The lane-level cost variance
your CFO cannot see today.
Logistics cost dashboard for manufacturers, FMCG and 3PLs. Lane-level freight, carrier mix, mode-shift, fuel surcharge and accessorial breakdown. Built on Microsoft Fabric. Most clients see 6–12% freight reduction in the first 12 months.
The Problem
Patterns we see in every engagement
Carrier rate cards live in PDFs. Fuel surcharges live in carrier portals. Accessorials surface 60 days later in a credit-note dispute. The dashboard pulls all three into one Power BI workspace, refreshed daily.
Rate cards in PDF, not API.
Every carrier ships rate updates as a PDF. Your team maintains a spreadsheet trying to keep up. Invoice audit happens by hand, late, partially. The dashboard OCRs the rate card and audits every invoice line against the contracted rate.
Fuel surcharge formulas vary per carrier.
Each carrier has a different formula tied to a different fuel index updated at a different cadence. The CFO sees one fuel surcharge line. The variance per carrier hides for quarters. The dashboard models each formula explicitly.
Accessorials are the silent killer.
Detention, demurrage, peak season, residential delivery, tail lift, redelivery. Each carrier categorises them differently. Most operators run accessorial at 18–28% of linehaul. The best are at 8–12%. The gap is real money.
Mode mix decisions made on routine, not data.
A 3% shift from air to sea-air on the right lane pays for the engagement. But nobody runs the comparison because the data is across three systems and a procurement Excel.
What we build
What we build
Eight dashboards. Each one surfaces a specific cost lever your procurement and operations teams can act on.
Spend by carrier with concentration view
Replaces
The annual carrier review that does not show which carrier is taking the biggest share of which lane.
- Total spend, % of carrier mix, 13-week and 12-month trend
- Lane concentration — where one carrier holds >65% of volume despite alternatives
- Per-carrier reliability scorecard (DIFOT, on-time pickup) overlaid on spend
- RFQ readiness — auto-package by lane for the next carrier procurement round
Procurement leverage becomes visible. The next carrier RFQ has data, not narrative.
Spend by lane — cost per kg / pallet / container
Replaces
The 'we are competitive on freight' line that has no per-lane benchmark.
- Per origin-destination pair with cost per unit metric
- Variance vs internal benchmark and (where available) market benchmark
- Drill from lane to the specific shipments driving the cost
- Mode-shift recommendation where the same lane has cheaper viable alternative
Per-lane cost conversation becomes specific. Procurement targets the right lane first.
Linehaul vs accessorial breakdown
Replaces
The freight invoice line on the P&L that hides accessorial running 22% of linehaul.
- Per-shipment linehaul rate vs accessorials (detention, demurrage, fuel, peak, residential, tail lift)
- Accessorial as % of linehaul per carrier per lane — benchmark surfaces outliers
- Trend so accessorial drift surfaces before it becomes a recurring cost
- Drill to specific shipments where accessorial > 30% of linehaul for investigation
Accessorial cost becomes visible per carrier per lane. Negotiation has evidence.
Cost per unit delivered
Replaces
The freight cost number divided by total revenue that nobody can explain when it moves.
- Freight $ per case / per pallet / per container — by customer, by product line
- Customer-level shipping cost — surfaces the customers who are unprofitable on logistics
- Product-line shipping cost — informs pricing and pack-size decisions
- Per-region trend so geographic-mix shifts are visible separately
The CFO gets the number she actually wants. Sales gets per-customer logistics cost for next quarter.
Rate-card adherence audit
Replaces
The 'we audit the invoices' line that means the AP clerk checks the total but not the line items.
- Invoice $ vs contracted rate per shipment per line
- Auto-flag over-charges and accessorial that fall outside the contract
- Dispute pack auto-generated for AP — evidence per disputed line
- Carrier-level scorecard of invoice accuracy — basis for next contract negotiation
Invoice audit becomes systematic, not sampled. Dispute success rises.
In-transit value at risk
Replaces
The 'how much inventory is currently in transit' question that nobody can answer in real time.
- Total $ value of inventory currently in transit
- Working capital exposure with insurance coverage check
- Per-lane delay risk overlaid — high-value cargo on high-risk lanes flagged
- Forecast in-transit position 7 days ahead for cash forecast
Working capital tied up in transit becomes visible. Cash forecasting gets a missing input.
CO2 per delivery — ESG reporting layer
Replaces
The annual ESG report scramble where carbon-per-shipment gets estimated from carrier averages.
- Per-shipment CO2 using GLEC framework where carrier APIs do not expose it
- Per-lane, per-mode, per-carrier carbon intensity
- Mode-shift carbon impact alongside the cost-shift impact
- ESG report-ready data feed — annual report numbers reconcile to monthly dashboards
ESG reporting moves from annual estimate to monthly measured. The disclosure has evidence.
How we work
From rate-card OCR to live cost view in 6 weeks
We start with the data. Most clients have rate cards in PDF, invoices in PDF and a spreadsheet trying to bridge them. We OCR the rate cards and audit the invoices first.
01
Discover — pull TMS, invoices, rate cards
Two weeks. Pull 6 months of TMS data, freight invoices and carrier rate cards. OCR the rate cards. Score data quality. Reconcile TMS spend vs ERP spend (these rarely match cleanly).
02
Prototype — one trade lane
Two weeks. Build the dashboard for one trade lane or one business unit. Validate against last quarter's actuals. Procurement and operations review together.
03
Deploy — all lanes, all carriers, audit workflow
Three to five weeks. All lanes, all carriers. Wire rate-card adherence audit and dispute-pack generator. Set monthly review cadence with procurement.
Technology stack
Lakehouse
Visualisation
Document AI
Pipelines
TMS & Visibility
Carrier APIs
Common questions
What buyers ask us
Our TMS reports already do this.
Most TMS cost reports are carrier-side and operational. They do not tie to ERP-side spend, they do not tie to inventory in-transit value, and they do not reconcile to the freight-payment system. The dashboard does all three.
Can you integrate Project44 / FourKites / GoComet ETA data?
Yes — we have integrated all three for in-transit visibility tiles. The cost layer sits underneath. If you have a real-time visibility provider we use it. If you do not, we use carrier EDI 214 messages.
Will this help us reduce freight cost?
The dashboard surfaces the targets — mode shifts, carrier consolidation, accessorial overcharge. The reduction comes from your procurement team acting on the data. Most clients see 6–12% freight reduction in the first 12 months. We will not promise more, and we will not promise less.
How accurate is the rate-card OCR?
92% on most carrier rate cards. Edge cases need manual reconciliation. We flag every below-95%-confidence extraction for human review.
How much does it cost?
Discover USD 8,000–12,000. Prototype USD 18,000–28,000. Deploy USD 35,000–95,000 depending on TMS, ERP and carrier mix.
Ready to move
Book a 30-minute Logistics Cost diagnostic
30 minutes with Amit. No slides. No pitch deck. No obligation to proceed. We walk through your current TMS, freight invoice flow and the lane where the cost variance is biggest.