Why your next integration should be a final shipping cost API

December 19, 2018

carrier discounts, carrier surcharges, FedEx and UPS fees on invoice, performance pricing, shipping api

Insights

Bear Down Parcel shipping API maximizes your ERP, WMS, and other systems by offering the custom integrations you need to align transportation costs, boost efficiency and leverage accurate data to make time-sensitive decisions.

The problem with processing shipping data manually

Component charges are billed on different invoices for the same shipment all the time. This makes accurate cost allocation difficult to accomplish. Typically, all recent invoices must be downloaded, merged into a single spreadsheet, sorted, and then summed by tracking number to view the debits and credits billed to a shipment. The process is tedious and must be repeated manually over and over again. If this sounds familiar, there’s a smarter way to manage this process.

The Bear Down Parcel API is free to use and gives you access to each cost component billed to a shipment, including debits and credits. The API aggregates all cost data on every shipment billed across all carrier accounts from a single endpoint.

Carrier charges often billed to shipments

Transportation Charges. If you open your FedEx invoice you will find a line item for Transportation Charges. For UPS, this is called Published Charges. This is often referred to as your base rate.

Service level. Costs are broken down by selected service level.

Address Correction. When the shipper has to make an adjustment to the address, there is a debit for this action.

Additional Handling Surcharge. This fee is added when extra work is required to ship packages that don’t follow the carrier guidelines.

Saturday Surcharges. Pickups and deliveries scheduled for Saturday are charged additional fees.

Residential Surcharges. Residential shipments incur different charges than commercial shipments.

Delivery Area Surcharges. Rural delivery zones are charged additional fees.

Fuel Surcharges. Fuel surcharges are applied to shipments that are delivered to residential addresses and extended delivery areas. This charge fluctuates every week as the price of oil increases or decreases.

Duplicate Charges. Duplicate invoices, tracking numbers, and cost components occur within carrier statements. These are identified through Bear Down Parcel API.

Dimensional Weight. Dimensional weight pricing is based on volume versus actual weight of shipments.

Delivery Reattempt Charge. Extra attempts to deliver a package will incur a fee.

Credits that can be applied to a shipment

Grace/Earned Discounts. This line item on FedEx invoices appears as a negative charge as discounts are part of the calculation that reduces the transportation charge on the invoice. These dollar amounts reflect the discounts found in your negotiated carrier agreement. You can also negotiate discounts on specific surcharges.

Performance Pricing. This item appears on FedEx invoices as a negative charge to reduce your transportation spend line item.

Incentive Credits. The discount applied to the UPS invoice as a credit according to the Incentive plan.

Bear Down Parcel shipping API integration benefits

Once integrated with the Bear Down Parcel shipping API, you can track total expenses by order, total expenses by SKU, net profit by order, net profit by SKU and trend analysis. Performing these actions manually requires to use the online billing tool provide by the carrier and download flat files. This must be done for each carrier, standardized into a common format, and collated to determine final cost by package. With Bear Down Parcel, you can consider those tasks streamlined. It takes into account the debits and credits and seamlessly outputs data you can use in an instant to perform key business functions.

Bear Down Parcel takes logistics to the next level

A good audit includes assessing each component cost assigned to any shipment, validating both the application of that component cost and the amount of the related charge, relative to any negotiated discounts. For example, Bear Down Parcel API analyzes the ‘ship to’ address on each shipment to be sure that the address is indeed a residential address, and that the discount on the residential surcharge fee is properly applied. Bear Down Parcel can help your business lower shipping costs and identify carrier invoicing discrepancies by reconciling the data in carrier invoices to your actual shipping records.

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