FREEHAND FOR FREIGHT
The spend category that moves your business and quietly drains it.
Freehand AI Teams map the connection between your commercial agreements and actual work delivered. This allows them to autonomously negotiate contracts, evaluate bids, validate invoices, and make spend decisions on parcel, LTL, FTL, ocean, air with absolute auditability.
Trusted by global leaders in Logistics, Manufacturing, and Retail
100%Invoice audit coverage
1.5–2.5%Freight spend recovered through anomaly/overcharge detection
50–70%Reduction in tender cycle time
90%Reduction in time spent on manual spend reporting
Freight spend is broken. The window to fix it is closing
Invoices are wrong more often than anyone admits.
Freight/parcel billing is complex by design. Accessorials, fuel surcharges, dimensional weight recalculations, zone errors. Most enterprises audit a fraction and absorb the rest.
Data lives in silos. No one sees the full picture.
TMS, ERP, carrier portals, email. Spend data is scattered across systems that do not talk to each other. Finance, logistics, and procurement each work from a different version of reality.
Talent and institutional knowledge walk out the door.
The people who understand your freight program are retiring or leaving. The knowledge they carry is not documented, not systematized, and not replaceable on a spreadsheet.
Invoice fraud and unchecked errors drain margins.
Complex accessorials, carrier disputes, and outright fraud quietly bleed revenue from enterprises that only audit a fraction of their invoices.
Outsourcing Freight Audit Impacts Payments & Carrier Relationships
Enterprises leak millions while deciding between building costly internal software or relying on legacy BPOs that just throw headcount at the problem.
how it works
Freehand AI Teams cover the entire S2P lifecycle, and work 24/7 to stop spend leakage.
Our AI Teams forecast demand, negotiate bids, audit complex invoices, and orchestrate global payments, giving you absolute, real-time control over your total freight spend.
how it works
Freight Audit & Payment
AI Teams audit every invoice, every line, every time. Multi-way matching across shipment data, contracted rates, and carrier invoices in real time. The platform learns from every exception, suppressing 70%+ of recurring issues within 90 days.
Freight Sourcing
AI Teams automate the full procurement lifecycle from lane design and bid distribution to bid analysis, scenario optimization, award, and contracting. Cycle times drop 50 to 70% while every sourcing decision improves in quality.
Freight Payment
Freehand automates the full payment lifecycle from invoice approval through disbursement. Full financial controls, real-time cost allocation, and integration with every major ERP. Clean invoices go straight through. Your team touch only the exceptions that need them.
Freight Spend Intelligence
Every team gets a single, real-time view of freight spend. Ask a question in plain language, get an answer with supporting data. Not a dashboard that makes you go find it yourself. Proactive alerts catch cost spikes before they compound.
Every mode. Every carrier. Every charge
Parcel & Air
Dimensional weight, zone, surcharge, accessorial audit, rate-per-kilo
Truckload (LTL & FTL)
NMFC classification, fuel surcharge, detention, liftgate validation
Container (LCL & FCL)
Port fees, B/L charges, BAF/CAF, demurrage and detention audit
Intermodal & Rail
Multi-leg cost allocation, equipment charges, drayage validation
Ocean
Bunker surcharges, GRI management, port pair optimization
Last-Mile Delivery
Per-stop, zone-based, weight-break charge validation
Powered by the Freehand knowledge graph.
A proprietary semantic layer that unifies logistics contracts, operational activity data, invoice records, SLA terms, provider performance, and historical exceptions. Al agents reason across fragmented data, detect patterns, explain variances, and continuously improve.
TMS Data | Operational Activity | Email Invoices | Rate Cards | Carrier Contracts | Dispatch Records
Freight Ontology | Providers > Contracts > SLAs | Planned vs. Actual | Invoice > Audit Events | AR > Collections > Disputes
Contract Ingestion | Activity Matching | SLA Enforcement | Invoice Validation | Dispute Management | Spend Consolidation | Cost-to-Serve | Cash Application | Collections | AR Intelligence | Provider Scoring | RFP Builder | Bid Analysis | Benchmarking
Enterprise-grade from day one.
Freehand Agents execute in the tools your team already uses and post results to the systems you already trust.
