Trax Technologies

6 Ways to Improve Freight Invoice Payment Processing in Your Supply Chain

Updated 04-17-25

Key Takeaways

  • Electronic payments reduce fraud and error. Manual, paper-based payments are more prone to mistakes and fraud—digital solutions offer layered security and faster processing.

  • Timely payments strengthen carrier relationships. Streamlined payment systems help ensure prompt, accurate payments that build trust with carriers.

  • Automation lightens the load on accounts payable. Automated invoice processing reduces manual tasks, freeing up teams to focus on strategic initiatives.

  • FAP services improve accuracy and insight. Freight Audit and Payment solutions minimize discrepancies, improve financial predictability, and enable smarter decision-making.

  • Freight payment technology like TraxPays simplifies the process. Centralized platforms consolidate payments, ensure compliance, and give complete visibility into cash flow.

Technology's evolution has made traditional accounts payable obsolete, as digital payment processes are more efficient and reliable. Manual, paper-heavy forms of payment were once the easiest way to complete invoice payments, but not anymore. Technology has enabled electronic payments, making it much easier for companies to streamline and automate their supply chain payment processes.

Accuracy and efficiency in your payment process lead to financial predictability, which can help manage and increase available cash flow. If your company is processing freight payments the traditional way, you’re not alone; 97% of organizations still make check payments to a portion of their suppliers.

With the right freight payment technology in place, here are some reasons why making the leap to electronic payments will be worth it for your company: 

Reduce Fraud

Paper-based accounts payable is error-heavy and time-consuming. Companies often encounter late or fraudulent payments when they do not use more efficient payment processing methods. It is much easier to commit fraud with check payments than with digital payment methods, which often have several layers of verification. Electronic payments are difficult to alter or expose to fraud, and they also allow for faster, more accurate payments, so they have become the safest and most efficient way to improve payment processing for any company.

Efficient and Timely Freight Payments 

Streamlined payment processing ensures timely and efficient payments to shipping carriers. Digital payment methods alleviate the risk of accidentally making a late or incomplete payment, so there is no need to worry or miscommunicate. An automated payment process helps your company meet its cash management objectives and can strengthen the relationship between you and your carriers.

Strengthen Carrier Relationships

In addition to becoming more successful in predicting and meeting cash management objectives, your company is more trustworthy to your carriers when you have a reliable payment processing source. A satisfactory experience with payment processing will strengthen your carrier relationships, and when you bolster this system, you can help each other grow. 

Reduce Workload

Automated payment processing can also help reduce the manual processes and work for your internal accounts payable team. Traditional payment processing requires paper documents for reconciliation and confirmation, which is time-consuming. When the freight invoice payment system is electronic, this department receives fewer requests, improving efficiency. This saves your accounts payable team precious time on more valuable business opportunities, as the payments are now automatic and instant.

How to Improve Freight Payment Processes with Payment Solutions

Enhancing freight payment efficiency requires leveraging freight payment solutions, ensuring carrier invoices are accurate, streamlining invoice processing, and improving cash flow management to reduce freight costs and errors across transportation services.

1. Have the Right Freight Audit and Payment Services

Freight Audit and Payment (FAP) is where most companies begin with transportation spend management and invoice payment processing. It requires, at minimum, the traditional form of payment processing, where bills are audited by hand. But this could cause frequent miscalculations if always completed manually, and your company hasn’t partnered with a Freight Audit and Payment partner. 

FAP services can ensure accuracy and cultivate deeper insights into your payment processing. These service options include outsourcing to a FAP provider, using an internal team in your company dedicated to processing FAP, using transportation management software (TMS), or implementing transportation spend management solutions that use proper FAP as the foundation. 

Outsourcing your FAP to a provider with transportation spend management capabilities means gaining contract optimization support, supplier and employee compliance, network optimization, and load consolidation, which are all critical value drivers that can result in immediate savings. 

2. Prioritize Freight Payment Requests

Overhauling your payment processing system isn’t something you can pull off overnight. Though switching to an electronic system takes time, there are still ways to improve your company’s payment processing. Step further to streamlined payment without requiring high-tech solutions by analyzing your company’s payment requests and identifying your priority charges. If you have debits requiring higher priority, set up a faster approval process to promptly complete the payment.

Optimizing your payment terms is an effective way to enhance freight payment processing. This involves assessing and adjusting your payment schedules to align with your company's cash flow and carrier expectations. Negotiate terms that balance prompt freight payment for your carriers while maintaining liquidity for your business. By revisiting these terms regularly, you can ensure they support your company’s financial health while building stronger relationships with your carriers.

3. Implement Card Payments

If your company solely relies on bank transfers, it might be time to implement card payments or at least an invoice system that accepts card payments and other payment options. Card payments are an efficient, accurate, and accessible solution. This method doesn’t require a problematic change in your company and reduces errors with freight payment.

4. Leverage Data and Analytics 

Improve invoice payment processing by using your financial data and analytics. This process requires leveraging all existing accounting systems and bank relationships. You can combine accounts payable data points with third-party figures to digitize freight invoice receipts and supply chain payments. Doing so can help organize and catalog transactions and find different payment solutions for suppliers. 

The right solutions for different payment methods can strengthen the convenience of card payments or other electronic payment methods. It strays from the traditional forms of freight payment to find new structures that bolster your company's reliability and support stronger carrier relationships. 

5. Use Automation

The automation process goes beyond electronic invoices for freight billing and invoice management. An automation system assists with invoice processing and automatic approvals, allowing accounts payable to filter freight invoices and send them and the supporting documents to the parties involved. 

Automation also helps accounts payable streamline and digitize everything so that it’s all properly visible and communicated. The end goal of automation is to have freight payments made automatically with the correct procedures and amounts, leading to cost savings and eliminating invoice errors. Automation saves the accounts payable department time and resources by supplying the proper communication tools and outcomes.

6. Implement Freight Payment Technology

Avoid snags in the freight payment process and access enhanced data in the business’s preferred format with payment technology. 

This method enables precise communication and quicker freight payments. Technologies like TraxPays automatically enable the switch to help your company achieve a smoother payment process. TraxPays alleviates all parties’ concerns over the transition by consolidating payment information and simplifying payment processes. 

Get Started with TraxPays

Trax is here to help you improve your freight invoice payment services. TraxPays is an invoice payment service that easily handles all of your carrier payments. TraxPays collects your carrier’s invoices and processes them swiftly and accurately. TraxPays ensures that your freight payments are completed promptly, not completed too far in advance, but also never late. 

TraxPays provides updates and notifications, sending you weekly funding requests through an automated system. These proposals cover the amount you need to pay and what the payment includes, so you’re always aware of your company’s supply chain finances. Once the request is fulfilled, TraxPays ensures that the payments are issued to your carriers promptly. Trax will report each step along the way, providing complete visibility throughout the payment process. 

TraxPays helps streamline your company’s payment process by discarding individual card and bank payments and abiding by differing legal or corporate requirements, so your company doesn’t have to. Our automated system collects all the information from your company’s carriers and combines it into one easy-to-read funding request for your company to fulfill.

TraxPays is dedicated to ensuring efficient and timely freight payments to your carriers, reducing your workload, and improving your relationships with your carriers. Contact us to get started with TraxPays today.