A statement from the agent in Shanghai
Your agent sends a statement at the end of the quarter. It lists debit notes for origin charges, credit notes for their share of profit on routed cargo, and a balance they say you owe. Your finance team's version of the account has a different balance, in a different currency, and a list of job numbers the agent does not use.
Somebody now has to go through it line by line, matching the agent's references to your jobs, finding debit notes that were never received and credits that were never raised. The agent's accounts team is doing the same exercise from their side. Weeks later, the difference is smaller but not gone, and a payment is agreed that both sides suspect is not quite right.
Why agent accounts drift
Each shipment between you and an agent generates entries on both sides, and the two sides record them independently. Timing, currency and references all differ.
- The agent uses their own job and invoice references, not yours.
- Debit and credit notes are raised at different times on each side.
- Currencies differ and are converted at different rates.
- Profit share rules are agreed per agent and applied by hand.
- Small differences accumulate over months and are hard to trace back.
What the drift costs
Finance time is the first cost, and it is significant for a forwarder with many agents. Money is lost in both directions: charges never recovered, and payments made for items that were never valid. Agent relationships suffer when statements do not agree, and settlement delays hold up cash on both sides. And nobody can say with confidence which agent relationships are actually profitable.
The agent account matching we build
- Your job revenue and costs relating to each agent are read from your forwarding system, with the shipment references: bill of lading, container, house bill and agent reference where recorded.
- Agent statements, debit notes and credit notes are read from the files they send, whatever the layout.
- Entries are matched by job and shipment reference, not just by amount, so a note can be tied to the shipment it belongs to even when the agent's job number differs.
- Your agreed profit share rules per agent are applied to routed shipments, and the expected share is compared with what has been raised.
- Currencies are compared using the rates you choose, and differences due only to exchange are separated from real differences.
- The finance team sees a short list of unmatched and different items per agent, which can be sent to the agent as a clean query list.
| Task | Spreadsheet | Account matching |
|---|---|---|
| Tie the agent's line to our job | Search by amount and date | Matched by shipment reference |
| Profit share | Calculated by hand | Applied by agreed rule |
| Currency differences | Mixed in with errors | Separated |
| Query list to agent | Assembled manually | Produced from unmatched items |
After
Statements are reconciled from a short list of differences rather than line by line, and the conversation with each agent is about a short list of specific items. Missing debit notes are raised while the shipment is still recent. Profit shares are applied consistently. And you can see, per agent, the volume and margin the relationship actually produces, which is useful in any review of your network.
Month end gets lighter too. Because matching runs as notes arrive, not once a quarter, unmatched items are found while the people who handled the shipment still remember it. Operators get the occasional question about a specific job, instead of finance arriving with a long list of old shipments nobody can recall.
Checklist
- Agent statements take weeks to reconcile.
- Settlement amounts are agreed with unresolved differences.
- Agent references do not match your jobs.
- Profit shares are worked out by hand.
- You cannot say which agent relationships are profitable.