Resource Center/Article • 05/29/2025
Selecting a Carrier? Avoid Common Data Oversights
Learn what the top shippers look for beyond rates. Use this guide to evaluate carrier data quality, billing, audit readiness, and system alignment.
Kim Morgan
Director of Implementations
Kim Morgan is the Director of Implementations at Green Mountain, a Parcel Spend Management service provider for shippers with over 10 million parcels per year. In this role, Kim’s team onboards new clients with Green Mountain, implements and maintains carrier integrations, and performs assessments to bring new carriers onto the Green Mountain platform. During her […]
When selecting a carrier, most shippers know to start with competitive rates. But pricing alone isn’t enough. Carrier data (its quality, structure, and frequency) has become equally critical. At Green Mountain, we often refer to cost, service, and data as the three pillars of carrier excellence.
The following considerations will help you evaluate carriers and consider data-related criteria that often gets overlooked but can make a major impact once a carrier is integrated into your network.
Data Quality
When considering a new carrier, understand your company’s requirements. Do you simply need to pay an invoice or do you need the kind of structured, shipment-level detail typically associated with enterprise carriers like FedEx or UPS?
Some carriers may offer you terrific rates to win your business, but they may not have the same invoice capabilities that more established carriers have. Some carriers may only have simple accounting systems like QuickBooks and cannot provide shipment-level details on the invoice.
That’s why it's essential to examine the invoice format and structure up front, before onboarding a new carrier. Even small gaps in data can create downstream issues.
- Request a sample invoice and review it with your audit or AP team
- Confirm it includes essentials: invoice number, date, total amount, and bill-to account(s)
- If you require shipment-level data, verify its inclusion
Watch for invoice formats in Excel—these can introduce errors like rounding discrepancies or dropped leading zeros in postal codes due to formatting rules.
📊 Last year, 58% of new carriers implemented by Green Mountain were missing one or more required invoice data fields. 48% had formatting inconsistencies that affected payment or auditing.
Data Frequency
Established carriers have billing cycles that range from daily to weekly, offering faster visibility to you as the shipper. Some carriers only invoice on a monthly cadence. Consider special accommodations to month-end accruals, etc. if billing cycles are less frequent.
Questions to ask:
- What billing frequency do you support (daily, weekly, monthly)?
- Is that cadence configurable or negotiable?
📈 91% of Green Mountain platform carriers invoice at least weekly.
Budget Allocation
Allocation to a budget or GL/cost center varies significantly based on the shipper’s accounting complexity. It is important to know the data elements that your company uses for allocating transportation costs so you can ensure that the carrier’s invoice provides that information.
Ask your team and the carrier:
- Will multiple bill-to accounts be needed based on ship-from points and/or business divisions?
- Does the invoice split out tax charges for separate GL coding?
- Can the tracking number on the invoice be matched back to your order or TMS data?
Invoice Testing & AP Setup
Before going live, generate test labels or shipments through the new carrier to validate both data and invoice structure. This step is critical for ensuring cost allocation, auditing, and payment workflows will function as expected.
Include in your testing plan:
- Adding the carrier as a vendor in your AP system
- Coordinating invoice timing with the carrier
- Allowing time for your auditor to review invoice format and fields
Testing early helps avoid surprises once volume ramps up.
Order Management Alignment
Many carriers provide more than one tracking number (or identifier) per shipment, even when there is only one package. This practice can generate misalignment or an inability to match the tracking number in your OMS or TMS data to the carrier’s invoice. It is critical for many shippers to have good accrual visibility to packages shipped but not yet invoiced.
Ask the potential carrier:
- If you use supplemental data from your OMS or TMS for accruals, cost allocation labeling, or other analysis, does the tracking number you have set up in that system match at least one of the tracking numbers that will be provided on the invoice?
Auditing Considerations
Integration of the invoice data supports visibility and payment processes; however, it does not guarantee the ability to audit the data accurately. In other words, integration ≠ auditing. Just because you can receive a carrier’s invoice doesn’t mean you can fully audit it.
Pricing Audits
The quality of the data, and the data elements provided, drive the ability to perform pricing audits. Carrier pricing models may evolve, and the data provided during the original integration may no longer be sufficient. Be sure to review your contract or pricing agreement with the carrier, as any fee or charge listed could be invoiced.
As you review, take note of the following:
- Does the carrier invoice contain every surcharge from the agreement, or does the ability for that charge need to be assessed (this is found in the data structure)?
- Does the invoice contain the data needed to calculate or verify the pricing? As an example, if the pricing is zone-based, does the invoice contain the origin and destination postal codes that could be used to estimate the mileage, and therefore the zone? Or does the invoice at least provide the zone that the rate is based on?
- If the carrier charges accessorial fees for time-based elements, such as a Sunday delivery surcharge, do they provide proof-of-delivery (POD) in the invoice?
- If the carrier charges additional fees for location-based elements, such as Delivery Area Surcharge (DAS), does the invoice contain the postal code for the destination? Does the carrier have a list of postal codes where DAS would apply?
As more carriers come into the parcel industry, the pricing logic evolves and expands. Virtually every carrier requires some custom audit logic to verify pricing, even if it’s a standard zone/weight break pricing by service due to the variation in how zones or weight is derived, rounded, etc.
Service Performance Verification
Shippers using Green Mountain’s Parcel Spend Management (PSM) services may want verification of the carrier’s reported service performance. (Did your shipment deliver, and if so, was it on-time?).
Note these considerations if you expect on-time performance verification:
- Does the carrier offer service commitments (regardless of money-back guarantee)? If so, how will the carrier supply that information to you and your auditor to keep the data current?
- Is the service commitment based on logic that can be provided to you (the shipper) or your auditor?
- Does the carrier’s tracking number in the scan event data match the tracking number that matches the invoice and your OMS/TMS data?
- Can scan events identify service delays?
- Can the carrier actively identify all scan events that would indicate whether an excused (not the carrier’s fault) exception occurred?
Service performance seems simple on the surface. A carrier with a quoted “2-day” service would imply that the shipment should be delivered within two days. However, if the original postal code is only picked up on Tuesdays and Fridays, the transit time is longer than the 2-day quote. Gig carriers may have logic based on the wait time of the driver picking up at the store.
Ask your carrier if the logic, holidays, blackout dates, location exceptions, etc. as well as scan event data is available proactively.
It’s also important to remember that your TMS solution may be limited to the quoted or promised transit times, that do not account for the variability listed above.
Final Thoughts
The parcel carrier market is fragmented, and not all carrier data is equal. When evaluating a new carrier, be sure to assess their data as one of the three pillars of excellence. The most successful shippers treat data as a key selection criterion, not an afterthought.
Recommendations
- Review the carrier questions above. Select a reliable carrier.
- Work with your accounting team to establish the setup of the carrier (vendor ID, remittance address, etc. in your Accounts Payable process.
- Plan for and allow time for testing a carrier not on platform. Your auditor may have a longer lead time due to alignment on data quality, frequency, etc. specifications outlined above. Plan around the timeline provided.
- Expect to either generate test labels or test shipments to allow the carrier to generate an invoice with your data that can be used for configuration and testing.
- Prepare that due to the carrier market fragmentation, auditing may not be available for some time.
By planning ahead and asking the right questions, you’ll set your business up for greater control, better visibility, and smoother carrier integrations.
Need support evaluating or implementing a new carrier?
Green Mountain helps large, complex shippers optimize carrier decisions with precision. Our team is here to ensure every integration supports your goals for cost, service, and visibility. Connect with us today to learn more.
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