More than 3 billion packages were shipped during last year’s shopping season. This year’s shopping season is around the corner, and with it comes a boom in businesses’ shipping needs. Having a reliable shipping partner during the shipping season is nothing short of a blessing in disguise, but a FedEx bill audit is just good insurance.

The increasing competition among global shipping carriers like UPS and FedEx has prompted them to offer fast order deliveries and even refunds for late deliveries. While this might sound promising, you might still end up losing money to unclaimed refunds and missed deliveries. 

That begs the question, how can you minimize shipping losses? Although most businesses don’t consider this, performing a FedEx bill audit could save your business hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in the long run.

What Is a FedEx Bill Audit?

A FedEx bill audit is simply the process of examining and validating all your shipping invoices on a regular basis. Doing this enables you to analyze and verify the validity of your FedEx bill.

A comprehensive audit could show instances where you were overcharged in your shipping invoice or fell victim to service failures like late and missed deliveries. Having a reliable bill auditor can go a long way in auditing your FedEx invoice for every error and mischarge.

4 Reasons for Performing a FedEx Bill Audit Before the Holiday Shipping Season

The ever-increasing complexity of local markets, coupled with the logistical rates and shipping practices of shipping carriers like FedEx, has necessitated the need to use a billing auditor to prevent financial losses. Here is what you stand to gain from performing a bill audit before the shipping season begins.

1. Insightful Data Insights and Analytics

Bill auditing companies dive deep into your business’s logistical data to provide you with a clear analysis and understanding of your operations. They go beyond the basics by employing IT and experienced human consultants to sort through data. Along the way, they can uncover previously invisible patterns like wastage and scalable errors. 

These insights can give you solutions to unsolved issues. They can also guide your business towards more effective optimization methods and logistical opportunities. This ultimately results in the identification of cash wastage and scalable errors, which could interrupt your cash flow in the long run. 

2. Reduced Expenses

Performing a bill audit goes a long way in preventing over-billing and mitigating other financial discrepancies due to service failures.

One of the most common issues in logistics is over-billing. This mostly happens due to the complexity of logistic operations, unforeseen circumstances during shipping, and, more often than not, human error.

Most businesses don’t even find out when they’re over-billed, even when it happens on multiple occasions. Others simply put off these issues, terming them as the cost of doing business. 

However, performing a bill audit could reduce your shipping costs considerably, thus saving your business lots of money. You don’t have to settle for less. After all, the money you save on logistics could be utilized on other important business goals.

3. Get Refunds for Late Deliveries

Performing a bill audit can also help you identify instances of service failures due to missed or delayed deliveries. Among the major perks of using FedEx is that they offer refunds on all late deliveries. But, there’s a catch. Getting the refunds is pretty daunting. For starters, the claim is only valid for fifteen days, so if you miss that window, you can kiss your refund goodbye. 

Therefore, it is advisable that you contract an audit company to handle everything for you. They can follow up on individual deliveries, identify discrepancies, and help you follow up on them to receive reimbursement. This saves your business a lot of money that would have otherwise been lost. 

4. Increased Visibility

Having a clear insight on the cost of logistics and rate contracts can give you the tools you need to plan your business operations and execute current objectives. This is especially vital if your business is dependent on physical goods. After all, you can’t manage your spending efficiently without a grasp on the cost of logistics and rate life cycles.

The Bottom Line

Shipping companies get away with a lot of money in unclaimed refunds due to shipping discrepancies. This is especially true for businesses with a lot of shipping needs since, in most cases, they are unable to keep up with all their shipping invoices.

A FedEx bill audit can make your business stronger through a more consistent cash flow and better insight into your shipping expenses. At Util Auditors, we offer FedEx and shipping audits, credit card processing fee audits, and more so you can regain control of your business. So contact us for a FedEx bill audit, one-time shipping audits, and audit programs for recurring oversight. You never know — the money you save now could finance your next business goal.