This article will cover Approving Bills in the system and explain the various processes involved:
- Approve Bills is where you go to approve carrier bills or bills from vendors.
- Carriers are typically your common carriers, and organizations are vendors that you are paying--this could be a factoring company or whoever owns the freight bill to be paid.
- This screen will show you a list of open bills to be approved:
- You will check any bills to be approved and enter any bill numbers to update the bill and approve it. As well as organize the information you see (ascending or descending) by clicking on any of the columns listed.
- Note: The TMS will ensure that Bill Numbers are unique on a per-carrier basis. Duplicate Bills will be identified and need to be unique in order to approve the bill.
- When a bill is selected and a PRO Number is available, it will be auto-filled to the Bill Number. For Truckload shipments, if a PRO is not available, by default it will add the Shipment ID as the Bill Number.
- The amounts listed in the Bill Amount column are hyperlinks, and when clicked, you will be able to edit the bill's pricing
- You can also see if any advanced payment was performed on the shipment if there's a checkmark on this column; also if the pricing has not changed since the rating of the shipment and the margin is greater than zero you will see a checkmark on the Auto Validated portion and a checkmark on the Quick pay column if this is the net term selected on the carrier profile, For more information, see LSP Carrier Profile
- Bills that have pricing discrepancies can be moved to the Billing Variance Report in order to set it aside for review while approving bills; we recommend adding an activity log not from the approve bills screen to explain why a bill is being moved to variance
- You can set a delivery date when updating the bill, and have the customer invoice automatically created as well before updating bills
AP Data From Carrier Profile
In the Approve Bills screen, we will give a full view of the carrier's accounts payable specifications so you can consider this before you approve a bill. The information displayed is what you set in the broker carrier's profile.
- Vendor Address
- Net Terms
- Credit Limit
- Payment Method
- Accepts Credit Cards
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Payment Frequency
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Last Payment Date
Customize Columns
In the Approve Bills screen, clicking on the gear on the right-hand side will open a modal allowing you to customize the displayed columns. With this function, a user can also reorganize the columns in the order that is best suited for their process.
Available Columns
- Carrier Rep
- Customer PO
- Destination City
- Destination Company Name
- Destination State
- Destination Zip
- Dispatcher Name
- Driver Cell
- Driver Name
- Invoiced
- Margin
- Origin City
- Origin Company Name
- Origin State
- Origin Zip
- Payer Name
- Payer Phone
- Quick Pay
- Service Level
- Shipper Reference
- Total Handling Units
- Total Weight
- Trailer Size
- Trailer Type
- Lumper Receipt
Lumper Receipt Column
By including this column, you can track shipments that require a lumper receipt. The system will alert you with a red triangle and exclamation mark if there is a lumper leg or any lumper-related charge in the shipment without a corresponding lumper receipt attached. Once this document is added, a check mark will appear in the system for confirmation.
Additionally, the system will provide a count to indicate the number of attached lumper receipts, highlighting any missing receipts for shipments with multiple lumper charges and accessorials.
