One of the largest pain points around Less Than Truckload (LTL) freight movement can be settlement. LTL has the greatest percentage of invoice variances. This means there is a lot of pressure to have an efficient and effective settlement process for LTL.
Within Shipwell we support multiple ways to receive invoices and supporting documents for LTL freight movement. These options include:
For most Shipwell customers with LTL freight, invoices are generally received via (1) or (2). Each customer and their existing carrier relationships must be considered though in determining which option is best. Furthermore, some customers will have different carriers follow different invoicing processes depending on existing options setup.
Questions Evaluated:
Do you have direct rates with your LTL carriers or are your rates through a third party? If you have direct rates with the carrier, then you are invoiced by the carrier. But, if you have rates through a third party then you will be invoiced through this third party. Depending on who is doing the invoice ( Example: Customer is using one or more rate aggregators Echo, WWEX, P1, GlobalTranz. They will receive and invoice from that rate aggregator, not the actual LTL carrier.)
Are your current carriers invoicing within P44? Shipwell leverages P44 for providing back instant rates and as part of this is that certain carriers within P44 we receive invoice images back that are then able to have key information extracted from it within Shipwell automatically and run through your First Pass Match Settlement Configurations. A list of current carriers that P44, and in turn Shipwell, receives invoice images is here.
Are your current carriers set up with EDI 210 within Shipwell? And if not, are they willing to be set up? Shipwell supports inbound EDI 210 invoices from carriers. If an LTL carrier is not set up within Shipwell, then we will need to set them up as a new EDI connection. The carrier must be willing to do this and assuming they are already set up with Orderful (our EDI intake partner), then this process usually takes under a week for most carriers but it must be planned out on timing with our team to schedule resources from our Solutions Engineering Team to do this. On the other hand, if the LTL carrier is already integrated with EDI with Shipwell then we simply need to work with them to send EDI 210 for your shipments.
Do your carriers or tariff providers require you receive List Bills? Some LTL providers or tariff holders will send List Bills where it is a spreadsheet of invoices for a certain time period. Currently, Shipwell does not have a way to consume these List Bills but it is an item that has been identified to be supported in the future. Oftentimes carriers or tariff providers that prefer List Bills will also provide another method like EDI 210 and we will advise you on this.
No matter which of the above, if an invoice is able to be consumed within Shipwell then the Settlement First Pass Match (FPM) process works the same. We leverage your Settlement FPM configurations and compare the invoice received against your configurations and identify exceptions as they exist. The invoices received with or without exceptions identified are available both within the Settlement Dashboard along with the Invoices Received card within the Shipment Details - Financials page.
Note that if you receive EDI 210 invoices and either Reject or Dispute these invoices then there is NOT an EDI transaction that goes back to the carrier. Instead, your carrier contacts will receive an email indicating that the invoice has been disputed or rejected. This is also true when your invoice is identified as Scheduled or Paid.