Freight Bill Audit for ECI Spruce
Every carrier invoice checked against the freight terms on the PO in Spruce, the bill of lading and the rate you were quoted. Accessorials nobody agreed to and duplicate bills are flagged, the dispute is drafted, and the right amount is prepared as a payables invoice batch for a person to decide.
Accounts payableUpdated Oct 202620 ERPs
See it work on Spruce.
Click through the steps. Fictional data, in Spruce’s terms; the real thing runs on Spruce.
Northeast Freight Lines · pro 588211 · BOL 44-20917 · Tamarack Forest Products to Main St · Received Oct 16
Linehaul · 14,200 lb · $1,420.00
Fuel surcharge · 22% · $312.40
Liftgate · $85.00
Reweigh · 14,600 lb · $40.00
Total · $1,857.40
Read overnight: pro number, BOL, weight, linehaul, fuel, accessorials.
The problem, as it happens in Spruce.
A carrier invoice comes in for a flatbed of lumber and the AP desk pays it, because who has time to find the PO in Spruce, check whether the freight was prepaid or collect, pull the bill of lading from Spruce document imaging for the weight, and remember what the carrier quoted. The invoice says $1,840 and it’s from a carrier you use, so it gets coded to freight.
What nobody sees: the liftgate fee on a yard delivery that has a forklift, the reweigh that added four hundred pounds, the second invoice for the same BOL a month later, the collect bill on a PO whose terms were prepaid by the vendor. Freight is a few percent of cost of goods, and the errors are a few percent of that, every month, nobody’s job.
How it works.
- 1
The carrier invoice is read
Each carrier invoice from the AP mailbox is read: carrier, pro number, BOL, origin, weight, linehaul, fuel, accessorials, total. Figures Spruce can’t confirm are read twice.
- 2
Matched to the PO and the BOL
The pro number and BOL are matched to the receipt and the PO in Spruce. The PO’s freight terms say who pays. The BOL says what shipped and how much it weighed. The quote, if you logged one, says the rate.
- 3
Each charge is tested
Terms: was this bill yours to pay? Weight: does the bill match the BOL? Rate: does it match the quote or the carrier’s tariff on file? Accessorials: were they on the PO or agreed in writing? Duplicate: has this BOL been billed before?
- 4
The dispute is drafted, a person decides
A clean bill goes to the AP board as a payables invoice batch at the amount owed. A bill with a problem shows the line, the reason and the amount, with a dispute drafted to the carrier. Purchasing or AP decides: pay, short-pay or dispute. Nothing is sent or posted on its own.
How it connects to Spruce.
Lunica reads Spruce’s purchase orders with their freight terms, receipts, the vendor file and the AP subledger through a read-only login to the Spruce SQL Server database, and the carrier invoices and bills of lading from the AP mailbox and Spruce document imaging. Carrier quotes and tariffs, where you keep them, are read from the folder you point it at.
Nothing is written to Spruce by Lunica and nothing goes to the carrier on its own. A bill at the right amount goes back as a payables invoice batch, imported or keyed by your team. A short-pay or a dispute is a person’s decision, and the note to the carrier is a draft until that person sends it.
What a week looks like.
- Every carrier bill checked against the PO’s terms before it’s paid.
- Accessorials that weren’t agreed are flagged with the reason.
- A second bill for the same BOL never gets paid twice.
- The dispute to the carrier is drafted with the BOL and the quote behind it.
Questions
Does Lunica pay or short-pay the carrier?
No. It prepares the bill at the amount it believes is owed as a payables invoice batch, with the reason for any difference. A person decides what to pay, and your team enters it in Spruce.
Where do the freight terms come from?
From the PO in Spruce: prepaid, collect, prepaid and add, FOB origin or destination, as your buyers entered them. A PO with no terms is flagged rather than guessed.
What counts as an agreed accessorial?
One on the PO, in the quote, or in a carrier agreement you keep on file. Anything else is flagged, with the charge and the usual reason it shouldn’t apply, for a person to accept or dispute.
What about freight on the vendor’s own invoice?
A freight line on a vendor invoice is checked in the accounts payable workflow against the same PO terms. A prepaid-and-add charge on a PO that says prepaid is flagged there.
Does the dispute go to the carrier automatically?
No. It is drafted with the BOL, the PO terms and the quote attached. A person reads it and sends it.
Does it handle outbound freight too?
Yes. A carrier bill for a delivery to a customer is checked the same way, against an order in Spruce and its BOL.
Does it need a server?
Lunica runs on one Windows server inside your network, or beside ECI’s hosted Spruce, set up and maintained by Lunica. It reads ECI Spruce through a read-only login to the Spruce SQL Server database. There is no inbound connection from outside your network.
What does Lunica read in Spruce?
The customer account, open items and terms, purchase orders and receipts, the item record, quotes and order history, as each workflow needs them. Read-only, and only the rows a task is about.
Can it post to Spruce?
Nothing lands in Spruce without a person. What belongs in Spruce goes back as a Spruce import where one exists, or keyed by your team from what Lunica prepared.
What about our documents?
Invoice copies and scans keep living in Spruce document imaging. Lunica reads them when a workflow needs one and never writes to them.
The same workflow, on another ERP.
Freight Bill Audit is written for every system on the list. You’re reading the Spruce version.
See it on your Spruce data.
Thirty minutes. We walk the workflow on Spruce data, then map it to yours.