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Transport invoice format for Operations

[Music] hey Megan thanks for joining me today so Megan Kidder before we start just tell everyone who you are what you do at a boar and how you even got here yep so I came to a born right out of college I got my MBA in supply chain management just sort of happened into logistics and Loveday born from the first time I interviewed it's a great crowd here it's a great environment and then now I've been an account manager here for almost two years now okay so when I first started one of like you were definitely were friendly as happiest pretty far like you just super bubbly willing to talk to me about anything but one of the things you were telling me when I kind of said what do you do like what's the big stuff that you're doing you said invoicing yes so that's the bane of your existence and as I've kind of done more and more conversations and talking with people it seems to be kind of like what everyone hates to do am I wrong like what why is invoicing still horrible there are some people who really love it but it is a lot of work and you really have to dedicate your entire job to it to be good at it and to be effective multitasking doesn't work when you're auditing invoices it's hard when you're also an Account Manager but you're also auditing invoices so it's a bit of a catch-22 there so I think one of the things like you you talked a lot about just like oh man I wish they would have done X Y & Z and that's sort of what I want to be working with you today and talk to you a little bit about is what are what are things that a shipper could be doing to like actions they could be taking to make invoicing easier and I kind of want to make it easy for anyone listening to this or watching it and just come up with a simple list so like five things the shipper could be doing or actions they could be taking to make invoicing easier you cool talking about that absolutely all right so let's start I mean what is let's start with what you think what's number one four five things it could be actions they could be taken yep I think easiest place to start is right when you're setting up your contracts you're getting your spot quotes anything like that with contracts seems really simple but you want to make sure that your contracts apply to any shipment that you're paying for whether it's a third party shipment whether it's a new location you added that the care you didn't know about a lot of people get tripped up of I added a new location and suddenly my discount is worse because X Y or Z one carrier didn't have that added to their tariff and then your pricing suffers because of it so having that setup up front of it covers every single thing seems really basic but it's a good place to start what happens if something does kind of pop up in the middle of it like if a new location comes up with it what's kind of a recommendation for that you can add it to your pricing especially if you have some carriers require a list of locations to be active anything like that adding it into your pricing after the fact is always an option but if you can have it set up front it's always best to not have it be location specific and just have it apply to any shipment that's that you're paying for you can I already talked about this but why kind of in your experience does someone not do that what's something that they're just not thinking about why wouldn't they do that in the first place usually it's just an oversight of oh I don't really do third-party shipments so I didn't think I had to include it or something like that but it's easy to catch up front and you really don't want to find out after you've already been shipping for a month oh geez yeah all right so that's an easy little one quick and easy so let's go to number two so second one sort of ties in with contracts but you really need to know what your customers requirements are and specifically towards Asus Orioles so every carrier has you know an immensely long rules tariff with every possible asset or you can you can imagine and they add to it constantly yeah and they like to put in tricks of oh you know you wave to the appointment fee but now we have an online scheduling appointment fee or we have a paper invoice fee things like that and it makes it hard to audit invoices if there's any ambiguity or uncertainty of what you should be paying so it's a lot easier if upfront you know what your rules tariff is you have any assets orioles that you might need negotiated so you know exactly what the rate is and you know what your customer requirements are so you know I'm shipping to this customer in Florida they always require a liftgate and an appointment I know that's gonna add some extra surcharge on to it when you're booking the shipment rather than finding out you know two weeks later after it's delivered and been invoiced and suddenly you're surprised by this and it has to be kicked out for a manual audit that you could have prevented up front Wow so basically my I'm thinking of it like terms and conditions that sort of out breaks down like when you sign up for Facebook and you like give away all your rights is that sort of like the same that's the consumer version of what what you're dealing with this a little bit yeah you can know what to expect because you can negotiate certain assets or else but there are ones that you're never gonna know to negotiate or they might get added after the fact things like that so you have to have a deep understanding of what the carrier's charging you what they're allowed to charge you because they will charge this is a limited access fee but it's a normal store there's no limited access you have to know when to push back on which means you have to know what they're actually charging you for how much time do you think it should take when you kind of go through that of the beginning like how much time should you be dedicating for this like when you're getting the the tariffs and what they're kind of putting into their terms and agreements I mean at least several weeks of knowing what you're looking for I mean if you have an understanding of every time I negotiate I look for these things because they always trip me up pretty quick and easy right but if you're doing it for a first time and you're you've never looked at of rules tariffs before you've never looked