Know What Every
Shipment Actually Costs
Freight spending doesn't sort itself neatly into reports. Carrier invoices pile up, lane costs blur together, and patterns in transportation spend stay invisible until someone builds the structure to see them.
What This Service Delivers
Per-Shipment Cost Clarity
You'll know the cost for each shipment — not an approximation across a cost center, but a reconciled number that accounts for what the carrier actually billed versus what the contract specifies.
Lane-Level Monthly Reports
Monthly reports organized around lanes, modes, and volume — the way your operations team already thinks about freight, not the way a general ledger categorizes it.
Cost breakdowns organized by shipping lane so you can see where money flows and where margins compress by route.
Truckload, LTL, air freight, intermodal — costs separated so mode-level decisions have actual numbers behind them.
How cost-per-unit changes with volume shifts — so you have context for carrier negotiations and customer pricing.
What Gets in the Way
Freight accounting gets messy in ways that general accounting software isn't built to handle.
Carrier Invoices Don't Match Contracts
Fuel surcharges shift, accessorials accumulate, and billing errors happen. Without systematic reconciliation, overcharges go unnoticed and cost allocation stays approximate.
Costs Are Aggregated, Not Allocated
Most companies know total freight spend. Few can break it down by lane, customer, or shipment type — so it's hard to know which parts of the business are carrying what share of transportation cost.
Patterns Stay Hidden
Rising costs on a particular lane, a carrier whose rates have drifted above contract, seasonal volume swings affecting per-unit costs — these patterns exist in the data but rarely surface without someone looking for them.
Reports Require Manual Translation
When financial reports aren't structured around operational categories, someone has to translate them before they're useful for decisions. That translation takes time and introduces interpretation gaps.
How Routefig Approaches It
The methodology is built around freight operations, not adapted from general accounting practice.
Carrier Invoice Reconciliation
Every carrier invoice is compared against contracted rates. Discrepancies are flagged, categorized, and tracked — fuel surcharges, accessorials, billing errors, and rate deviations all documented separately so you know what you're actually paying versus what you agreed to pay.
Per-Unit Cost Calculation
We calculate cost-per-shipment and cost-per-unit figures that can be tied to specific routes, carriers, and customers. These numbers feed customer pricing decisions and carrier selection discussions with something more than a gut sense of what shipping costs.
Monthly Lane-Mode-Volume Reports
Reports are structured around how freight actually moves — not generic account categories. Cost by lane, cost by mode, cost by volume tier. These are ready to use without requiring an internal translation step before anyone can draw conclusions from them.
Spend Pattern Identification
Month over month, patterns in transportation spending become visible — lanes where costs are rising, carriers whose billing has shifted, volume changes affecting per-unit rates. These are noted in reporting so you have something to act on, not just historical figures.
What Working Together Looks Like
The engagement is structured to minimize what you need to manage on your end while keeping you fully in the picture.
Initial Call
30 minutes covering your current carrier setup, invoice volumes, and what you'd want to see in monthly reporting.
Data Setup
We connect to your carrier invoice sources and build the allocation framework around your lanes, modes, and customers.
Monthly Reports
Reconciled, structured reports delivered after each period close — ready to use without internal rework.
Ongoing Review
Regular check-ins to discuss what's surfacing and adjust scope as your carrier mix or operations change.
The Investment
Straightforward monthly pricing with no hidden scope or variable billing based on invoice volume.
Freight & Transportation Cost Accounting
How Progress Is Measured
What gets tracked, how reporting evolves, and what a realistic timeline looks like.
Setup and Baseline
Data connections established, carrier rate files loaded, and the first reconciled reports produced. You'll see your current baseline cost structure clearly, probably for the first time.
Pattern Visibility
With a few reporting periods completed, trends in lane costs, carrier billing patterns, and per-unit rate changes become visible. These are the comparisons that inform carrier negotiations and routing decisions.
Operational Integration
Reports become a regular input to operations and finance decisions — structured the same way each month so teams know what to expect and can compare periods without needing to relearn the format.
Starting With Confidence
We understand that engaging a new accounting partner involves trust — and we try to make that step straightforward.
Assessment Call First
Before anything formal begins, we have a direct conversation about your operation, your current reporting setup, and what you'd actually want from this service. If it's not a clear fit, we'll say so — and if it is, you'll have a concrete sense of what to expect before any engagement starts.
Scope Transparency from Month One
The first month's deliverables are agreed before work begins — so there's no ambiguity about what you're getting. Reporting structure, cadence, and format are documented and shared before setup starts. Changes to scope are handled openly, not through invoice surprises.
How to Get Started
The path from here to structured freight reporting is shorter than most people expect.
Send a Message
Use the contact form to give us a brief overview of your freight operation and what you're trying to understand better. No lengthy intake forms — just enough context to make the first call useful.
Brief Call
A 30-minute conversation about your carrier setup, current reporting, and where the gaps are. We'll tell you clearly what this service covers, what it doesn't, and how long setup typically takes.
Engagement Begins
If there's a fit, we agree on scope and start the data integration process. Your first reconciled reports typically arrive within the first billing cycle after setup is complete.
Ready to See What Your Freight Costs Are Actually Doing?
Most of the information already exists in carrier portals and invoice files. Getting it structured and reconciled is what this service does.
Start a ConversationExplore Other Service Tracks
Freight accounting addresses transportation spend. If your needs extend to warehouse operations or full supply chain costing, these tracks may be relevant too.
Warehouse & Distribution Accounting
Labor, occupancy, equipment depreciation, and inventory movement — with facility-level profitability and WMS reconciliation.
Supply Chain Cost Analysis
End-to-end cost mapping from procurement to delivery, with a cost model and prioritized improvement opportunities.