Guest blog by Brian Gibbs from Refund Retriever: Looking to strengthen your shipping efforts while saving money along the way? Incorporating parcel auditing into your shipping strategy allows you to do this. Auditing your FedEx and UPS shipments will ultimately unveil errors, savings opportunities and ways to improve upon your own shipping decisions. Keeping this in mind, consider the below five reasons why small parcel auditing is a must for e-commerce shippers.
Reason #1: Parcel auditing identifies possible delivery problems
Merchants are busy folks, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want full transparency across all the touch points of their operations. Accordingly, these touch points include package delivery information, whether or not they were done so both on time and without any damage or error. Thanks to parcel auditing, shippers can gain confidence in understanding when any problems may occur, as well as gain refunds when appropriate in response to these situations. Through parcel auditing, these details are managed without busy online sellers ever having to get engaged – making it a win-win scenario in gaining both dollars back and clarity in the delivery of packages, as well.
Reason #2: Parcel auditing offers insight on preferred shipping rates
Today’s shippers are challenged with having to identify which carrier to use and why one is better than another. Then how to manage the various rates that impact each of their shipments. From dimensional pricing to weekend delivery rates to insurance costs and more, there are a lot of variables that go into pricing packages to be shipped. Parcel auditing can help identify the variations in these rates – including any potential billing errors that may be made. Ultimately this helps e-commerce sellers make more precise decisions that save them money in their shipping efforts. As a result, be more profitable in their business.
Reason #3: Parcel auditing delivers data and analytics on shipping spend & efforts
Having 24/7 access to your own personalised data when it comes to shipping is something any savvy online seller shouldn’t ignore. Parcel auditing companies – such as Refund Retriever – provide detailed reports that cover all aspects of shipping activity for each of the unique companies they support. Data allows companies to make smarter decisions in their shipping efforts. Having one, concise destination to review this data is a value that any business can appreciate. Particularly those looking to decrease their shipping spend.
Reason #4: Parcel auditing takes the burden off busy e-commerce sellers
From spotting overcharges to recognising mistakes made by your shipping carriers to capturing proof of delivery and more, there are a lot of fine print details to monitor when it comes to shipping. As busy online sellers, it’s beneficial to ease up time while also gaining certainty that these details are in fact being monitored accurately. Thanks to modern software with automated efforts, these details can be removed from e-commerce sellers to-do-lists thanks to parcel auditing. Small parcel auditing combined with multi-channel eCommerce tools allows e-commerce sellers to focus on their core competency, selling more products each day.
Reason #5: Parcel auditing credits your FedEx and UPS accounts directly with refunds
While gaining efficiency and clarity to your parcel efforts is undoubtedly important, the best part of parcel auditing is that it gives shippers credit – aka dollars back. The credits are applied to the carrier invoices based on errors, mistakes, late deliveries and more that translate to shippers deserving refunds. Another perk to this scenario? When using Refund Retriever, there is no setup fee or cost to gain this service. Instead, Refund Retriever simply takes a small percentage of the savings gained in exchange for monitoring the shipments along the way. To explore more on how you can benefit from parcel auditing, click here.
About the author
Brian Gibbs | President of Refund Retriever Brian Gibbs founded Refund Retriever in 2006 while running his first eBay based business and seeing the shortcomings of other shipment auditing companies. Refund Retriever’s primary focus is FedEx and UPS parcel invoice auditing. After graduating from Texas A&M University in 2001, he then graduated from the University of Houston in 2004 with a JD and MBA. Gibbs has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur and other publications discussing parcel auditing, shipping, eCommerce and more. Learn more at www.refundretriever.com or call (800) 441-8085 for more information.