at a contract digging into what are all the new twists and turns of this that you never thought were actually there what about resources is there easy ways for you kind understand this there's a lot of it just like industry knowledge when it comes like asus orioles all of the carrier's post their rules tariff on their website so any carrier you can use you can go to their website look up their rules tariff they say exactly what their assets orioles are a lot of them will say what the scenario is that they'll be used but some of it is you just sort of have to know and do your research of I don't know what an inside delivery is when's that applied to and it's just having that base knowledge of this is the scenario in which this is applicable and it's not applicable in this that you're trying to charge me for and that that's hard to gain that's gonna be ridiculous yes every one of those like just I mean you're just like man every year I'm here like this becomes a little bit easier is that sort of gives you industry knowledge grows as you're here it's like time spent right yeah it becomes easier and then they throw new things after so it's always changing fantastic alright let's move on to number three all right so number three seems pretty simple but it's how you generate your bill of lading and specifically what you put on your bill of lading so try and make it as easy as possible on carriers so that there's really no excuse for anything to be screwed up first one is have your reference number that you want the carrier to reference at the very top bold letters you know highlighted if you need to but have them use that one reference number keep it in the same spot every time otherwise they might be referencing your customer Pio number they might be referencing some other random reference on the bill of lading and that's typically what they're going to use for their finance department invoicing you is the first reference number they see so if they're referencing a customer Pio number that you don't have in your system or you don't actually pay attention to because it doesn't concern you you have a hard time matching up the invoice when it comes in Wow give an example of like and you don't don't need a name names or anything but talk about like where where it really can mess you up if you're not like having that kind of simple bill of lading yep so we have seen clients in the past where we'll get invoices in there will be one reference number which is a bill of lading number that we don't have any access to and they'll say but this ship do you have to pay the invoice it's like I I have no clue what this goes to it doesn't have a Pio number it doesn't have a a sales order number there's no reference other than this one bill of lading number that doesn't really mean anything Oh how do you figure it out like that's gonna be it's a lot of manual digging it's finding the back up paperwork tracking it down talking with your customer of what actually shipped are they supposed to be paying for it are they not jeez by coming out or like that's gonna take forever to figure out yeah it's a lot of back and forth so what wears some kind of is there resources out there is there a template like I'm just thinking kind of in my world of like okay I need to do a script for a video something like that i'm a guy google like script example script is there a template building or how's that work out you can get template bill of ladings on carrier websites it's specific to each carrier and what they want to see it's typically best if you have just your standard format that you use every time if it's the same format per carrier that's fine if you want to use the carrier website one but just having one general format that if a carrier comes in they know they always look in the top right for whatever reference number they need all right perfect do any carrier like is there I'm sure there's some specific carriers that you have to use our bill lading or no it's completely if you just like hey this is what I use here's where my reference number is like you kind of your golden they're not gonna kind of fight back too much yeah as long as you have all the necessary information on it you have where shipping from it to who's paying for it what's actually being shipped one thing that snags a lot of people is for LTL shipments if you don't have an fak in place you need to have the class and the NM FC in big bold letters not hidden anywhere so that the carrier knows exactly what they're supposed to be charging you for because if they don't see it or they don't catch it they'll hike up the class and they'll charge you class 125 when it's actually class 60 and then your invoice charge is ridiculously high ah fun yeah all right moving on number four number four is a big one so it's to automate as much as humanly possible speaking of someone who had two hours have been voicing yesterday automated as much as you can and that really starts with how the invoices get to you to pay you can mail them you can email them best option is to send them EDI then you don't have to worry about it got lost in the mail or I delete an invoice and it also reduces the human error of I sat and keyed it in and oh that I thought that was a six and it's actually an eight anything like that then they just pop directly into whatever system you're using if it's a TMS an ERP if it's an outside freight payment company whoever then you can have it come in automatically match to a shipment you already know the PIO numbers match and you're supposed to be paying for the freight and you can set specific tolerances for I will approve anything that's within 2% of what I expected it to be and that should eliminate eighteen and 90 percent of your invoices if you have the correct rates up front and the tolerance is set so it catches the majority of invoices that you're comfortable with you really should only have to audit ten maybe up to twenty but try and keep it at ten um that way you don't have someone sitting there saying yep this matches yep this matches they're only looking at the ones that are exception so you saying if you automate you really should only be like about like out of a hundred invoices you should only really have to look at ten you're doing there right Automation yep any troubleshooting if I mean you're bringing in technology and stuff like that you talk about something