A haulier's invoice with forty lines
You serve customers outside your own area through local hauliers. A retailer with shops across three counties has one contract with you, and you subcontract the collections in two of those counties. At month end, each haulier sends an invoice: lifts by site and date, extras, a fuel surcharge.
Your accounts assistant has to decide whether to pay it. The site names on the haulier's invoice do not match your site names. Some lines are for extra lifts nobody in your office knew about. One site closed last month but still shows weekly lifts. Meanwhile the customer is being billed from your contract schedule, not from what the haulier did.
Why subcontracted work is hard to verify
You are responsible to the customer for collections you do not carry out and cannot easily see.
- Hauliers use their own references, site names and invoice formats.
- Proof of collection, if any, sits in the haulier's system.
- Extra lifts are arranged directly between haulier and site staff, bypassing you.
- Customer billing follows your schedule; haulier cost follows their lifts.
- Differences are found months later, if at all.
What unchecked invoices cost
Paying for lifts that did not happen, or at the wrong rate, is a straight loss. Extra lifts paid to the haulier but not billed to the customer erode the margin on the contract. Lifts billed to the customer but not done by the haulier become complaints and credits.
The accounts team spends days each month trying to reconcile, and often ends up paying anyway to keep the hauliers working.
There is a contract risk as well. When a group customer asks for evidence that a site was collected on a particular day, you have to ask the haulier, wait for an answer and hope it is clear. Without your own record of the work, you are passing on a promise you cannot check, and the customer holds you responsible for every missed lift regardless of who drove the lorry.
How we match subcontracted work to invoices
What we build gives every subcontracted collection a job record and matches invoices against it.
- Each subcontracted service is set up as a scheduled job linking your customer site to the haulier and their site reference.
- Hauliers confirm lifts through a simple web page or app, with time and photo, or send a daily file from their own system, which we import.
- Extras requested by site staff are logged as jobs with who requested them, so they can be approved and billed.
- Haulier invoices, received as PDFs or files, are read line by line and matched to jobs. Unmatched lines, rate differences and lifts at closed sites are flagged.
- Matched costs are compared with what the customer is billed for the same site and period, showing the margin and any unbilled extras.
- Approved invoice lines go to your accounts package for payment, and unbilled extras become draft customer invoice lines.
| Invoice line | Match found | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled lift | Confirmed job | Approve |
| Extra lift | Logged request | Approve and bill customer |
| Extra lift | No request found | Query with haulier |
| Lift at closed site | Site inactive | Reject |
| Rate differs | Agreed rate on job | Query with haulier |
Month end after the change
The haulier's invoice arrives and is matched within the hour. Most lines match confirmed jobs. Three extras match requests logged by store managers, and are passed to billing for the customer. Two lifts at the closed site are rejected with a note to the haulier. One rate is queried.
The accounts assistant pays the approved lines and moves on. The contract margin report shows the retailer account in the black, including the extras that would previously have been lost.
Are you paying for collections you cannot see?
- Haulier invoices are paid after checking only the total.
- Haulier site names do not match yours.
- Extras are arranged between haulier and site without your knowledge.
- Customers are billed from the schedule, not from actual lifts.
- You cannot say whether subcontracted contracts make money.