Pending billing: the revenue that leaks between a finished move and an invoice

Ask a forwarder how much completed work has not been invoiced yet and the honest answer is usually a guess. The big freight charge gets billed. These are the ones that slip:

• The extra transport leg.
• The re-handling.
• The documentation fee.
• The detention to pass through.

Why do completed charges go unbilled?

Operations knows the work happened; accounts raises the invoice. Between them sits a handover that depends on someone remembering. At month end, accounts reconciles by asking around, and anything nobody mentions is lost or billed so late the customer disputes it.

Turn work into open items

The reliable pattern has three rules:

1. Make each completed service an open billing item automatically, per container or per BL.
2. Keep it open until a registered invoice covers it. A draft invoice should not close it, because drafts get deleted.
3. A charge that should not be billed should need an approval, not just disappear.

A charge you meant to waive and a charge you forgot look identical on a spreadsheet.

Corrections reopen, not vanish

When a credit note corrects a service, the charge it corrected should come back as open, so it can be billed again at the right rate. Without that, a correction quietly becomes a write-off.

This is how Freightflow's Pending Billing works: charges collect from completed moves and stay visible until a registered invoice covers them, and marking a charge not billable requires a sign-off. The list becomes the answer to "what have we not billed yet?" instead of a guess.