that has like a hard deadline what's ways you can kind of cool your automating but how do you do have to also set up sort of alerts or how do you kind of pay attention to hey technology kind of failed me here because they want to get paid they don't care that technology failed me like what not some advice for that so we set up a lot of reporting specifically around invoices to avoid those issues we have reports for this is everything we shipped we don't have an invoice for it yet what's going on right we need to reach out to the carrier because the carrier definitely invoiced this we just didn't receive it okay so the aging is going up but we haven't audited anything second thing you can set up is accruals so you can say this is everything that has been delivered but we don't have an invoice for and this is everything that we have an invoice for but we haven't approved for one reason or another it's still sucking on it we're still arguing over something that way you have a clear picture of exactly what is outstanding and what you still have left to pay you can take it up to your higher-ups they're like why are we doing this why am I getting like hounded about this like because this is what setup absolutely I think it's gonna take us into our last point right for kind of curls in like what were you hinting at for like tip number five for invoicing or am I wrong yes yeah so I guess it's just saying out loud I mean what what is the fifth kind of thing so one should be thinking about when it comes to invoicing so it's all the reporting making sure you know exactly what's outstanding making sure there's nothing you were missing you're getting Aging's from carriers so you know exactly what they think is still on the books what you still have so there's no misconceptions everyone's on even playing field and knows exactly where everyone stands so looking back at point number four is there a way to automate your reports there's their technology out there that helps with this type of process absolutely you can use an ERP to set it up we use a TMS so we can send out automated reports to all of the carriers where we think we stand so they can come back and say oh actually you're not gonna get an invoice for this because it was combined with something else or you still have a balance due of $20 on this that you haven't paid for all right that sounds great is there anything else that like something what's like this late I mean we're closely like fantasy football I don't know what I'm doing this what's a sleeper thing what's the one thing like I hate to put you on the spot with this but what's one thing that they never like you never think about until you kind of really get deep in the world of invoicing where you spend hours upon hours auditing what's like one little sleeper thing that you're like hey here's a little Meghan Gator tip and trick or life hack is there anything like that have the carrier send you the documentation yeah make it a requirement they have to send you all the backup paperwork otherwise you will spend hours scouring a carrier website trying to find the information you need when they should be sending it to you upfront hey just like why am I even gonna bother searching like I need this tell me what I like where this exactly gets to a point where it's like you didn't give me this back up I'm putting it back try again it's awesome Megan thanks so much for this I guess as we wrap up I'm sure like it from what I was here there's not a lot of great resources out there so I'm sure you would be happy if like our listening audience you're watching how it's reached out to you it's the best way to kind of get in touch with you absolutely you can shoot me an email it's M Kinneret 8 borne cocom it can give me a call right at our main line seven eight one six five nine one three two one and then I'm an extension one three seven nine or there's also the social things there's LinkedIn no no no it's fine I mean if you see any members WL Aires you know but on LinkedIn is a great one reach out reach out to you what about LinkedIn any twitter any of that stuff yeah yeah LinkedIn Megan KITT is probably the best way to reach out to you to kind of get to know yeah I'm sure that you're happy to kind of share your knowledge and also like go back and forth it's a two-way conversation right yeah you're just you're like hey I'm trying to learn I got my MBA in supply chain but I'm somehow a logistic let's figure this out together invoice I'm fully aware of that all right Megan thanks so much for your time today Thanks so to wrap up here are the five tips that Megan gave during the conversation 1 make sure your contracts applied to any shipment you are paying for to make sure you understand the rules tariffs and your customers requirements specifically towards Asus Orioles 3 try to make your bill of lading as easy as possible for your carriers so there's no excuse for making a mistake for automate as much as humanly possible and then finally 5 create reports to make sure everyone's on an even playing field knows where stuff stands so here's what I learned from Megan's conversation if you want to stand up the best practice with freight carrier invoice Auden have a tool like TMS that allows you to connect with your ERP so that orders are dropped into the TMS right and then electronic connections are made with your carrier's orders are rated with carrier pricing they're shipped delivered and carrier invoices come in electronically where it's matched to your shipment rate this will provide an automated environment and it alleviates all of the manual work then imagine the amount of data you would have not just to pay carriers but also provide internal analytics to support your supply chain would measuring freight costs down to the SKU level be important to you how about accurate freight ocurro's at your fingertips these are just examples of the many many many types of reporting capabilities you'll have with the best practice of technical phrase audit so check out a burning company learn more contact us we're always happy to talk and then thanks for watching consulting logistics as always you can like subscribe and share this with a friend if you found it informational we also premiere our podcasts live every Monday at 11 a.m. Eastern Time so hit that notification button and join me as I learned about all things Freight peace you