These days, it’s easy to set up automatic payments for your personal expenses like your mortgage, your water bill and, of course, that all-important new Disney+ account.
So why aren’t you doing that for your shipping invoices in your business? Automating your payments means you’ll never pay late and get stuck with costly fees that make your CFO crabby.
Oh, you always pay your invoices on time or even early, you say? While that’s admirable, what if we told you that paying your shipping invoices too soon could cost you extra as well?
That’s because when you pay your UPS or FedEx bill, you lose the right to any refunds they might owe you from that billing period. But if you time your payment correctly – not too early and not late, of course – you can ensure you have a chance to get those refunds and put money back in your company’s pocket.
Reasons you might be owed a refund
Finding all the carrier refunds you’re due can be challenging, especially if you don’t know what to look for. There are dozens of surcharges you could be hit with that might not always be accurate. For instance:
Overnight Delivery Charges: When you pay for overnight service – or the even pricier options that get a package to your customer by a specific time – and it doesn’t actually get there the next day, your carrier owes you that surcharge back.
Residential Surcharge: When you ship commercial to a location that the carriers designate as residential, they’ll charge you. However, if it’s a commercial office in a residential area, you can get that surcharge credited to your account.
Service Failure: Similar to an overnight delivery surcharge refund, if your package doesn’t arrive in the amount of time that’s in your contract, your carrier should refund that money.
The problem is that carriers aren’t exactly eager to give you your money back in these situations, so they don’t typically notify you when they occur.
Let software handle it
If hunting down carrier refunds you might be due on individual invoices, submitting the information necessary to get the refunds and then making payments at the right time sounds like a bit of a nightmare, you’re right. But you don’t have to tackle it alone. Parcel Pay can do all the dirty work for you.
- It uses artificial intelligence and business logic to identify refund opportunities.
- It pays your invoices on your behalf to ensure you don’t pay late or before you get refunds you’re owed.
- Because Parcel Pay does all the heavy lifting, you won’t be doing hours of manual work and potentially making errors along the way.
- It gives you a rebate on your invoice payments every month.
Mary Hayat, director of accounting at SimpleTire, struggled to manage all her company’s incoming invoices efficiently. But Parcel Pay brought consistency, order and productivity back to her processes.
“Before, invoices were coming in at different times, from different sources,” Hayat said. “And now with VeriShip Parcel Pay they’re coming in at specific times, in a consistent format with consistent data. The reliability of that is fantastic, plus it’s saved us several hours a day, which is a six-figure productivity gain for our group.”
How Parcel Pay works
How does this all work? First, we have an initial 15-minute call with you to identify your specific needs and confirm transfer of your carrier payments to VeriShip.
Then, each week:
- We give you payment files listing which invoices will be paid on which date for what amount so you can review and flag any payments you may want to delay or dispute with the carrier. We pay your invoices for you at the optimal time.
- We supply a consolidated payment and reconciliation file for invoices and payments made across all accounts and carriers. We’ll then general ledger code the post-payment file.
That’s it! No more missed refund opportunities, no more silly mistakes that cost you money unnecessarily. Just a smooth, consistent process with data you can use to improve your operations even more.
The bottom line
You have too much to do and too many things to worry about when it comes to shipping. When you tackle your invoice challenges in a new way, you’ll find funds you didn’t know you could get back – and time you didn’t know you could get back either.
