Our first post on this covered UPS and FedEx refunds. Since then we have added six more audits to TraxRecovery, and the pattern is the same every time: the money is already sitting in a document you have, the other side will pay it if you ask correctly, and nobody at a small distributor has that job. This post is the field guide. For each one: what it is, how to check by hand, the window, and who pays.
1. Parcel refunds (UPS and FedEx)
Late guaranteed deliveries (Air and Express, not Ground), the same charge billed twice, residential or Saturday surcharges that did not apply, billed weight above the box, and labels that were billed but never shipped. By hand: export the invoice CSV from UPS Billing Center or FedEx Billing Online, sort by tracking number, compare ship date plus the service promise to the delivery date. Window: 15 days. Who pays: the carrier, as a credit on a later invoice.
2. LTL freight bills
Your pricing agreement says 70% off base rates and a fuel surcharge of X%. The freight bill says something else. Reweigh and reclass fees appear with no scale ticket or inspection certificate behind them. Residential delivery gets charged to a business address. The same PRO shows up on two bills. By hand: take one month of freight bills, multiply gross linehaul by your discount, compare to the discount line; divide the fuel surcharge by net linehaul and compare to your contract percentage; ask for the inspection certificate on any reclass. Window: 180 days to contest a freight bill under federal law. Who pays: the carrier, as a corrected bill or credit memo.
3. Supplier invoices against the purchase order
The PO said $125 a unit. The invoice says $131.25. The PO said 44 units. Two invoices add up to 48. The same invoice number was entered twice in accounts payable and both got paid. By hand: match every invoice line to its PO line before it is approved for payment, and keep a list of invoice numbers already paid. Window: best before payment; most suppliers will credit for a year after. Who pays: the supplier, as a credit memo.
4. Early-payment discounts
Terms of 2/10 Net 30 mean 2% off if you pay within 10 days. Two things go wrong: you pay on day 8 and nobody takes the 2%, or the invoice sits unpaid until day 11 because nobody flagged the date. By hand: read the terms line on every invoice and put the discount date, not the due date, on the payment calendar. Who pays: the supplier credits the discount you earned; the second case is simply money you keep by paying on time.
5. Sales tax on goods bought for resale
If you hold a resale certificate, suppliers should not charge tax on goods you resell. Many do anyway, because the certificate never reached their file, or a new vendor was set up without it. By hand: look for a tax line on any supplier invoice for inventory. Window: the vendor will usually credit recent invoices once the certificate is on file; the state allows refund claims three to four years back, filed by a tax professional. Who pays: the vendor first, the state for older periods.
6. Retailer deductions and chargebacks
If you sell to Walmart, Amazon, Target, Home Depot or any large account, they pay your invoices short: shortage claims, compliance fines, price differences, allowances. Industry experience is that a large share of these are disputable with the right paperwork, and that the same deduction is sometimes taken twice. By hand: download the deduction or claims report from the retailer portal, match each one to your invoice, and check that deductions against one invoice do not exceed the invoice. For shortages, pull the signed proof of delivery. Window: most retailers accept disputes for 12 months; Amazon shortage and chargeback disputes must be filed within 30 days. Who pays: the retailer, as a repayment on a later remittance.
7. Duty drawback on exported goods
If you import goods with duty paid and later export some of them unused, within five years, U.S. Customs refunds 99% of the duty on the exported share, Section 301 tariffs and processing fees included. Almost no company under $50M in revenue files. By hand: line up your broker's entry summaries (entry number, HTS, part number, quantity, duty) against your export invoices by part number, oldest import first. Window: five years from the import. Who pays: Customs, through a claim a licensed drawback broker files.
8. Utility bills for warehouses and plants
Electric, gas and water bills go on autopay and nobody reads them. Four things go wrong: the same service period is billed twice, a meter is misread or estimated and one month doubles, sales tax is charged on an account that qualifies for the manufacturing or production exemption, and a late charge lands on a bill that was paid on time. By hand: export the billing history from the utility portal, sort by service period, and compare each month's usage per day to the account's own median. Window: utilities correct bills up to 12 months back; exemption refunds through the state reach three to four years. Who pays: the utility, as a credit; the state commission is the escalation path.
And one that is not an audit: class-action settlements
Every business that accepted cards, shipped freight, bought packaging or licensed software has been a class member in settled antitrust and pricing cases, and most never filed because nobody knew. The claim forms usually take minutes. The deadlines pass anyway. By hand: search the settlement administrator sites for the words "business" and "class member" a few times a year, and calendar the deadlines. Who pays: the settlement fund, months to years later. TraxRecovery keeps a registry of open business settlements and matches them against eight yes-or-no answers, so the ones you qualify for show up with the deadline and the link.
What it adds up to: an illustrative example
Take a distributor with $5M in revenue, $10,000 a month in parcel, $10,000 a month in LTL, $3M in purchases and one big-box account worth $1.5M. The numbers below are illustrative ranges built from the rules above, not reported results.
| Audit | Typical recoverable, per year | Window |
|---|---|---|
| Parcel refunds | $1,200 to $3,600 | 15 days |
| LTL freight bills | $2,400 to $6,000 | 180 days |
| Supplier invoices vs PO | $15,000 to $45,000 | before payment, then 12 months |
| Early-pay discounts | $15,000 to $30,000 kept | 10 days from the invoice |
| Sales tax on resale goods | $3,000 to $10,000 | vendor now, state 3 to 4 years |
| Retailer deductions | $30,000 to $75,000 taken, a third to a half disputable | 12 months, Amazon 30 days |
| Utility bills, one warehouse | $1,000 to $5,000 | 12 months, state 3 to 4 years |
| Duty drawback (if you import and export) | 99% of duty on the exported share, often five figures | 5 years from import |
None of it is exotic. All of it is tedious, deadline-driven and spread across documents that live in five different places. That is why it does not get done.
What TraxRecovery automates
TraxRecovery runs all seven audits on the files you already have: carrier invoice exports, freight bills, your AP export or QuickBooks bills, and the retailer's deduction report. A team of specialized AI agents, each trained on one carrier or one kind of error, reads every line, builds the evidence packet, and files or prepares the dispute inside the window. Purchase orders, shipments and AR invoices are already in TraxSail, so the matching that other tools ask you to set up happens on its own. You approve anything above your thresholds. The fee is 30% of what actually lands, nothing otherwise, and no TraxSail plan is required. There is a free audit that reads one file in 30 seconds with no account.
Questions people ask
Is this worth it for a small company? Parcel alone, maybe not. Supplier overbilling and retailer deductions are where a small company can be owed five figures a year, and those two need the PO and invoice data a follow-up system already holds.
Will this annoy our suppliers and customers? Corrected invoices and credit memos are routine accounts receivable work on their side. Retailer deduction disputes are a formal process the retailer runs. Nobody is surprised by a documented request.
Do you file the state tax refunds? No. We point them out with the amounts and the periods; a tax professional files them.