Payables Automation – It’s Not What You Think.

10月 18, 2021BravoTran blog

Because the freight industry is so transaction intensive, automating payables is a big deal. When you have 4+ payables events per shipment, manual processes can eat up a lot of margin.


But automation has been elusive. Not because transportation companies aren’t tech-forward – far from it. But the logistics industry is highly fragmented and multiple parties (carriers, agents, freight forwarders, shipper, etc) need to collaborate on each shipment.

This structure makes it hard to converge on electronic standards (blockchain or otherwise). In the meantime, companies utilize the oldest standard in the world – shipping documents – updated slightly as files sent back and forth in emails.

At HubTran we gained a lot of experience automating payables for US 3PLs. And this success led to our $97MM acquisition by TriumphPay. As BravoTran, we’ve built on that experience and tech foundation to create a game-changing automation platform for freight forwarders.

But it’s not what you think it is. Sure, we’re utilizing browser-based OCR to read every line of text on each incoming page. And, yeah, our integrations with freight forwarding systems are rock solid. And, of course, there’s advanced machine learning to interpret all that data. So, when invoice amounts match accrual amounts, the payables process just… happens. Sight unseen. Lights out.

But what about when an invoice has an unexpected line item? Or a charge is out of tolerance? Well, these exceptions occur 45% of the time. And if you’re just thinking about automating the “happy path” you’re in for a world of hurt. Because exception management drives over 80% of payables expense. And we’ve figured out how to make that hum too. Learn more here: https://web.bravotran.com/solutions/payables.