What is freight audit and payment?

Freight audit and payment is an outsourced service that validates carrier invoices against contracts and shipment data, resolves billing errors with carriers, pays approved invoices, codes freight cost to the general ledger, and reports on spend and savings.

How much does a freight audit and payment service save?

Savings depend on carrier mix, contract complexity, and how invoices were checked before. Recovered overcharges are the visible part; prevented errors, accurate accruals, and negotiation leverage from audited data usually matter more over time. Orca sizes the opportunity from a sample of recent invoices before an engagement starts.

Does the service replace our accounts payable process?

It replaces the freight-specific part of it. Orca can pay carriers directly or hand approved, coded payment files to the shipper's AP system. Either way, freight invoices reach AP already audited and coded.

Which modes are covered?

Parcel, LTL, truckload, ocean, air, rail, intermodal, and related charges such as customs, duties, warehousing, and fulfillment fees.

Guide

Freight Audit and Payment Services

Freight audit and payment (FAP) services take over the work between a carrier sending an invoice and a shipper paying it: validating every charge against the contract and the shipment, resolving what is wrong, paying what is right, and reporting what happened. For enterprise shippers, that work spans thousands of carriers, every mode, several currencies, and a finance close that depends on getting it right.

This guide explains what a complete freight audit and payment service includes, how the workflow runs, and what to expect from a provider. Orca has delivered these services since 2016 and is recognized in the Gartner Market Guide for Freight Audit and Payment Providers.

Pre- and post-payment auditCarrier payment and settlementGL coding and accrualsAnalytics and benchmarking

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Freight audit and payment workflow from invoice to settlement

What freight audit and payment services include

A full-service provider handles the whole cycle rather than one step of it. The components below are the ones enterprise shippers should expect to see scoped explicitly.

Invoice intake from every carrier by EDI, API, portal, or document capture, in any format and language
Data normalization: carriers, lanes, charge codes, references, weights, and currencies mapped into one model
Pre-payment audit of rates, fuel, accessorials, duplicates, dimensional weight, and service against contract and shipment data
Exception management: disputes prepared with evidence, submitted to carriers, and tracked to recovery
Approval workflow and carrier payment in the shipper's currencies, with remittance detail
GL coding, cost allocation, and accrual support for the finance close
Reporting and analytics on spend, savings, carrier performance, and cost drivers
Claims management, contract benchmarking, and RFP support as extensions of the same data

How the workflow runs

Invoices are matched to shipment records (bills of lading, orders, tracking events) and to the contract terms in force on the ship date. Lines that agree are approved automatically. Lines that do not become exceptions, each with the evidence a carrier needs to accept a correction. Approved invoices move to payment on the shipper's terms; disputed lines are held or short-paid without stopping the rest.

The result is that finance pays a validated amount, transportation sees where carriers deviated, and both work from the same record. Post-payment audit covers historical invoices for recovery and establishes the baseline for a pre-payment program.

What separates a service from a software tool

Audit software finds exceptions. A service resolves them. The difference shows up in dispute follow-up with carriers, in handling non-standard invoices and documents, in paying carriers in multiple currencies, and in a team that reviews results with the shipper and the carriers each quarter. Orca combines a cloud platform with that operational service so exceptions turn into recovered dollars and changed carrier behavior, not a report.

Service elements to confirm

Who chases the carrier on a dispute, and how aging is reported
Whether payment is included, and in which currencies
How contract changes, rate increases, and weekly fuel updates are maintained
Coverage of all modes, including ocean, air, rail, and customs charges
Support for quarterly business reviews and negotiations

How results are measured

Recovered overcharges and prevented overcharges, by carrier and root cause
Contract compliance rate and trend
Dispute win rate and exception aging
Accrual accuracy and days to close freight
Freight cost per unit, per order, or per customer over time

Orca's freight audit and payment service

Orca audits and pays freight for more than 80 enterprise customers across manufacturing, retail, consumer goods, industrial, life sciences, chemicals, automotive, aerospace, and logistics, with more than 2,000 carriers onboarded across all modes and more than $5 billion in annual freight payments. Payments are made in CAD, USD, and EUR directly and in other currencies through Orca's U.S. Bank partnership. The platform supports all global regions and most languages, with the majority of carriers in North America and growing coverage in Europe and Asia.

Frequently Asked Questions

Freight AuditAll-mode invoice audit and recovery Payment ServicesApproval, funding, and carrier settlement Freight Audit CompaniesHow to evaluate and choose a provider

See the service on your own invoices

Book a strategic demo and Orca will run a sample of recent carrier invoices through the audit engine and walk through what a full program would look like.

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