Operate — Supply Chain & Resource Optimization
Freight Leakage Detection Work Flow
ConceptBuild
Fully autonomous freight invoice auditing agent that scans incoming invoices from email, categorizes them by shipment type, compares charges against contracted rates, detects billing errors (duplicate charges, misapplied fees, NMFC code errors, weight discrepancies), and generates variance reports for procurement analysts — recovering costs that manual processes miss.
Dow identified millions of dollars in freight billing savings using AI-assisted invoice analysis with Microsoft Copilot.
Agentic behaviors
- Automatically identifies incoming freight invoices from email (PDF, Word formats)
- Extracts structured data from unstructured invoice documents
- Matches each invoice to the governing contract and applies category-specific validation rules
- Flags errors and generates variance reports with quantified error amounts
- Updates the invoicing database for analyst review and enables natural language querying of invoice patterns
Features & capabilities
| Invoice Ingestion & Extraction | Monitors Exchange inbox for incoming freight invoices; extracts structured fields (carrier, shipment ID, charges, origin/destination, dates) using document intelligence |
| Contract Matching | Matches each invoice to the corresponding freight contract by carrier, lane, shipment type, and date range |
| Shipment Categorization | Classifies invoices by mode (land, air, barge) and geography to apply the correct validation rule set |
| Error Detection Engine | Checks for: duplicate charges, late delivery codes, accessorial fee anomalies, weight discrepancies, inaccurate rates, misapplied fees, NMFC code errors, and incorrect fuel surcharge calculations |
| Variance Report Generator | Produces a report for each shipment showing contracted rate vs. actual charge, with flagged discrepancy amounts and priority for review |
| Invoice Database Writer | Enters extracted invoice data, matched contract data, and error flags into structured database for analytics |
| Natural Language Invoice Analyst | Enables procurement analysts to query the invoice database in natural language ("Show me all duplicate accessorial charges from Carrier X in Q2") |
| Carrier Performance Summary | Aggregates error rates by carrier to support contract renegotiation and carrier selection decisions |
Agents powering this workflow
Reusable AI capabilities from our Agent Store.
Who benefits
- Procurement Analysts (primary)
- Logistics Planners
- Finance / Accounts Payable
- Procurement Directors
KPIs impacted
Required connectors
Configured per-organization in the Control Tower once this workflow is enabled for your team.
Configurations & Options
Set up in the Control Tower once this workflow is enabled — shown here so you know what to expect.
Configurations
- Carrier dispute escalation threshold ($)
Options
- Require director approval for carrier disputesWhen on, disputes above the threshold require director-level approval before the carrier is contacted. When off, procurement analysts can send disputes of any size directly.
Governance requirements
- Agent flags errors for human review — it does not automatically reject or dispute invoices
- Dispute communications to carriers must be drafted by the agent but sent by a human procurement analyst
- Validation rule sets versioned and maintained by logistics/procurement team — agent applies rules, does not create them autonomously
- All flagged errors logged with the specific rule triggered, raw invoice data, and contract reference (audit trail for dispute resolution)
- Carrier dispute escalation above a defined dollar threshold requires director-level approval