What is Shipment Auditing?
Discover how this modular software add-on can identify opportunities for efficiency improvement and cost savings.
A shipping audit is a comprehensive review of shipping invoices to verify accuracy and ensure correct billing. It also helps uncover potential cost-saving opportunities in your shipping process. Auditing your parcel and freight shipping invoices can save your company money, support carrier contract negotiations, and ensure accuracy.
Varsity Logistics eliminates the need for costly third-party audit and administrative costs by automating the entire carrier invoice auditing process. To accomplish this, Varsity offers two versions of intelligent auditing software: ShipAudit for parcel shipping and FreightAudit for freight shipments.
Parcel Auditing with ShipAudit
Varsity’s ShipAudit module is the first IBM i Series-based parcel shipping auditing solution, seamlessly integrated with ShipSoft™ Parcel for advanced shipping and parcel rate shopping. This intelligent software automates invoice auditing, ensuring your company is never overcharged for shipping services. Unlike third-party auditors that return only a fraction of recovered costs, ShipAudit credits 100% of overcharges directly back to your business.
ShipAudit automatically imports carrier invoices and reconciles them against pre-negotiated rates, anticipated costs, and stored discounts. It swiftly detects overcharges, duplicate bills, and invalid fees, preventing unnecessary expenses.

The software also verifies accessorial charges and incentives, ensuring they are correctly applied. Bills that meet user-defined tolerances are approved for payment, while discrepancies are flagged for internal review, short-paid, or rejected—eliminating costly administrative burdens.
Beyond auditing, ShipAudit enhances address validation to prevent incorrect delivery fees and optimizes rate shopping to select the best shipping method, reducing surcharges and inefficiencies. By automating the auditing process and focusing only on exceptions, businesses can eliminate third-party audit team costs and achieve significant savings—often enough to cover the cost of the software itself.
Key ShipAudit Features
Address Accuracy and Validation
Incorrect shipping addresses are a costly mistake, leading to delays, misdeliveries, and customer dissatisfaction. Carriers like FedEx and UPS charge an average of $18–$21 per correction, and once an address is flagged, the on-time delivery guarantee is void. Even minor errors—like a missing Zip+4 or a small typo—can result in unnecessary fees and lost trust.
Automated Rate Reconciliation
This feature allows reconciliation of estimated shipment costs with actual billed carrier costs. This includes all known discounts or other incentives, whether based on rolling 52-week volumes, accessorial charges, etc. You'll quickly identify unnecessary shipping costs, such as:
- Dimensional (Length or Width) Overages
- Dimensional Weight Charges
- Collect on Delivery (COD) Fees
- Delivery Confirmation Fees (e.g., Signature Required)
- Delivery Reattempt Charges
- Inside Delivery or Pickup Charge
- Fuel Surcharge
- Third-Party Billing Fees
- Package Rerouting Fees (Phone request; Web Request)
- Delivery Area Surcharges (Remote Area; Metro Service Area; Residential Area; Alaska or Hawaii; International)
- Return Pickup Fees
- Saturday Delivery or Pickup Fees

Interface with Accounting Systems
As an option, ShipAudit can directly interface with Accounts Payable systems, ensuring seamless reconciliation and payment processing. All bill-related data, including internal audit findings, is automatically transferred, so only approved charges are paid. This integration enhances accuracy, streamlines auditing, and prevents overpayments.
Additional ShipAudit Features:

Line Item Audits

Electronic Receipt of Billing Information

Billing Discrepancy Audit Reports
Benefits of ShipAudit
- Eliminates manual data entry and audit processes
- Prevents erroneous or duplicate charges
- Erases need for costly third-party audit services
- Ensures contract rates and incentives are correctly applied to parcel shipping bills
- Quick ROI on your shipping system investment

Freight Auditing with FreightAudit
For ShipSoft™ Freight users, FreightAudit is a powerful solution designed to automate and streamline the freight bill auditing process. It reconciles estimated and actual carrier costs across LTL, truckload, and rail shipments, ensuring accurate billing and cost control. By comparing invoices against pre-negotiated rates, tariffs, accessorial charges, and incentives, FreightAudit identifies discrepancies, preventing overpayments and costly errors.
Bills within user-defined tolerances are automatically approved, while exceptions are flagged for review, short-paid, or rejected—eliminating manual audits and reducing administrative costs. FreightAudit also helps businesses track freight cost trends, meet carrier claim and dispute deadlines, and avoid reliance on expensive third-party auditors. With end-to-end automation, it delivers greater financial control and operational efficiency for freight shippers, saving time and money.
Key Freight Audit Features
Automates Freight Bill Audit Process
FreightAudit compares the freight carriers’ actual freight invoices with pre-negotiated rates, anticipated costs generated at the time of shipment, and discounts stored in the system. FreightAudit ensures that all tariffs, accessorial charges and incentives are correctly applied.
Sophisticated Product Cost Allocation
FreightAudit automatically allocates freight costs to order, product, product group, or business unit. FreightAudit enables partial or complete costs to be assigned to customers, products, or any other account automatically, providing management with an accurate view of actual expenses for more precise cost analysis.
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) Compatibility
FreightAudit receives freight bill data electronically from carriers via EDI (210). This eliminates manual data entry errors, expedites the freight bill audit process, and reduces billing cycle time.
Analysis and Management Decision Support
FreightAudit automates the aging and allocation of freight bills to financial accounts. Furthermore, FreightAudit’s reporting tools provide details to quickly and easily file claims and resolve outstanding issues with your carriers.
Integrates with Accounting Systems
FreightAudit can be directly interfaced to Accounts Payable systems, allowing unique accounting rules to be applied. All bill-related information automatically passes through to the Accounts Payable system for reconciliation and payment processing.
Additional FreightAudit Features

Tracks Claims and Disputes Efficiently

Verifies all accessorial charges accurately

Audits LTL, Truckload, and Rail Shipments
Benefits of FreightAudit
- Significantly reduces freight expenses by identifying duplicate bills and erroneous payments
- Ensures discounts are correctly applied to LTL, truckload, and rail shipments
- Eliminates manual audit errors and reduces administrative expense
- Simplifies carrier management based on historical performance
- Quick ROI on your shipping system investment
- Manages complex carrier tariffs and contracts
- Provides customizable reports for freight cost insights
Learn how integrated shipping audit solutions can improve your supply chain shipping.
Learn how Varsity Logistics' parcel and freight audit software can improve accuracy, time efficiency, and cost savings by scheduling a demo with a Varsity Shipping Expert today.