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Frequently Asked Questions
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What is freight audit and payment, and why does it matter?
Freight audit and payment is the process of validating carrier invoices against contracted rates, shipment data, and purchase orders before releasing payment. Most enterprises audit only 30 - 50% of invoices manually. The unaudited invoices are where overcharges, duplicates, and billing errors hide. Automated freight audit closes this gap by checking every invoice, every line, every time.
How much freight spend do enterprises typically lose to billing errors?
Industry data shows 1.5 - 2.5% of total freight spend leaks annually through overcharges, duplicates, and unclaimed entitlements. For an enterprise spending $500M on freight, that is $7.5M - $12.5M leaving the business every year. Most of it is entirely preventable with full-coverage automated audit.
What is the difference between freight audit software and a freight audit BPO?
A freight audit BPO outsources the manual review process to a third-party team. It adds headcount to the problem without changing the underlying approach. Freight audit software, particularly AI-driven platforms, automates the entire audit lifecycle: ingestion, matching, exception management, dispute resolution, and payment. The result is 100% coverage at a fraction of the cost, with no dependency on manual labor.
How does AI improve freight sourcing and procurement?
AI automates demand forecasting, RFQ generation, bid normalization, scenario optimization, and contract execution. Instead of 45 - 60 day tender cycles run on spreadsheets, AI-driven sourcing compresses cycle times by 50 - 70%, benchmarks every bid against market rates, and surfaces negotiation leverage points automatically.
What freight modes does Freehand cover?
Freehand covers parcel, air freight, LTL, FTL, ocean (FCL and LCL), intermodal, rail, and last-mile delivery. Audit logic is pre-built for each mode, including carrier-specific charge structures, fuel surcharge tables, accessorial rules, and dimensional weight calculations.
What is 4-way matching in freight audit?
4-way matching validates every invoice against four dimensions simultaneously: contracted rates (base freight, fuel, accessorials), confirmed shipment data (weight, dimensions, zone, service type), purchase orders, and historical carrier performance patterns. This catches accessorial overcharges, zone errors, and duplicate submissions that simpler 2-way or 3-way matching misses.
How does Freehand handle freight invoice disputes?
When Freehand's AI Teams detect a discrepancy, they automatically categorize the exception, determine the resolution path, generate an evidence packet with all supporting documentation, and manage carrier collaboration through to closure. Configurable thresholds and role-based escalation logic ensure disputes are resolved in days, not weeks.
Can Freehand detect duplicate freight invoices?
Yes. Freehand identifies duplicate submissions across PRO number variations, BOL references, carrier resubmissions, and consolidated invoice formats. Confirmed duplicates are blocked before payment. Post-payment duplicates trigger automated recovery workflows with credit memo tracking.
What is freight spend intelligence?
Freight spend intelligence gives logistics, finance, and procurement teams a single, real-time view of all freight costs across modes, carriers, lanes, and geographies. Users can ask natural language questions and get instant, data-backed answers rather than building manual reports or waiting for month-end data.
How does Freehand integrate with ERP systems?
Freehand has native connectors for SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, JDE, and NetSuite. It also supports EDI, API, SFTP, and database sync for real-time and batch processing. Middleware support includes Seeburger, MuleSoft, and Boomi.
What security certifications does Freehand have?
Freehand is SOC 2 Type II certified and ISO 27001 aligned. All data is encrypted with TLS 1.3 and AES-256. The platform is GDPR compliant and provides a full audit trail with role-based access controls (RBAC).
How long does it take to implement Freehand?
Freehand arrives pre-trained on thousands of global carrier rate structures, NMFC freight classifications, dimensional weight calculations, fuel surcharge tables, and accessorial logic. This means the platform is carrier-ready on day one with minimal onboarding friction.
What is the ROI of automated freight audit?
Enterprises typically recover 1.5 - 2.5% of total freight spend through overcharge detection alone. Add faster audit cycles (80 - 90% faster), 70%+ reduction in recurring exceptions within 90 days, and 50 - 70% productivity improvements for logistics and finance teams. For a $500M freight spend enterprise, the annual recovery is $7.5M - $12.5M.
