How to audit freight invoices with Noverbill
Six chapters, from first login to fully automated intake. Follow them in order the first week and your AP team will be working exceptions instead of reading carrier PDFs.
Create your workspace
Registration captures the legal entity behind your freight spend. Those details drive currency handling, tax treatment and the evidence attached to every dispute letter.
- Company profile
- Legal name, business number / tax ID, corporate address and default currency (CAD or USD). Cross-border shippers should set the currency their AP team actually pays in.
- Plan selection
- Start on the free tier with 50 analyses, or pick Starter, Pro or Enterprise during onboarding. Plans can be switched later from Billing & plan.
- Account approval
- New accounts are reviewed before auditing unlocks. Paid plans are approved automatically as soon as checkout completes.
TipOnly platform admins can change company legal data after approval — this prevents duplicate-account abuse. Reps can always update their own phone, job title and password.
Load your rate cards
Rate cards are the contract truth Noverbill audits against. Without one, invoices come back flagged as “Missing Rate” because there is nothing to compare the billed amount to.
- What to upload
- Executed carrier rate sheets, fuel surcharge tables, accessorial schedules and any amendments or riders with their effective dates.
- Carrier naming
- Use the carrier name as it appears on the invoice. Noverbill matches acronyms and partial names (for example XGSI ↔ Xpress Global Systems) automatically.
- Versions
- Upload new versions rather than replacing old ones — audits always use the contract in force on the invoice date.
TipGo to Rate cards & contracts in the dashboard sidebar and upload one card per carrier and service level.
Upload carrier invoices
Drop carrier PDFs into Upload & extract. Vision parsing reads the document the way an auditor would — header, line items, accessorials, weights and references.
- Start extraction
- Select one or more PDFs and press Start extraction. Each document is parsed into structured line items with a per-field confidence score.
- What gets captured
- Invoice and pro numbers, BOL, carrier, lane origin and destination, weight, base rate, fuel, accessorials, currency and totals.
- Source document retained
- The original PDF is stored and shown side-by-side with the extracted data so you can verify any figure in one glance.
TipLow confidence on a field is a prompt to check the PDF pane before disputing — the extracted value is editable.
Review the audit findings
Every invoice is reconciled line-by-line and given a status. Audit reconciliation is where your AP team works exceptions instead of reading invoices.
- Rate variance
- Billed versus contract for each line, with the governing clause cited so finance can defend the claim.
- FX spread
- CAD/USD conversions are checked against the Bank of Canada published rate for the invoice date, not the carrier's rounded figure.
- Duplicates
- Invoice number, BOL, pro number and load ID are fingerprinted so re-bills are caught before payment is released.
- Lane & visibility
- Each invoice shows its mapped lane, and connected visibility feeds attach the matching shipment milestones as proof for accessorial claims.
TipUse the checkboxes for bulk actions — mark a batch as dispute drafted, or export the selection to CSV for your AP system.
Dispute and recover
Findings only matter when the credit memo lands. The dispute pipeline tracks every claim from drafted to recovered with a full audit trail.
- Generate the packet
- Noverbill drafts the dispute letter with the contract citation, the variance breakdown and the supporting document references.
- Send with the right reply-to
- Emails go out from Noverbill but reply to your representative's work address, so the carrier talks to your team directly.
- Track to resolution
- Move claims through the pipeline, escalate stalled ones with an automated reminder, and mark them resolved to update recovered totals.
- Measure it
- Recovery and Carrier scorecards show recovered dollars, dispute win rates and which carriers overbill you most.
Automate the intake
Once the manual loop works, remove the upload step entirely so invoices audit themselves as they arrive.
- Carrier email ingestion
- Point a dedicated mailbox at Noverbill and invoices forwarded by carriers are pulled and parsed on a schedule.
- Visibility connector
- Connect project44 to match shipment milestones to invoices by BOL or tracking number for detention and layover evidence.
- Team & seats
- Invite AP, finance and procurement colleagues up to your plan's seat limit so exceptions are worked by the right people.
TipIntegrations live under Integrations in the dashboard sidebar. Credentials are encrypted at rest.
Common questions
- How long does implementation take?
- Most teams audit their first invoice within an hour. There is no data migration and nothing to install — upload a rate card and a PDF.
- What if a carrier is missing a rate card?
- The invoice is flagged as Missing Rate and held out of the variance totals. Add the card and re-run the audit.
- Which currencies are supported?
- CAD and USD, including cross-border invoices where the carrier converts. FX spread is checked against the Bank of Canada rate for the invoice date.
- Who can change company details?
- Only platform admins, by design. Contact contact@noverbill.com and the change is applied to your workspace.