform expertise
We audit inside the systems you already run.
Plus carrier portals and EDI feeds. No migration, and no change for your carriers.
Common questions
Freight audit, answered.
What is a freight audit?
A line-by-line check of carrier invoices against the contracted rate, the rate confirmation and the shipment record. It identifies duplicate billing, rate discrepancies, incorrect fuel surcharges, accessorial charges applied outside the agreed schedule, and detention or demurrage billed beyond actual free time.
What errors do freight audits typically find?
The recurring categories are duplicate invoices, linehaul rates that do not match the contract, fuel surcharges calculated on the wrong index or week, accessorials never agreed, weight or class misclassification, and detention charged against free time that had not expired.
How is a freight audit different from accounts payable processing?
AP processing moves invoices through to payment correctly. An audit examines whether the charge should have been made at all. In practice they work best together — the audit catches the error, the AP process stops the payment before it leaves.
Do you audit historical invoices as well as current ones?
Yes. Retrospective audits examine invoices already paid, where recovery depends on the carrier's dispute window and your contract terms. Ongoing audits catch errors before payment, which is always the cheaper outcome.
Which modes do you audit?
Truckload, less-than-truckload, ocean, air, rail, parcel and intermodal — domestic and international. Each has its own charge structures and its own characteristic errors.
Do you handle the dispute with the carrier?
Yes. We compile the rate proof and shipment evidence, raise the discrepancy, and follow it through to credit note or resolution. You see every open dispute and its status without handling the correspondence.
How do we know an audit is worth doing?
Send 100 recent invoices and we will audit them at no cost, then show you in writing what we found. If there is nothing there, you have a clean bill of health and it has cost you nothing but the export.
100 invoices. Five days. One number.
You will know what your freight billing is costing you before you have spent a dollar or an hour of your team's time.