How much money are you losing with inaccurate freight reporting?

The amount of money that businesses lose every year due to inaccurate freight management reporting is astounding. From carrier invoice discrepancies to a lack of visibility on key metrics, the numbers quickly add up.

There is also the cost of not having clear data to make accurate business decisions around freight logistics. Without knowing where your money is going and how different areas of your business are performing, it’s near impossible to steer your business.

One of the easiest wins for business owners is to use technology to identify these differences to claim the refunds you’re entitled to. These can be things like duplicate charges, incorrect weight or dimensions, incorrect accessorial fees, or errors in freight or service classifications.

MachShip identifies tens of thousands of carrier invoice discrepancies each month by comparing what was delivered with what was charged to your businesses, and in this blog, we’re going to cover how accurate reporting can save your business a significant amount of money on shipping management, every single day.

The price of carrier cost discrepancies

Going line by line through your carrier invoices to uncover overcharges can consume hours of your employees’ days but ignoring this could cost your business tens of thousands of dollars. A recent analysis of MachShip’s top 20 customers showed they experienced an average ROI of x 2.6 just from using the invoice reconciliation feature, clearly highlighting how better handling of this area can result in significant financial upside.

We also examined MachShip’s most-utilised carriers (between 1 May – 30 June 2021) and found that 7.4% of consignment invoices have a discrepancy of more than $1, showing again how crucial it is to have your reporting down to accessorial or line item charges comparing what was quoted.

With MachShip you can automatically evaluate what was quoted vs. what was charged to uncover overcharges from carriers immediately. For example, if your carrier has a guarantee of fast delivery you can catch shipments that did not meet that delivery time frame. Or if you’ve already paid for certain fees upfront, you can catch duplicate charges that come in and avoid paying for anything twice.

Data to make better freight management decisions

Most businesses still rely on staff members to organise and manage their freight operations with insufficient technology support or training. This often results in human error but even worse — it can result in senior management having very little visibility into the financial results of the decisions being made.

We recently spoke with one of MachShip’s customers, The Blue Space (an Australian online retailer). Who has been using their Machship reporting to make key business decisions that would have otherwise been missed.

Ken Poole, National Logistics Manager at The Blue Space explained how they have gained the power to view performance across zones and prevent revenue from being lost.

“Rather than having to rely on the carriers coming back to me once a quarter, with a dispersion report or DIFOT report — I can produce those myself out of MachShip now. The level of detail is there — not only in terms of the state but the zones and the regions — that the freight is going to. So I can now produce my own dispersion report by carriers”.

Ken continued, “if I want to look at June to August this year by Australia Post, by state, I can do that now — and make decisions. For example, we’ve now made the decision to turn off some zones because it’s become cost-prohibitive to send it there — and it was on the back of data. Being able to produce that report directly out of MachShip and look at that is excellent.”

Taking it a step further

There are several other key reports MachShip provides that can prevent your business from losing money, including:

Carrier Optimisation Report

Allows users to analyse the options they have for carriers over a specific timeframe and compares the price and ETA of the route selected. MachShip customers love this report as it enables them to discover the most cost-efficient and/or time-efficient carrier options to prevent price or margin leakage.

Bulk Quote Report

This report allows users to quote consignments on a large scale, by uploading data and returning a list of other route options to find the best carrier option. This is especially useful when assessing the price competitiveness of a potential new carrier as users can upload the proposed carrier rates into MachShip and compare how they compare with their current carrier mix.

4PL / Freight Broker /Reseller

For Freight Brokers this report is beneficial when bidding for new work, as it displays their rates to prospective customers based on a historical order data set, showing them what a previous order would have cost the business with their brokerage.

From fiscal reports to operational reports and “what-if” analysis — it’s crucial for any business involving freight to be on top of where they can be optimising their operations, creating process efficiency and saving money.

MachShip allows for sophisticated views of the numbers that matter to simplify your business decisions — allowing you to reduce costs while also improving your service to customers.