Finance Tools
3 min read
Three certainties in life: death, taxes, and shipping invoice discrepancies.
Sait Cham
Introducing 'Invoice Reconciler' – our tool to help brands and 3PLs save money and time by easily catching courier invoice discrepancies.
A few years back, while running our 3PL business, I was digging around for a reference number on an invoice. To my surprise, I stumbled across something that didn't look right. After combing through it, I realised we had discrepancies amounting to £2,453.32 on just one invoice.
Naturally, we went straight to the carrier to challenge it, only to be told the window for raising queries had passed, as per our contract. Despite all our efforts, we couldn't get that money back. Lesson learned, the hard way.
How Common Is This?
On average, across a year and among 12 of the UK's top couriers, our data shows you're likely to be overcharged by around 0.35% of your total invoices. That might sound small, but in an industry with already squeezed margins, every percentage point counts. In many cases, we're talking tens of thousands of pounds a year, money you simply shouldn't be paying.
Why It's So Hard to Catch
If reconciling invoices were easy, this wouldn't be a problem. But shipping invoices, especially at high volumes, are incredibly long and painfully time-consuming to work through. And with many couriers setting expiry dates for raising queries, you're constantly racing against the clock.
To be clear: we don't think couriers do this on purpose. It's more likely down to accounting slip-ups, clerical errors, outdated software or the sheer complexity of running a large legacy operation. But that doesn't mean you should be footing the bill.
Introducing Invoice Reconciler
We figured out how to solve this problem for ourselves through Pimento, and now you can use it too.
Invoice Reconciler is part of the premium feature set on our Scale Plan. Upload your courier invoices and in around 10 seconds, Pimento generates a detailed report highlighting any overcharges, complete with the corresponding amounts and reasons for each discrepancy. In simple terms: it shows you what you should have paid versus what you actually paid.
You can then take that report directly to the courier and have the overcharges credited on your next invoice. That's it.
What It Means in Practice
If you're currently scrutinising invoices manually, a process that likely takes hours or even days, Invoice Reconciler reduces that to seconds. And if you haven't been checking your invoices at all, this makes it easy to start.
The team at Hutch has been using this tool for over two years, saving thousands in the process. One customer told us it has effectively paid for the software itself.
More Than Just a WMS Feature
We refer to Pimento as a new kind of WMS because we believe your software should do more than manage what happens inside your warehouse. Invoice Reconciler is a good example of that thinking in action, it extends value beyond the operations team and into accounting, helping the whole business run more profitably.
Our mission is to help brands and 3PLs run profitable operations while delivering exceptional experiences to online shoppers. This is just one of many ways we're working towards that.
Want to Know More?
If you're interested in Invoice Reconciler and how it could work for your operation, drop me an email at sait@getpimento.com — I'd love to chat.
