Automated Freight Billing Software

Shyftbase Auto Billing generates and sends invoices in real time from completed services, applying client-dependent rate tables that capture each contract's rules. It integrates directly with QuickBooks and ERP or accounting systems including Oracle NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Odoo, Epicor and Microsoft Dynamics 365, and supports custom billing cycles, automated reconciliation and dispute-resolution workflows.

An invoice is the last thing a delivery produces, and almost none of it is made where it is raised. It is assembled out of events that happened somewhere else: a proof of delivery signed at 14:20, a driver who sat at a dock for ninety minutes, a stair carry nobody wrote down. Billing is the point where operations become money, which is also why most billing problems are not billing problems. They happened hours earlier, in another screen, and the invoice is where they surface.

How an invoice actually gets built

The rate table is the contract written in a form software can apply. Shyftbase holds client-dependent rate tables — custom pricing rules, service-specific rates and client-specific agreements, with conditional pricing and tiered rates — so the terms you negotiated per client live in one place and are applied automatically, rather than being remembered by whoever raises the bill that week.

The trigger is a completed service, not a date on a calendar. When a service completes, the module applies the rate that governs it, handles the contract's billing rules and generates the invoice, and it can send it immediately.

The billing cycle is a separate decision from the trigger, and the two are not the same lever. Cycles are configurable per customer agreement and per service type, with different frequencies running side by side. One client gets an invoice per load the moment it closes; another gets a consolidated invoice on the schedule their accounts payable team actually processes. The event stream underneath is identical; only the packaging differs.

Rates are versioned rather than overwritten. A change can be scheduled ahead or applied immediately, and historical rate records are retained. That is the difference between a rating engine and a price list: six months later, the table that rated a given load still exists, which makes a billing argument checkable instead of a matter of recollection.

After the invoice leaves, three things carry the rest — detailed billing records, automated reconciliation, and a dispute-resolution workflow with the complete transaction history behind it. That history is the spine of the module. Every later argument, from a short payment to a duplicated charge to a rate the customer says they never agreed, is answered out of it or is not answered at all.

Where freight invoices go wrong, and why

The accessorial that never becomes a line. Accessorial charges — detention time, a liftgate, a stair carry, a second delivery attempt, a lumper fee — are billable only if the event that triggered them was recorded where the rate table can see it: an arrival and a departure timestamp, a status code, a signature, a photo. When the record is a phone call to dispatch, nothing fails. No error appears, no exception queue fills, and the invoice goes out looking entirely correct. A missing line raises nothing, because nothing in the system knows it should have been there.

The invoice the payer cannot check. The Federal Maritime Commission has written down what a verifiable invoice looks like, for one narrow case. A demurrage or detention invoice must carry the bill of lading and container numbers, the invoice date and due date, the allowed free time in days with its start and end dates, the specific dates charged, the total amount due, the tariff rule or service contract the daily rate comes from, and a contact plus defined timeframes for requesting mitigation, refund or waiver^[fmc]. That rule governs ocean demurrage and detention, not motor freight, so it binds none of this. It is still the clearest published specification of an invoice a payer can verify without phoning you, and it is a fair standard to hold any billing output to: every charge traceable to the rule that produced it, and every date shown.

The table that drifts from the contract. A negotiated increase takes effect on the first of the month, the rate table is edited eleven days later, and every load in between bills at the old number. The correction arrives as a credit note, and the customer's accounts payable team now has a reason to hold the whole account while somebody works out which invoices are affected. Scheduled rate changes are what stop that: the change lands on the date it was agreed, and if it does not, the table that was live at the time is still on file to prove what happened.

The clock you are billing against

Cash timing in freight is not entirely a matter of commercial preference. For for-hire, non-exempt motor carriers and household goods freight forwarders that extend credit rather than collect on delivery, the credit period begins on the day following presentation of the freight bill, and unless a tariff rule says otherwise it is 15 days, including Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays^[cfr]. A carrier may publish a tariff rule setting a different period, but not longer than 30 calendar days^[cfr].

Read the first clause again, because it is the operative one. The clock starts at presentation, not at delivery. An invoice you have not sent has not started anything, so every day between a completed service and a presented freight bill is a day added to the front of the period — and it is the only part of your days-to-cash that does not depend on the customer at all.

Three days is not dramatic, and that is the point: it is three days of working capital on every load, bought by changing when a file is generated rather than by renegotiating anything. Run the same arithmetic on a monthly cycle before you defend one.

The decision rule is not "invoice faster". It is: bill on completion where the customer's accounts payable will accept a per-load invoice, and run a cycle where they require a consolidated one — then set the cycle against their payment run rather than your month end. A weekly cycle that closes the day after their run gives back at the far end everything you gained at the near one.

What it connects to, and what integration means here

Auto Billing integrates directly with third-party finance systems rather than through a services engagement, and the named list is ERP and accounting software: QuickBooks, Oracle NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Odoo, Epicor, Acumatica, Infor CloudSuite, IFS, SYSPRO and Workday. The integrations hub carries the platform-wide list, which adds SAP.

The shape of that list tells you where the boundary sits. These are not freight systems. Shyftbase holds the rate table, the completed-service event and the invoice; your accounting system holds the ledger, the aged debtor report and the tax position. Nothing here replaces the second half, and the integration exists precisely because it does not.

That leaves three questions a logo grid cannot answer, and they are the ones that decide how much work the first month is.

• Which direction does it run? An invoice pushed out is not the same product as a two-way sync where payment status and credit notes come back. The second changes what your dispatch and customer-service teams can see without asking finance; the first does not.
• What is the unit, and how often? Per invoice as it is raised, or a batch at a fixed time. If it batches, that cadence is now part of the days-to-cash arithmetic above.
• Which objects move? Customers, invoices, credit notes, payments, tax codes. It is rarely all five, and the ones left out are the ones somebody re-keys.

What this does not do

It bills; it does not pay. This module is the outbound half of the money — rating and invoicing what you are owed. Paying carriers, subcontractors and drivers, with their deductions, holds and disbursement, is carrier and provider payouts, a separate module with its own rules. Treating "automated billing" as one thing covering both receivables and payables describes two systems rather than one: different counterparties, different rules, different failure modes.

It is not your general ledger. The invoice is produced here; the ledger, the aged debtor report and the tax return stay in the accounting system you already run. That is what the integration list is for, and it is why that list is made of ERP and accounting systems rather than freight ones.

Fuel tax, fuel cards and factoring sit outside it. Fuel-tax returns, fuel-card reconciliation and invoice factoring get discussed in the same breath as trucking billing, and none of them is part of this module. Settle where each of them is handled before you assume the invoice is the end of the process.

The dispute workflow does not decide who is right. It routes the claim, holds the evidence and records the outcome. The judgement is still a person's; what the workflow changes is that the person has the transaction history and the rate confirmation in front of them instead of an inbox.

Ask for the mechanics — here as anywhere. Which fields a rate is allowed to key off: weight break, zone, mileage, service level, fuel surcharge, minimum charge. What comes out of the system: EDI 210, CSV, PDF, an API object. How long transaction history is kept, and how it exports. Which billing frequencies a cycle supports. A capability list does not answer any of those, including the one on this page, and together they decide whether your first billing run takes a week or a month. Ask on your own contracts, with your own accessorials, and watch the rate get applied.