Manifested But Not Shipped and Why it Could Be Costing You Big Bucks!

Your company’s officers arrived at the quarterly shareholder meeting and voiced a concern regarding shipping costs. They’ve recently been made aware of a line item cost called, manifested but not shipped. When asked what it meant and why it was costing several thousand dollars per month, nobody seemed to be able to provide an answer.

Shipping and logistics costs, even in larger organizations who have parcel carrier agreements, can be an expensive element of the total cost of goods. Keeping shipping costs down is often a challenge because of fluctuating market conditions specifically associated with fuel costs. It’s not uncommon for companies to employ personnel as part of an internal shipping department. While the shipping or mail room department is likely well trained, simple human oversight occurs and mistakes happen. This oversight, unfortunately, can and does cost the businesses a lot of money. That cost reduces profit margin and places lost shipping dollars directly into the hands of the big parcel carriers.

When a packages need to be shipped, someone logs the request with the parcel carrier. A manifest document is created and included with the shipment. This document outlines all of the orders to be included in the shipment. The manifest includes the quantity, weight, and reference number of each box.

Unlike a regular consumer who may be shipping one or two boxes, companies may ship several hundred per week. Because of the quantities, most businesses have corporate accounts with the carrier. When orders are placed and manifests are created, the account is billed for the shipment.

What can and does happen quite often is that orders change after the manifest is created and billed. Let’s say a manifest is created on a Thursday afternoon for fifty boxes. The customer calls and says they would like twenty more boxes added to the order. A new manifest is created for the quantity of seventy and the shipment goes out.

The original manifest for the fifty boxes was billed and the addition of the twenty boxes created a whole new order. The company shipping the products was essentially billed for shipping one hundred twenty boxes. The accounts receivable department pays the invoice, never knowing that there was an error. It’s easy to see how cost can creep and fluctuate in situations like this.

Amware now has a service called ParcelRate which can show you just how many manifested but not shipped packaged your business has accrued. ParcelRate is a cutting edge software platform that can audit over 56 different contract points. This is the most comprehensive platform being offered in the parcel space and can show you both short and long-term savings on your parcel contract to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars depending on your parcel shipping volume.