Service
Freight Audit & Recovery
Audit every freight invoice, recover every overcharge, and catch the duty errors no freight auditor even looks for.
Industry benchmarks put freight overbilling at 8 to 10% of spend, and most invoices clear approval untouched. GingerControl audits 100% of your freight invoices against contracted rates and accessorial schedules, files and recovers the claims, then goes one layer deeper than any freight audit provider: the tariffs, duties, and classification decisions inside your landed cost.
- 100% Invoice Audit, Not Sampling
- Rate, Accessorial & Duplicate Recovery
- Duty & Tariff Layer Included
- Live in Weeks, Not Months
The Problem
Your freight spend runs on unaudited invoices
Transportation, finance, and customs data live in different systems, so teams reconcile by hand and pay what the carrier bills. The result is quiet, compounding leakage that never shows up as a line item.
8-10%
of freight spend is lost to overpayments, billing errors, and unclaimed refunds
Up to 80%
of carrier invoices contain at least one error or discrepancy, from wrong rates to phantom accessorials
40%
of team time each week goes to manually tracking, matching, and reconciling freight data
Industry benchmark figures. Your baseline audit will show your own numbers within weeks.
Related service
Overbilling does not stop at the carrier invoice. Supplier invoices drift from purchase orders the same way, and we reconcile those too.
Open the PO Reconciliation serviceService
Four Layers of Freight Spend Recovery
Freight audit providers stop at the carrier invoice. We treat the invoice as one layer of landed cost and audit the full stack, because the largest errors usually sit below the freight line.
100% Freight Invoice Audit
Every invoice, every mode, checked against contract before or after payment.
- Every shipment re-rated independently, then matched four ways: contract, BOL, proof of delivery, and the invoice itself
- Accessorials validated line by line: detention, liftgate, redelivery, reweigh, lumper fees, and DOE-indexed fuel surcharges
- NMFC reclassification and reweigh balance-due invoices challenged with density and handling evidence, plus duplicate billing detection
- AI reads 100% of the unstructured backup, reweigh certificates, detention logs, and email threads, that legacy audits only sample
Carrier Contract & Rate Benchmarking
Renegotiate from evidence, not intuition, and cut contract spend 15 to 20%.
- Contract terms benchmarked against current market rates by lane and mode
- Accessorial schedules flagged where they exceed market norms
- Rate simulation before renewal so you negotiate with the math already done
- Typical outcome is a 15 to 20% reduction in contract spend
Duty & Tariff Audit, the Layer Freight Audit Misses
We audit the customs line of landed cost, which no freight audit provider touches.
- HTS classification review on your highest-duty product lines
- Section 301, 232, and IEEPA exposure checked against what you actually paid
- Overpaid duty recovered through Post Summary Correction, protest, or duty drawback
- Tariff surcharges on freight and supplier invoices validated against real duty owed
Recovery Filing & Ongoing Prevention
We file the claims, chase them to credit, and stop the leak going forward.
- Carrier claims filed, tracked, and escalated until credits land
- Pre-payment audit gate so future errors are caught before money leaves
- Monthly recovery reporting plus GL coding and cost allocation, spend visibility finance can actually use
- Duty recovery filings coordinated with our drawback and refund teams
Unlock the profit trapped in your landed cost
Average outcomes across GingerControl recovery engagements. On $50M of annual landed spend, every 1% recovered is $500,000, and our engagements average far more than 1%.
Up to 9%
of total landed cost recovered, measured on freight plus duties together, a far larger base than freight spend alone
15-20%
contract spend reduction after rate benchmarking
Weeks
to your first priced recovery report, not months to go live
11.3x
average first-year client ROI, the average across engagements, not the best case
Field Note
Freight Audit Stops at the Invoice. Landed Cost Does Not.
The freight audit industry was built to check carrier invoices against carrier contracts, and it does that well. But for an importer, the carrier invoice is one line of landed cost. The larger lines, duties, tariffs, and fees, are set by how each product was classified, which trade programs were applied, and which surcharges got passed through unchecked, and those lines are audited by nobody. A misclassified product line quietly overpays duty on every entry. A blanket tariff surcharge from a supplier or forwarder rarely matches the duty actually owed. This is where GingerControl is structurally different: we are a trade compliance company that audits freight, not a payment processor earning float on your disbursements. Your money never routes through us: we audit and recover, you keep payment. The same team that classifies products under GRI legal reasoning and files duty drawback claims audits your freight file, so compliance stops being the cost of doing business and becomes the savings center of the whole program.
Client Outcomes
“Our freight invoices were approved on trust because nobody had time to check them against three different carrier contracts. GingerControl audited a year of history in weeks, recovered more than their annual fee before the first quarterly review, and then found duty overpayments our freight auditor was never going to see. They capture savings end to end, from the carrier invoice down to the tariff line.”
