Reading detention fees against dispatch timelines
How to spot detention and waiting-time charges that were booked as ordinary freight by lining invoices up with gate-in and gate-out stamps.
Detention and waiting-time charges often land in the same invoice column as linehaul. Finance sees a higher freight total; operations swears the truck was not late. The gap usually sits in how gate times were recorded in the dispatch application versus how the carrier coded the bill.
Pull three clocks
For each disputed load, gather the appointment time, the gate-in stamp from the yard or warehouse, and the gate-out or POD timestamp. Dispatch apps frequently store these as separate events even when the invoice collapses them.
Match invoice narrative text
Carriers sometimes bury “detention” only in free-text descriptions while mapping the amount to a freight GL code. Search invoice PDFs for waiting, dwell, and demurrage synonyms before accepting the coded category.
Sample before you rebuild the year
Financial audit applications favour sampling. Start with the twenty highest freight lines in a month, then expand only where detention language appears. Rebuilding twelve months of every trip is rarely the first move.
Hand findings to procurement with references
A useful pack lists invoice number, trip ID, expected free time, actual dwell, and billed amount. That is enough for a commercial conversation without arguing abstract “visibility.”