Freight is one of the few costs a finance team pays without a purchase order it can check line by line. The goods left the dock, the carrier moved them, and weeks later an invoice arrives listing consignment numbers, weights, services and extra charges. If the business uses several carriers, several invoices arrive, each in its own layout. Most finance teams approve them, because checking every line against what was shipped would take longer than the month allows.
This guide is for the finance lead who wants to check them anyway. It covers the three records that have to match, the mismatches that come up most often, a worked month-end, and what changes when one party holds all the carrier accounts.
Why Freight Invoices Are Hard to Check
Three things make freight harder to reconcile than most supplier bills.
The charge is set after the booking. A consignment is booked with a declared weight and size, but the carrier may measure it again in the depot, and the invoice follows the carrier's measurement.
Extra charges arrive separately. Redelivery, storage, return-to-sender and futile pickup charges are raised when something happens during delivery, which can be days after despatch. They often appear on a later invoice than the consignment itself.
Every carrier formats differently. One lists consignments by despatch date, another by invoice date, a third groups extra charges at the end. Matching across them means rebuilding each one into a common shape first.
The Three Records You Need to Match
A reconciliation is a three-way match.
The order. What the customer bought and where it was going, from your eCommerce, ERP or order system.
The consignment. What was booked: the carrier, the service, the despatch date, the declared weight and dimensions, the consignment number.
The invoice line. What the carrier charged for that consignment number, plus any extra charges raised against it.
The consignment is the hinge. It carries the consignment number the invoice uses and the order reference your system uses. If your consignment records are scattered across carrier portals, the match breaks at the hinge.
The Usual Mismatches
Weight or size changed. The invoice weight is higher than the booked weight. Sometimes the carrier is right and the booking was wrong. Either way, finance needs to see both figures side by side to know.
Extra charges with no context. A futile pickup charge appears with a consignment number and nothing else. To judge it, someone needs the consignment's history, starting with whether the pickup was booked for a time the site was closed.
Billed twice or billed but not booked. A consignment number appears on two invoices, or a number appears that nobody in the business booked. Both are only visible if you hold a complete list of what you booked.
Booked but never billed. Less common, and still worth finding, because a late invoice for it will arrive in a future month and throw that month out.
Worked Example: One Month-End
Take a hypothetical homewares wholesaler that ships through three carriers from one warehouse.
On the first business day of the month, the finance lead has three invoices for the previous month. Before reconciling, they export the month's consignments: every consignment number, carrier, service, despatch date and declared weight, taken from wherever the business booked them.
They sort each invoice into the same columns and match on consignment number. Most lines match cleanly. A short list does not: a handful of consignments with invoice weights above the booked weights, two futile pickup charges, and one consignment number that is on no internal record. The futile pickups trace to a public holiday when the warehouse was closed but pickups were still booked. The unknown consignment turns out to be a return a customer booked themselves on the business's account. The weight differences go to the warehouse to check how cartons are being weighed.
The matching took most of a day, and nearly all of that was rebuilding three invoice layouts and pulling consignments from three carrier portals. The judgement calls at the end took an hour.
What Changes When One Party Holds the Accounts
On a managed freight platform (4PL), the platform holds the carrier accounts. Senditt manages the accounts, the billing and the support, and every carrier is booked on Senditt's negotiated rates across 35+ carriers. For finance, that means one billing relationship instead of one per carrier, and one consignment history across every carrier.
The export step in the example disappears, because every consignment was booked in one place and sits in one list with its carrier, service, despatch date, ETA and status. You track and reconcile every consignment from one dashboard. The invoice questions that remain, a weight query or an extra charge, go to one support team, the same team that manages the carrier accounts.
A Month-End Routine Finance Can Own
- On the last business day, export the month's consignment list from wherever bookings are made.
- When invoices arrive, match every line to a consignment number. Flag any line with no consignment and any consignment with no line.
- For each weight or size difference, send the consignment number to despatch and ask them to check the booked figures.
- For each extra charge, look up the consignment's status history before approving it.
- Keep a running list of consignments billed in a later month than they shipped, so next month's reconciliation starts with them.
- Once a quarter, review which mismatches keep recurring and fix the cause at the dock.
If your month-end means rebuilding invoices from several carriers into one spreadsheet, book a freight review and we will show you one consignment history across every carrier. There is no lock-in on standard accounts. Fixed terms apply only where you agree to one. The platform page shows how quoting, booking, tracking and manifests sit in one login.
Senditt is a managed freight platform (4PL). Senditt is not Sendle and is not affiliated with it.