How do freight audit companies charge?

Common models are contingency (a share of recovered overcharges), a fee per invoice or shipment, or a subscription based on spend and services. Contingency-only pricing tends to reward recovery over prevention, so ask how prevention and reporting are compensated.

Should we use our 3PL or TMS vendor for freight audit?

It can work for a single-platform shipper, but the party auditing the freight bill should not be the party being paid for the freight. An independent audit and payment provider gives finance a separate control and a complete view across carriers and platforms.

What size shipper needs a freight audit company?

Any shipper with multiple carriers and modes and enough spend that a low single-digit error rate is material. Most of Orca's customers are enterprise shippers with complex networks, but the underlying problem exists at every scale.

Guide

Freight Audit Companies: How to Evaluate and Choose One

Freight audit companies all promise to catch carrier overcharges. The differences that matter show up later: whether they audit every mode or just parcel, whether they resolve disputes or only report them, whether they pay carriers in the currencies you ship in, and whether the data they produce is good enough to run your transportation finance on.

This guide lays out the types of freight audit companies, the criteria that separate them, and the questions to ask before choosing one. Orca is one of the providers recognized in the Gartner Market Guide for Freight Audit and Payment Providers; the criteria below apply to any shortlist.

Types of providersEvaluation criteriaQuestions to askRed flags

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Types of freight audit companies

Parcel-only auditors: strong on UPS, FedEx, and DHL refunds, usually weak on freight modes and payment
Audit and payment specialists: full cycle from invoice intake to carrier settlement across modes; this is the Gartner category
3PL or TMS-embedded audit: convenient if you already use the platform, but the auditor and the party paid for freight are the same company
Consulting-led audit: strong analysis, often manual, and rarely continuous

Evaluation criteria

Score each company on the same criteria and ask for evidence rather than assurances. A provider that audits at scale can show anonymized examples of exceptions, disputes, and recoveries for a shipper like you.

What to compare

Mode coverage: parcel, LTL, FTL, ocean, air, rail, intermodal, and customs charges
Carrier coverage and how new carriers, formats, and languages are onboarded
Audit depth: rate, fuel table and cap, accessorials, DIM, duplicates, service failures, and contract amendments over time
Dispute handling: who follows up with carriers and how recovery and aging are reported
Payment: whether the company pays carriers, in which currencies, and with what controls
Finance integration: GL coding, allocation, accruals, and ERP exports
Data and analytics: whether reporting reconciles to paid invoices and can be used for benchmarking and RFPs
Security, controls, and audit trail for a process that touches payments
Commercial model: contingency, per-invoice, or subscription, and what is excluded

Questions that separate strong providers

Show me an exception from intake to recovery, including the carrier correspondence
How did you handle the last three carrier fuel surcharge table changes for a shipper like us?
What percentage of invoices are approved without human touch, and what happens to the rest?
Which currencies do you pay in directly, and how do complex international payments work?
How do accruals get built, and how close were they to actuals last quarter for a reference client?
Who at your company will be in our quarterly carrier reviews?

Red flags

Savings quoted as a percentage of spend before anyone has looked at your invoices
Audit limited to rate and fuel, with accessorials and service failures out of scope
No pre-payment audit, so errors are recovered months later at best
Reporting that does not reconcile to what was paid
Contracts and surcharge tables maintained by you rather than the provider

Where Orca fits

Orca is an audit and payment specialist founded in 2016 and headquartered in Toronto. It audits all modes for more than 80 enterprise customers, has onboarded more than 2,000 carriers, processes more than $5 billion in freight payments a year, and pays in CAD, USD, and EUR directly with complex global payments through its U.S. Bank partnership. Analytics, contract benchmarking, claims, GL automation, and RFP support run on the same audited data, and Orca's AI capabilities are built on that foundation rather than bolted on.

Frequently Asked Questions

Freight Audit and Payment ProvidersComparison criteria and an RFP checklist Freight Audit and Payment ServicesWhat a complete service includes Customer ResultsCase studies from enterprise shippers

Put Orca on the shortlist and test it

Send a recent month of carrier invoices and Orca will show the exceptions, the evidence, and the recovery process before you commit.

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