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May 2005
Poor Audit Procedures
Both of Shippers and Carriers
Once bills have been presented, a lax attitude or a
poor job of monitoring the correctness of the rates
that are being used to arrive at the charges can
lead to excess payments for transportation charges.
Furthermore, while a post audit does recover the
over charges, there are losses associated with this
process since the charges are not recovered until
long after they have been paid. If done in house a
post audit requires staff time to perform the post
audit, which is of course a cost. If done by outside
auditors the fees are usually assessed as a
percentage of the money recovered, so the money
retained by the outside audit firms is an expense
generally charged to the transportation budget.
Today there are any numbers of computerized freight
audit software programs, which can make the auditing
job a great deal easier. Generally the cost for
doing the audit in-house is lower than the cost for
outside services. However in these days of “head
counting” this does require the staffing and or
training of a competent staff. And of course, the
cost of software programs designed specifically for
this sort of job. Logistics is the responsible
party along with other “Team Group C” for
implementing “Team Group B” might be involved in the
design and final approvals process for freight bill
payments. |
