Playbook / Logistics

How AI carrier invoice auditing works for 3PLs

Q: Will it work with our TMS?

Yes. We connect through your existing TMS or accounting API (for example McLeod) to read invoices, loads, and rate data, and can optionally write audit results back.

Q: How is this different from a freight audit and pay provider?

Traditional providers batch-process and often take a percentage of savings. Rigby builds an agent inside your stack for a flat fee, so the recovery stays yours and the logic is yours to edit.

Q: What about accessorials we forgot to bill the customer?

The same audit catches those. Unbilled accessorials are pure margin, and recovering them is often a bigger win than catching carrier overbilling.

If you move freight, two things are quietly eating your margin: carriers overbilling you, and accessorials you earned but never billed your customer. Both hide in the line items, and both are too high-volume to catch by hand. This playbook explains how an AI agent audits every freight invoice line by line, what it can and cannot do, and how Rigby builds it on top of the TMS you already run.

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1-5%

Of freight spend recovered by audit

20%

Of freight invoices contain errors

3.8%

Average overbill rate

$17,100

Per month left on the table, 300-load broker

50%

Of carrier revenue is accessorials

The definition

What is carrier invoice auditing?

Carrier invoice auditing (also called freight bill audit) is the process of checking each carrier invoice against the agreed rate, the contract, the accessorial schedule, and the load record, then flagging any line that does not match before the invoice is paid. AI does this line by line in seconds and escalates only the genuine exceptions to a human.

Done by hand, an AP clerk opens the invoice, the rate confirmation, and the load record, eyeballs the charges, and approves what looks close enough. At a few invoices a day that works. At hundreds, the errors slip through, and they almost always favor the carrier.

The cost of manual auditing

Why manual auditing costs you.

3-20%

Of freight invoices contain errors, most favoring the carrier

Laneproof, FreightWaves

1-5%

Of total freight spend recoverable through audit, up to 8% in top programs

FreightAmigo, US Tech Automations

Of invoices are double billed

Laneproof

$17,100/mo

Left on the table by a 300-load broker at 3.8% overbill on a $1,500 average invoice

Laneproof

This is exactly the kind of high-volume, rules-based document checking that AI does cheaply and reliably, and that a human cannot keep up with.

Coverage

What the audit actually checks.

Line rate against the contracted rate or rate confirmation
Fuel surcharge against the agreed schedule
Accessorials (detention, lumper, layover, reweigh) against the accessorial schedule
Duplicate invoices and duplicate payments
Charges that do not match the load record in the TMS
Accessorials you incurred and can rebill to the customer but have not

How it works

How Rigby runs the audit.

Five steps, all running on top of the TMS, accounting, and document tools you already use.

Capture

Pull the carrier invoice from email or the TMS and extract every line item.

Retrieve

Look up the matching load, rate confirmation, and accessorial schedule through your TMS API.

Compare

Check each line against the agreed rate, fuel, and accessorial rules, with tolerances you set.

Flag

Detect overbilling, duplicates, fuel creep, and accessorials that should have been billed to the customer.

Route

Clean invoices go to approval; exceptions go to the right person with the reason and the dollar impact attached.

Scope

Where we draw the line.

Auditing is reading documents and comparing them to a source of truth. That is the safe, fast, high-value zone. We stop short of moving money.

We build this

Line-level rate, fuel, and accessorial auditing
Duplicate detection
Unbilled-accessorial detection
Exception routing with dollar impact

Scoped carefully

Writing audit results back to the TMS or ERP
Auto-approving inside tight tolerances
Short-pay recommendations

We do not do

Paying or short-paying carriers automatically
Posting to the ledger
Approving exceptions without a human

Proof point

The same engine that validates PODs.

"Once you have this done you won't have to worry about missing document errors and the downstream consequences ever again."

For a 300-plus truck, 9-terminal 3PL, Rigby pulls delivery records and document files directly from the McLeod TMS API, checks each document for legibility, and flags mismatches against the order record. The exact engine that validates proof-of-delivery documents is what powers line-level carrier invoice auditing. Case study coming soon.

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions.

Does the agent short-pay or dispute carriers on its own?−

No. It audits, flags, and attaches the dollar impact and the reason. A human decides what to dispute or short-pay. Keeping money movement out is what makes the build fast and low-risk.

Will it work with our TMS?+

How is this different from a freight audit and pay provider?+

What about accessorials we forgot to bill the customer?+

Keep reading

Solution

Catch the overbill, bill the accessorial.

Flat fee, live in days. Rigby audits and flags. Your team keeps approvals and payments.

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