Have Duplicate Payments Been Eliminated?

One would think that with all the marvels of the electronic age duplicate payments of freight bills would no longer be a problem.

Unfortunately, the exact opposite is true-the prevalence of duplicate (and multiple) billing and payment is greater than it has ever been. Although computers have been programmed to catch the repetition of pro numbers, bills of lading, origin, & destination by date, mileages and other factors, many carriers submit correct follow-up bills with slight variations, such as adding suffix letters to pro numbers.

Sometimes these variations cause the computer to miss the duplication and pass the item through as a new entry. Or carriers re-bill on a "Statement" form with a different number series than their invoices, and the bill is paid twice.

If several statements are submitted as follow-ups to an individual bill, that bill could wind up being paid three, four or more times.

(We actually saw a $528 freight bill paid five times within a two week period.)

The bottom line is that there are some judgments and/or conclusions that are beyond our ability to program into computers. In order to minimize the possibility of duplicating payments, the computer's information must ultimately be analyzed and evaluated by trained professionals.