It’s never a good sign when inflation is front page news. While demand and inventory levels are starting to level out, gas prices continue to soar, driving up transportation costs at every step. On the parcel side, UPS and FedEx are in no hurry to reinstate their GSR’s or money-back guarantees, respectively. Instead, peak surcharges continue to be the new normal. There’s no denying that for many companies across the country, the current economy is squeezing budgets and hurting bottom lines.

Now more than ever, your business needs to know precisely where profits are leaking out. And that’s exactly why you need a parcel audit.

The Importance of a Parcel Audit

While it’s true that the nationwide carriers are still suspending their service refunds, they are just one part of a comprehensive parcel audit. There are other aspects to shipping charges that expert auditors know how to examine in order to maximize savings. Here are just some of the other opportunities Zero Down goes after for our clients:

• Rate Errors:

While the carriers do a lot of things well, rate errors happen more than anyone would like to admit. With the increasing complexity of residential and same-day delivery driven by the expansion of the e-commerce market, even parcel shipments are starting to get complicated. Errors can occur in missing discounts, inappropriate surcharges, incorrect dimensions . . . the list goes on and on.

• Address Corrections:

Not all address corrections are created equal. If a carrier’s address verification software changes a ‘S’ to ‘South,’ that is not something the shipper should have to pay for. A thorough parcel audit will systematically compare the carrier’s address corrections to the originals, allowing shippers to either catch incorrect charges, or update their address database and save down the line.

• Accessorial Charges:

The number of accessorial charges the carriers can tack onto any given shipment seems to get longer every year. The only way to ensure accuracy and keep costs down is by combing through each invoice line by line, to make sure these don’t start to add up. Or, ideally, to let your industry-leading advanced logistics platform automate the process for you.

Benefits of a Parcel Audit

While there is some optimism that the supply chain bottlenecks that have plagued the logistics industry in recent years are easing, transportation costs themselves continue to climb. Now is the perfect time to ensure your business has a logistics partner with the expertise and technological capabilities needed to provide a comprehensive and thorough parcel audit, in order to offset those rising costs. You need supply chain solutions that examine every aspect of your unique shipping profile, and cutting-edge technology to level the playing field with the carriers.

At Zero Down, we specialize in providing both.

Our parcel audit will not only provide guaranteed savings, but our best-in-class Business Intelligence offering will lift the veil on your own shipping data, providing actionable insights that can help your customers as well as your bottom line.

Perfection is the enemy of progress, or in this case, profits. Just because the carriers are raising costs and eliminating service refunds doesn’t mean there aren’t other opportunities for savings hidden in your shipping invoices. You just need the right partner to help you find them.

If you want to see how much your company could be saving, reach out to us today for a Free Savings Report. In these hard economic times, can you honestly afford not to?

You Can Be Better. We Can Help.