Sea and air freight · extension

Air freight invoice audit

On an air freight invoice the chargeable weight is the basis not for one line but for four: the freight charge, the fuel surcharge, the security surcharge and screening. One error in the weight calculation increases all four at once. That is why an error on an air invoice costs more on average than in any other mode of transport.

What we check without your contract

Eight of the thirteen checks require neither a contract with the forwarder nor a rate card. They test whether the invoice agrees with itself:

• Volumetric weight recalculated from the dimensions. Length × width × height, divided by the agreed divisor.
• The divisor. The standard air freight divisor is 6000 cm³/kg, which is 167 kg per cubic metre. In courier shipments it is usually 5000, which is 200 kg/m³. Applying 5000 where 6000 was agreed makes the volumetric weight a fifth higher.
• The rounding basis. Chargeable weight is rounded up to 0.5 kg — but it is the shipment total that is rounded, not each package separately. Twenty packages rounded one by one can add up to ten kilograms.
• Rounding of the dimensions. To the nearest centimetre, not upwards. 48.2 cm turned into 49 cm in three dimensions increases the volume by about five per cent. This check needs the original dimensions — the packing list or the shipment order: it is impossible to detect from the AWB alone, because “49 cm” looks the same whether the original was 49.0 or 48.2. If the original dimensions are not available, the check is not performed, and in the report it is shown as not performed, not as “no discrepancies found”.
• The surcharge basis. Fuel and security surcharges are calculated on the chargeable weight, not on the gross weight.
• Duplicates. The same screening or AWB fee on the forwarder’s invoice and in the airline’s charges.
• Charges for services that did not happen. A dangerous goods fee without dangerous goods, a ULD fee without a ULD.

For these checks we need from you an invoice with the lines itemised, the AWB and the dimensions of the shipment. A summary line “Air freight €2,480” is no use — without the lines there is nothing to check.

We do not guess the divisor

If the divisor is stated neither on the invoice nor in the contract, we do not perform the volumetric weight check and we state that separately in the report. A guessed divisor would be more dangerous here than none at all: it multiplies into four lines, so a guess would produce false findings and missed ones at the same time — the same invoice can be “flagged” or “confirmed” depending on which figure we assumed.

Weight breaks: when 96 kg has to be charged as 100

Air freight rates have weight breaks. Up to 45 kg — one rate, from 45 — a lower one, from 100 — lower again, and so on up to 1000 kg.

From that follows a situation which looks illogical but is the rule: if charging 96 kg in its own band gives a higher amount than charging 100 kg at the lower rate, the lower amount applies. You pay for 100 kg and pay less.

This rule is systematically not applied in the market. Not out of bad faith — every shipment has to be checked separately, and nobody does that by hand.

This check needs your rate card with all the breaks. If we do not have it, we do not generate a finding — we provide a list of shipments whose weight is at a break, and we say that we cannot check them without the card. This list never counts towards the amount found. We show it anyway, because only you can provide the rate card: by keeping quiet we would cut off the only route to turning those cases into findings.

Fuel and security surcharges

We check two things: the basis (whether the surcharge was calculated on the chargeable weight and not on the gross weight) and the amount — against the rate you agreed, as in force on the date of the flight. The period around a rate change is when errors are most frequent, which is why the date matters here and is not a formality.

We do not check against a general carrier surcharge register, because no such register exists, and that is not a gap in our data. We checked: since 2015 Lufthansa Cargo has combined fuel, currency and security costs into a single indexed “Airfreight Surcharge”, so it does not publish a separate fuel surcharge at all; other carriers’ rates including surcharges are available only through their portals and only under your specific contract. In air freight the level of a surcharge is a contractual matter, exactly like the divisor or the weight breaks.

So if we do not have the agreed rate, the check is not performed, and the report states that separately. We do not say “the fuel surcharge is too high” when all we have is a hunch: a jet fuel price index is the PRICE of fuel, not a carrier’s surcharge rate, and deriving euros per kilogram from it would be our guess about somebody else’s pricing.

In air freight the time limit is short — and it does not come from the convention

This is where air freight differs from every other mode of transport, and it is important to know before you start.

The Montreal Convention sets short limits: notice of damage to the cargo within 14 days, of delay within 21 days, an action within two years. These limits apply to damage, loss and delay of the cargo — not to an invoice overcharge. An overcharge is a question of charging, not of liability for carriage.

A dispute over an overcharge is governed by your contract with the forwarder. It often contains a clause that invoices are to be disputed within a certain number of days from receipt. That number is usually weeks, not years.

So the first thing we do with a new air freight client is not an audit. The first thing is establishing the period for disputing in your contract, because until then we do not know which of the errors found can still be used.

And plainly: in air freight a historic audit is often already too late. Ongoing monitoring is not an additional service here — it is the only way to make use of these errors at all. If you buy only a historic audit, part of the findings will not be disputable because the contractual period has passed, and we will say so before, not after.

What this audit does not check

• Whether your rate is at market level. We have no market rate database and do not propose to have one. We check performance of the contract, not the quality of the purchase.
• Whether the forwarder’s margin is justified. That is a commercial question.
• Whether the routing is optimal.
• Damage to the cargo and delays. A different area, different time limits, a different process.

If you are a forwarder

The audit works in two directions, and both of them are yours.

Against the airline: the same checks apply to the Master AWB and to CASS charges.

Against yourself: if an incorrect chargeable weight came from the airline and was passed on to your customer, you are the point at which the error was passed on. Your report has a separate section on “what you passed on”. That is not a finding against you — it is information you are better off having first.

We audit one AWB at one level only. We cannot audit your invoice for the benefit of your customer and the airline’s charges for your benefit at the same time — in the second case we would know the margin from the first. The level is fixed when the service is activated.

Price

Historic audit. A success fee of 25 % of the amount actually recovered — if you recover nothing, you pay nothing.

For clients in Germany no success fee applies, as with all our other services. The fixed price is calculated per AWB, not per month: €19 per AWB audited, minimum batch 50 AWBs.

The price is per AWB and not per month for a factual reason: air shipment volumes are very uneven, so a monthly price for the same work would be either too high in a quiet month or loss-making at peak.

Ongoing monitoring is not priced separately — it is calculated from the total number of modules, as for all other modules. The air-specific part is only how the volume limits translate: one AWB counts as 3 documents (the invoice, the AWB itself, the packing list, sometimes a CASS statement).

How we calculate the result and what we treat as checked is described in the methodology.

Related articles

• Six thousand or five: the air freight divisor
• When 96 kilograms have to be charged as 100
• The Montreal Convention does not cover your invoice

Which of these checks we can run — and which invoices drop out because of the dispute deadline — is decided by the contract, not by the module: line-level checks require an itemised invoice. Contract clause review.

What exactly you get →