Internal Audit Checklist For Freight Transportation

Conducting regular shipping audits or parcel invoice audits are one of the best ways companies can reduce freight costs, making this an essential step for retailers, manufacturers and goods based service businesses.

Internal audit checklists offer clear criteria against which processes can be assessed, often tailored specifically to an organization’s requirements.

1. Review Invoices

Freight audits should be carried out regularly by either an in-house team or outsourced to a third party; invoices and related documents need to be carefully scrutinized in order to ensure proper management and prevent financial or physical supply chain disruptions.

Freight invoice audit checklists encompass numerous tasks, such as reviewing tariff compliance, detecting duplicate payments and matching accessorial fees to contracts. Conducting such an audit helps your organization remain transparent while adhering to contractual compliance while simultaneously cutting costs.

An audit checklist for freight shipping can help you meet these goals, even as demand for transport increases exponentially. With smart rules and clear directives in place, a freight audit checklist ensures carrier invoices are paid accurately in a timely fashion to keep financial and physical supply chains moving smoothly.

2. Review Bills of Lading

Bills of lading (BOLs) are used in freight transportation to verify that goods being sent out match what was stated on the bill of lading (BOL). A BOL contains details regarding an order’s origin and destination as well as loading specifications and storage capacity.

Reviewing BOLs and related documents can be time consuming when auditing multiple carriers’ invoices at once. MachShip allows you to quickly reconcile all invoices and BOLs instantly.

Watching for shipping invoice discrepancies is one way to make sure you’re receiving maximum value from your budget. Conducting regular freight audits will also provide actionable data to enhance transport and logistics operations.

3. Review Bills of Quantities

Examining bills of quantities and other documents related to freight transportation is an integral step, helping ensure the goods and services you’re charged for correspond with what was delivered and with your freight carrier contracts.

MachShip makes auditing invoices simple by automatically reconciling invoice data for you, so there’s no need to manually compare invoices, analyze differences and submit credit requests yourself.

Outsourcing freight auditing to an experienced freight audit company can take the stress out of this process and ensure your shipping processes run efficiently. They’ll handle data analysis and reporting directly back to you so you can focus on growing your business instead.

4. Review Bills of Origin

Freight audits are essential in ensuring accurate billing in the freight transportation industry, and will help ensure shipping companies do not overcharge for handling fees or area surcharges.

Advanced technology to conduct freight audits can reduce the time spent manually reviewing each invoice, as well as ensure they all follow a unified data pattern without errors.

DATAMYTE’s low-code platform makes it possible for users to create audit templates and checklists for any process or document, making auditing much simpler than before. Users can conduct Layered Process Audits (LPA), which evaluate the individual steps within an entire workflow process; or conduct Detailed Process Analyses (DPA), which focus on pinpointing areas of improvement – making it simpler than ever to identify and fix issues threatening shipping operations.

5. Review Bills of Representation

Businesses dealing in retail, manufacturing, or goods-based services face many responsibilities in managing their supply chains effectively and impacting operational costs and performance.

An effective freight audit checklist can ensure that processes are operating optimally. With advanced technology available today, logistics and transportation companies can quickly conduct this review of their processes.

Freight audits help companies optimize shipping costs and increase profitability by reviewing base rates, accessorials (such as additional handling fees or delivery area surcharges), contract carrier discounts, taxes and customs collection accuracy and turnaround time improvements for shipment processing. In essence, a freight audit helps companies optimize shipping costs and improve profitability.