Freight discrepancies don't start in accounting. They start in logistics, long before a bill ever reaches your AP team.
By the time a freight bill reaches AP, the opportunity to catch costly discrepancies is often buried beneath dozens or hundreds of shipments. What should be a quick review turns into a manual hunt through quotes, invoices, and shipment records.
That's the problem Invoice Hub Essentials was built to solve. Instead of spending hours comparing carrier invoices against original quotes, shippers can view every freight bill in one place, automatically identify overcharges, quickly submit disputes, and pay carriers from a single dashboard. The result is a faster freight audit process that helps protect margins while giving your team valuable time back.
1. Activate it directly from your billing page
Invoice Hub Essentials is fully self-service. You do not need a sales call or a custom quote to turn it on.
Path: Profile > Billing > Add-ons > Invoice Hub Essentials
Once activated, an onboarding email goes out immediately with an interactive tutorial and help center articles, so your team has everything needed to get moving right away.
2. Pick the plan that matches your shipment volume
Invoice Hub Essentials is built for shippers running 100 or fewer shipments a month, split across two tiers:
- Up to 50 shipments a month
- Up to 100 shipments a month
If your volume regularly exceeds 100 shipments a month, that is a signal you have outgrown Essentials. The natural next step is the EDI-enabled Invoice Hub on a Professional Plus plan, which adds automation built for scale.
3. Let every invoice get checked against the original quote automatically
Once it is live, Invoice Hub Essentials compares every carrier invoice to the original quote and flags discrepancies in seconds. There is nothing to configure here: no rules to write, no manual comparisons to run.
This is where the real time savings show up. Instead of a shipping manager or accounting clerk cross-referencing spreadsheets and emails, the audit happens automatically before the invoice ever reaches accounting.
4. Use the built-in dispute tool instead of email chains
When Invoice Hub Essentials flags a discrepancy, submit and manage the dispute directly in the platform. That means no more digging through inboxes or waiting on a carrier rep to reply to a forwarded thread.
Centralizing disputes in one place also gives your team a clear record of what was flagged, what was disputed, and what was resolved, which makes month-end reconciliation far less painful.
5. Pay every carrier invoice from a single place
Once invoices are audited and disputes are resolved, pay multiple carrier invoices at once instead of logging into separate carrier portals. Every payment ties back to its shipment, so your team has full visibility into what was paid and why.
6. Connect QuickBooks Online if that is your accounting system
If your team runs QuickBooks Online, Invoice Hub Essentials customers get a free, self-serve, one-way sync included at no extra cost. Audited invoices become AP Bills automatically, so there is no manual re-entry step between auditing and accounting.
A few things worth knowing as you set this up:
- It is a one-way sync: audited invoices push into QuickBooks Online, but edits made inside QuickBooks do not sync back
- It is included automatically with Invoice Hub Essentials and is not sold or configured separately
- If your business later needs two-way sync, custom field mapping, or multi-entity support, that is what the full QuickBooks Online Integration is for
7. Set expectations with your team before you go live
The biggest adoption win comes from a quick conversation before rollout. Let your shipping team know that discrepancies will now get flagged automatically, and let accounting know that invoices arriving in their queue have already been audited. That small alignment step means fewer questions in week one and faster trust in the new workflow.
The Bottom Line
Invoice Hub Essentials is designed to give shippers visibility and control over freight spend without disrupting how your team already works. Catch just one overcharge, and the tool pays for itself.
Ready to see it in action? Schedule a demo or activate Invoice Hub Essentials directly from your billing page today.