How does Freehand handle GL coding and cost allocation?
Freehand automatically codes freight costs to the correct GL account, cost center, and business unit using rules mapped to your chart of accounts. Multi-dimensional allocation logic handles complex cost splits across divisions, brands, and geographies without manual journal entries.
What is freight accrual management?
Freight accruals are estimated costs recorded at the time of shipment tender, before the carrier invoice arrives. Freehand maintains live accruals that update as shipments move and reconcile automatically when invoices arrive, giving Finance real-time budget accuracy instead of month-end surprises.
Can Freehand help with freight contract negotiations?
Yes. Freehand's Negotiation Intelligence Agent benchmarks every carrier bid against real-time market rates, historical awards, and carrier performance data. It identifies where incumbents are over-market, flags lanes where challenger carriers are competitive, and generates negotiation talking points with specific leverage data.
How does Freehand handle multi-currency and global freight payments?
Freehand manages payment orchestration across currencies, legal entities, and geographies. Exchange rate management, VAT handling, and cross-border compliance are built in natively, not bolted on.
How does freight audit differ from freight payment?
Freight audit validates that every invoice is accurate before payment is released. Freight payment handles the disbursement lifecycle: approval routing, GL coding, ERP integration, and multi-currency settlement. Freehand automates both, ensuring only validated, correctly coded invoices reach payment.
How does freight audit differ from freight payment?
Freight audit validates that every invoice is accurate before payment is released. Freight payment handles the disbursement lifecycle: approval routing, GL coding, ERP integration, and multi-currency settlement. Freehand automates both, ensuring only validated, correctly coded invoices reach payment.
What invoice formats does Freehand support?
Freehand ingests invoices in any format: EDI 210, PDF, Excel, flat file, CSV, or email attachment. No custom parsers or carrier onboarding friction. The platform normalizes and extracts line-item data automatically using adaptive OCR and format recognition.
Can Freehand replace my existing freight audit BPO?
Yes. Freehand is designed to deliver 100% audit coverage with AI Teams that work 24/7 without sampling or manual queues. This replaces the BPO model of throwing headcount at the problem with an approach that scales without linear cost increases, while improving coverage and accuracy.
How does Freehand detect freight invoice fraud?
Freehand's AI Teams cross-reference every invoice against contracted rates, confirmed shipment data, historical patterns, and carrier performance benchmarks. This catches not only billing errors but also systematic overbilling patterns, phantom charges, and fraudulent accessorials that manual sampling would miss.
What are freight accessorials and why are they hard to audit?
Accessorials are supplemental charges added to a freight invoice beyond the base rate: fuel surcharges, detention, liftgate fees, residential delivery surcharges, and others. They are difficult to audit because they vary by carrier, mode, lane, and contract. Many enterprises absorb incorrect accessorial charges simply because validating them manually at scale is not feasible.
How does freight demand forecasting work in Freehand?
The Demand Forecasting Agent analyzes historical shipment data to build lane-level volume forecasts. This ensures that RFQs and procurement decisions reflect actual network demand rather than copy-pasted legacy data, leading to more accurate bids and better contract terms.
What is scenario optimization in freight sourcing?
Scenario optimization models multiple award scenarios simultaneously, balancing cost, service levels, carrier concentration risk, sustainability targets, and volume commitments. What-if modeling lets procurement teams instantly see trade-offs and make confident, data-backed award decisions.
How does Freehand handle carrier rate changes?
The Carrier Rate Refresh Agent continuously ingests carrier rate changes, compares them against existing contracts, and automates rate card updates across all modes. This ensures billing precision is maintained without manual intervention every time a rate changes.
What proactive alerts does Freehand provide?
Freehand monitors freight spend continuously and alerts teams when cost spikes, rate changes, or contract anomalies occur via Slack, Teams, or email. This prevents situations where a 15% cost increase goes unnoticed for months.
Does Freehand support early payment discounts with carriers?
Yes. The Carrier Discount Agent actively surfaces and manages early payment discount opportunities to optimize working capital across your carrier network. It tracks payment performance by carrier and identifies where early payment delivers the best return.
Recover margin. Enforce contracts. Close the loop.
