E-Voicing

When a shipper receives an ocean freight rate, they begin to book their shipment. During the booking process, they usually receive a detailed invoice for their logistics provider. Sometimes, there might be an invoice dispute between the shipper and the shipping company. When this occurs, there could errors with the payment, freight or customer service. The industry wants to improve this by fixing the invoice process once and for all.

In an effort to streamline the invoicing process, the Ocean Freight Industry EIPP Standards Advisory Board recently announced their creation of E-Voicing Standards. These are guidelines with the goals of improving efficiency and ensuring fewer accounting errors. Carriers and freight forwarders widely support this effort for improving the shipping experience. According to the website of the Ocean Freight Industry EIPP Standards Advisory Board, their mission it to “lead the ocean freight industry, as a community, towards greater efficiency in Electronic Invoice Presentment and Payment through standardization and automation.” They have been around since 2010.

These new standards include guidelines for electronic invoice processing. Specifically, the guidelines points out information for the invoice acknowledgement process for the clients. It also has guidelines for routing, verifying and auditing the invoices, which is something that will improve the industry. Further more, they provide guidelines for proper accounting of the invoices for the purposes of taxes. They also have a section on creating easier credit note processing.

Hopefully, these new guidelines will help improve the customer service experience in the industry for the shippers involved.