What is the Gartner Market Guide for Freight Audit and Payment Providers?

It is Gartner's overview of the freight audit and payment market, describing what the services include and profiling representative providers. Orca is included in the guide. Inclusion is a useful shortlist signal; the evaluation still has to be done on your own network and invoices.

How long does it take to implement a freight audit and payment provider?

Typically a few weeks to first audited invoices for a shipper with organized contracts and carrier data, longer where contracts must be collected and carriers onboarded to new invoice channels. Providers should give a timeline with dependencies in their proposal.

Can a provider audit without also paying carriers?

Yes. Audit-only engagements hand approved and coded invoices to the shipper's AP system. Many shippers start audit-only and add payment once the audit is established.

Guide

Freight Audit and Payment Providers: A Comparison Framework

Freight audit and payment providers are increasingly evaluated as a category: Gartner publishes a Market Guide for Freight Audit and Payment Providers, and procurement teams run formal RFPs rather than picking a parcel auditor on referral. That is the right instinct, because the provider you choose will sit between your carriers and your cash.

This page gives a comparison framework and an RFP checklist you can adapt. Orca is one of the providers recognized in the Gartner Market Guide; the framework is written to be fair to any provider on your list.

Scope and coverageAudit depthPayment and currenciesData, controls, and terms

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Comparing freight audit and payment providers

Comparison framework

Weight the categories by what matters to your network. A parcel-heavy retailer will weight surcharge and DIM depth; a global manufacturer will weight currencies, languages, and ocean and air coverage.

Scope: modes, regions, carriers, languages, and invoice formats supported today, not on a roadmap
Audit depth: contract rules, fuel tables with weekly updates and caps, accessorials, DIM, duplicates, service failures, claims
Resolution: dispute ownership, carrier follow-up, recovery reporting, and aging
Payment: direct payment capability, currencies, funding model, controls, and carrier remittance detail
Finance: GL coding, allocation, accrual support, ERP integration, and close support
Data: normalization quality, reporting that reconciles to paid, benchmarking, and RFP modeling
Service: named team, quarterly reviews, carrier negotiation support, and consulting depth
Controls: segregation of duties, audit trail, security posture, and payment safeguards
Commercials: pricing model, exclusions, implementation timeline, and exit terms including data return

RFP checklist

Ask every provider to answer in writing

List the modes, regions, and currencies you support, with a current client example for each
Describe how carrier contracts and surcharge tables are loaded, maintained, and versioned by effective date
Walk through one exception end to end, including carrier correspondence and the recovery record
State the share of invoices approved automatically and the median time to resolve an exception
Describe payment controls that prevent duplicate, premature, and unaudited payments
Provide sample executive, finance, and operations reports built from audited data
Explain implementation steps, timeline, and what you need from our carriers and systems
Provide references in our industry and at our scale
State pricing, what is excluded, and how data is returned if we leave

Scoring the responses

Score evidence, not claims. A provider that can show a live exception with the carrier's reply and the credit on the next invoice has an operating process; one that shows a slide about savings percentages may not. Ask two references specifically about dispute follow-up and accrual accuracy, since those are where providers differ most in practice.

How Orca answers

Orca is a cloud-based freight audit and payment provider founded in 2016. It supports all carriers and modes across all global regions and most languages, has onboarded more than 2,000 carriers, serves more than 80 enterprise customers across industries, and processes more than $5 billion in freight payments annually. Payments are made in CAD, EUR, and USD directly and in other currencies through a U.S. Bank partnership. Analytics, contract benchmarking, claims management, GL automation, RFP support, and AI-driven anomaly detection run on the same audited data. Orca will answer the checklist above in writing as part of any evaluation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Freight Audit CompaniesTypes of providers and red flags Freight Audit and Payment ServicesWhat a complete service includes RFPs & Scenario ModelingHow Orca supports carrier RFPs

Send Orca your RFP

Orca will answer the checklist above in writing and run a sample of your invoices so the evaluation is based on evidence.

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