“We move freight for a living and still could not check every invoice line. GingerControl's overcharge recovery caught duplicate billings and phantom accessorials from carriers we had trusted for years, and the credits actually landed.”
How We Work
From Data Pull to Recovered Cash
A typical engagement produces its first recovery report within weeks of data access, not months, and moves into always-on prevention once the backlog is cleared.
- 01
Baseline & Data Intake
We connect invoices, carrier contracts, rate schedules, and customs entry data. Read-only exports are enough to start, no system migration required.
- 02
Historical Audit
12 to 24 months of freight and duty history audited line by line. You get a recovery estimate by carrier, lane, and error type within weeks.
- 03
Recovery Filing
We file carrier claims and duty recovery actions, track every one to resolution, and escalate what stalls. You approve, we chase.
- 04
Prevention Gate
The audit moves in front of payment. New invoices are checked against contract before money leaves, so the error rate falls instead of recurring.
- 05
Operations & Reviews
Monthly recovery reporting, quarterly carrier scorecards and renegotiation support, and a landed cost dashboard your CFO can actually use.
Who We Serve
Three Profiles That Recover the Most
Importers Paying Both Freight and Duty
If your landed cost carries meaningful duty, Section 301 exposure, or tariff surcharges on top of freight, you are the profile where our combined audit recovers the most, because the two leaks compound on every shipment.
High-Volume Parcel and LTL Shippers
Thousands of invoices a month make manual checking impossible and sampling meaningless. 100% automated audit catches the rate errors, duplicate billings, and accessorial creep that sampling was built to ignore.
Finance Teams Without Freight Visibility
When freight hits the GL as one blended number, budgeting and carrier negotiations run blind. Our audit produces the clean, allocated freight data that turns the next carrier conversation into an evidence-based one.
Frequently Asked
Freight Audit Questions
What is a freight audit, and what does it recover?
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A freight audit is a line-by-line review of carrier invoices against contracted rates, accessorial schedules, and service commitments. It recovers overcharges from wrong rates, invalid accessorials, duplicate invoices, unclaimed refunds for service failures, and misapplied fuel surcharges. Industry benchmarks put recoverable freight spend at 8 to 10%. GingerControl audits 100% of invoices rather than sampling, then extends the audit into duties and tariffs, which is where importers usually find the larger recovery.
How is GingerControl different from a freight audit and payment provider?
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Traditional freight audit and payment providers check carrier invoices and process payment, and stop there. GingerControl is a trade compliance company, so the audit continues into the customs layer of landed cost: HTS classification accuracy, Section 301 and 232 exposure, tariff surcharges passed through by suppliers and forwarders, and duty recoverable through drawback or refund filings. For most importers the duty layer is worth more than the freight layer, and no freight audit provider audits it. We are also audit-only by design: disbursement stays with you, so working with us never means routing your freight payments through a third party's bank.
How much can we expect to save?
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Across engagements, clients see up to 9% total landed cost reduction when freight and duty recovery are combined, and a 15 to 20% reduction in carrier contract spend after rate benchmarking. Average client ROI is 11.3x in the first year. Your actual number depends on mode mix, duty exposure, and how long invoices have gone unaudited, which is why every engagement starts with a baseline audit that estimates recovery before you commit to anything.
Do we have to change our TMS, ERP, or payment process?
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No. The audit runs on read-only data exports or API connections from the systems you already use. Post-payment audit starts with nothing more than historical invoice files, and the pre-payment prevention gate slots in front of your existing approval flow rather than replacing it. Implementation is measured in weeks because there is no migration involved.
Does the audit cover ocean, air, parcel, and LTL?
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Yes. Rate and accessorial verification runs across parcel, LTL, FTL, ocean, and air, each against its own contract and tariff structure. On international modes the audit extends into the entry itself: brokerage fees, disbursement markups, and the duty and tariff lines that freight-only audits treat as untouchable.
What happens with the money you recover?
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Recovered funds land as carrier credits, refund checks, or duty refunds from CBP depending on the claim type. We track every filed claim to resolution and report recovered dollars monthly, so finance can reconcile every credit back to the original overcharge.
Get your freight spend baseline
Get your freight spend baseline
Get your freight spend baseline
Send a note about your modes, monthly invoice volume, and duty exposure, and we will come back with what a baseline audit would look like for your operation.
Email Us
For general inquiries, partnership opportunities, or product questions:
chen@gingercontrol.comExisting Customers
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app.gingercontrol.comOffice
Unit 12-324, 701 Tillery StreetAustin, TX 78702
United States
Compliance Reminder
This is an HTS classification researcher. Results are for general reference, educational, and planning purposes only, designed to enable better communication between trade compliance teams, importers, and licensed customs brokers. Per CBP Ruling HQ H290535, providing HTS classifications beyond 6 digits for specific imports constitutes "customs business" under 19 U.S.C. § 1641. Do not use these results directly in customs entry documents without independent review by a licensed customs broker.
Read full compliance disclaimer →