Freight Billing Pre-audit

The sample audit — what the pre-audit finds on nine bills

Sample Shipper Inc.’s nine bills from the last month, audited against its agreement exactly as yours are. The whole sample, with every bill’s evidence, is open on the desk.

• EXF-220131 billed $391, hold $10

  Liftgate billed $85.00; the contract says $75.00.

• EXF-220118 billed $360, hold $360

  This bill (PRO EXF-220118) was already received from Example Freight Lines.

• EXF-220140 billed $645, hold $105

  Discount billed $975.00 on $1,500.00; the contract gives 72% ($1,080.00).

• EXF-220152 billed $371, hold $65

  Residential billed $120.00; the contract says $90.00. notify charge ($35.00) is not in the contract's accessorial schedule.

See the whole sample audit

What the pre-audit is

Before your company pays a carrier, ZetaVolt reads the carrier’s bill and checks every line against the contract, tariff and fuel table that were in force on the ship date. It tells you what is right to pay, what to hold back and why — so you pay the right amount the first time. You decide what to pay and you pay your carriers yourself.

Bills sent twice — held back in full

Carriers bill the same shipment twice more often than most companies see: the same bill sent again, the same shipment under a new invoice number, a corrected bill sent with the first one still open. Paying one of them twice costs the whole bill, not a part of it.

• How ZetaVolt catches it: every bill is matched by carrier and shipment number (the PRO) — or the invoice number when there is no PRO — against every bill your company brought in over the past 400 days. The same shipment under a new invoice number is still caught.
• What happens: the second bill is held back in full and shown beside the first one, which stands. Nothing about it is approved to pay, and the drafted notice tells the carrier it was already billed.
• What it saves: the whole duplicate bill, every time — a $435 bill sent twice is $435 your company does not pay twice. See it in the sample audit.

What we audit

Electronic freight bills only, read and audited by ZetaVolt’s own software:

• EDI freight invoices. X12 210 (truck), 110 (air), 310 (ocean) and 410 (rail), from your carriers or your EDI provider — uploaded, sent to your own ZetaVolt address, or picked up from your EDI mailbox (SFTP or AS2).
• Carrier billing data files. CSV or Excel files of invoices exported from a carrier’s billing portal, your TMS or your accounts payable system.
• Bills sent by your own systems. JSON sent by your TMS or ERP to your own ZetaVolt address, as bills are made.
• PDF invoices made by a carrier’s billing system. Electronic PDFs with the words in them (the kind a carrier emails), one bill per file.

Not audited: paper bills, scans, photos and faxes — ZetaVolt does not key bills in by hand.

You pay only for the bills ZetaVolt reads and audits: a file or bill it cannot read is refused and never charged.

Each bill is checked line by line against the contracts, tariffs and fuel tables you bring in: the rate, the discount, the minimum, the fuel surcharge, every accessorial, the freight class and duplicates. You get what to approve, what to hold back and why, the written notice for the carrier, and the report your accounts payable pays from.

What is automated

• Every bill read as it arrives, from a file, your own address for bills, your EDI mailbox or a connected system.
• The contract in force on the ship date found by itself, carrier by carrier.
• Every line checked: the rate or tariff, the discount, the minimum charge, the fuel surcharge at that week’s diesel price, every accessorial against your schedule (and the proof it needs), the freight class, and bills sent twice.
• The amount to pay and the amount to hold back, each finding with the bill’s line beside the contract’s line.
• A written dispute notice drafted for each finding, with the last day to contest the bill in writing (180 days by federal law, or your contract’s shorter window).
• Reports and a payment file your accounts payable can pay from, and an EDI 997 acknowledgment back to any system that sends bills by EDI.

What you do: bring in your contracts and tariffs once (any file, or typed), keep them current, and choose what to pay.

How your bills come in

• Upload any bill file — an EDI interchange, a CSV or Excel export, a JSON file, a PDF from the carrier’s billing system — or paste bills in.
• Your own address for bills: your TMS, ERP or EDI provider sends each bill to it as it is made, with your company’s key.
• Your EDI mailbox (SFTP or AS2): the 210s, 110s, 310s and 410s you already receive are picked up by themselves.

How it works

1. Sign up your business and sign the Freight Pre-Audit Agreement (a minute).
2. Paddle’s checkout takes your card — pay as you go starts. Card, PayPal, Apple Pay or Google Pay.
3. Bring in your contracts, then your bills, any of the ways above.
4. Each bill comes back audited: pay the approved amount, hold back the rest and send the drafted notice if you choose.
5. At the end of the month you are charged for the bills audited, at the month’s price per bill.

How it is billed: Freight Billing pay as you go

You pay only for the bills audited — no package, no commitment. The month’s number of bills sets one price for every bill that month.

The month's count sets one price for every bill that month, and the best price always applies: a month never costs more than the next step would (9,999 bills cost what 10,000 do, $5,000).

At least $10 a month, counted toward your bills. Charged to the card on file as it adds up — each time $500 more is owed — and the rest at the end of the month, each with a receipt from Paddle. Only the bills audited are charged.

For example: 1,000 bills in a month, $550 · 10,000 bills in a month, $5,000 · 100,000 bills in a month, $45,000.

Signing up: your business’s account, then the Freight Pre-Audit Agreement (only about the pre-audit), then Paddle’s checkout.

What a pre-audit usually finds

Industry estimates, not a guarantee. Your results depend on your carriers, contracts and bills.

• About 4.5% of LTL freight bills had a billing error — 11,881 errors in nearly 250,000 LTL invoices audited.

  Source: AFS Logistics, “Stat’s Incredible: Common LTL Invoicing Errors” · published undated · read 2026-10-29

• 42.8% · 14.4% · 12.3% · 10.3% of those errors were accessorial charges, fuel surcharges, freight class, and the discount, minimum or rate.

  Source: AFS Logistics, “Stat’s Incredible: Common LTL Invoicing Errors” · published undated · read 2026-10-29

• 2% to 4% of monthly freight spend saved by catching invoice errors with a prepayment audit, as one provider described its customers’ results.

  Source: Inbound Logistics (trade magazine) · published September 2015 · read 2026-10-29

• About 0.5% ongoing savings on the audit itself once a shipper is an established client of an audit provider (“around one-half of 1%”).

  Source: Inbound Logistics, Logistics Planner · published September 2023 · read 2026-10-29

ZetaVolt will publish its own clients’ results here once there are case studies.