DL Freight Enhancements: Automating Accessorial Charges

Invoices.

When most of us look at them, we briefly examine the descriptions, the costs, and then the total. If it aligns with our expectations, it ends there. Seldom, though, do we appreciate what goes into the creation of each line item.

If we consider the charge for a burger and fries at a restaurant — how many different decisions and processes had to be fulfilled to harvest the wheat, grow the lettuce, produce the meat, and then combine all of that into a single, consumable food item?

When you think about it, it’s extraordinarily complex. One can draw the same conclusion from a shipping invoice. Similarly, charges are represented as line items and combined, producing a final outstanding amount. But, if you look a little deeper, you’ll realize that this is the result of a range of processes involving different people, organizations, and systems all combined to produce a single representation of the shipping cost.

Mix in cross-border routing and multiple loads to numerous destinations with the added impact of traffic, weather, supply, rates, currency fluctuations, and scheduling — the complexity increases exponentially.

Now, we are looking at a document that comprises the results of hundreds, if not thousands, of manual and machine-executed…