As fleets use factoring companies more and more, the need for accurate information to transmit is increasing. To solve this problem, Innovative Computing Corp. applied for and received a patent for a “method and system for auditing trucking invoices.”
The patent for the as-yet-unnamed software gives Innovative a proprietary product that will gather actual and accurate data, such as exact mileage, fuel consumption and negotiated rates, from a carrier’s Innovative Enterprise Software (IES) system and use that information to validate invoices before they are sent out to a factoring company.
“In today’s economy, an increasing number of shippers are taking well over 60 days to pay invoices, which in turn leads many carriers to use factoring companies in order to get advance cash,” said Ernie Betancourt, president of Innovative. “And unfortunately, perhaps also attributed to the economy, many factoring companies are receiving fraudulent invoices. This product will put a stop to that. Our hope with this new offering is that factoring companies will give the customers utilizing our product a better percentage when paying out invoices. The primary goal is to get our customers a better deal.”
Factoring is when a carrier sells its accounts receivable for a discount to a third-party company which then attempts to collect the amount owned, hopefully for more than it purchased the receivable for, thereby making a profit. The advantage to a carrier is access to immediate cash, albeit at a reduced rate, rather than waiting for a customer to pay.
