Invoice auditing for contractors who buy aggregates

Your aggregate invoice, squared against the ticket the driver signed.

Crushed stone, sand, gravel, rip rap: whatever's moving to your commercial site, the invoice gets checked line by line against the signed ticket already sitting in your job file. No PO system. No integration.

First audit free See why the window matters

Aggregate suppliers time the dispute window tighter than ready-mix

This is worth knowing before it costs you a credit: on the aggregate side of the counter, the paper we've reviewed runs a shorter window and a harder line than most contractors expect from a ready-mix supplier.

Several aggregate suppliers' published terms of sale set a five-day window to dispute a charge, counted from the day you receive the invoice or the day the material is delivered, depending on the supplier. Order quantities up to ten percent over or under what's on the purchase order still count as filled under at least one supplier's terms, a tolerance most ready-mix contracts never spell out.

Our own paper backs this up, and in places the window runs even shorter. One supplier's printed contract terms give a buyer one business day after receiving material to file a written exception, or the claim is deemed waived. Another prints, on every one of 59 invoices we've reviewed from that account, a rule that any discrepancy not raised within 60 days of the invoice date will not be honored. At least one supplier's terms go further still: the buyer has no right to withhold, offset, or deduct a disputed amount from what it owes, in writing, in the contract. Holding back the disputed portion until it gets sorted out, the move a lot of contractors reach for instinctively, isn't available once that clause is signed.

The spread is wide: printed windows we've found run from one business day up to sixty, and most of what we've read sits in the days-to-weeks range, not hours. A monthly review, the same habit that already drives every TallySquared audit, drop last month's stack, get it checked, send what doesn't hold up, keeps you inside the windows measured in weeks. The tighter ones are a reason to know your terms before the next delivery, not after: no monthly habit reaches back far enough to save a claim that closes before the invoice is a week old.

The families that transfer straight to aggregate paper

Same checks, same engine, run against aggregate suppliers' own invoices and terms instead of a ready-mix batch ticket. The full catalog is on the home page.

Duplicate billing

The same load ticket can end up on two different invoices weeks apart, easy to miss when invoices are reviewed one at a time. We check every ticket number within an invoice and across a full month's submissions, so a ticket billed twice gets caught even when the two invoices never sit side by side on your desk.

From the paper

A supplier's own credit memo on an aggregate account, correcting 24 tickets billed on two separate invoices: $8,650.64 credited.

Rate errors

Every invoice line gets checked against your quote or contract rate, including tiered pricing and a rate that shifts partway through an invoice. We account for how each supplier rounds, so a line isn't flagged for a rounding convention that was always there, and no claim is ever larger than the line's own arithmetic supports.

From the paper

One corpus invoice billed 28 rip rap lines at the same rate, all but one: 27 lines at $27.00, the 28th keyed at $270.00 on the same ticket quantity. The other 27 lines on that invoice are what convict it: a $6,198.64 overbill, material and tax included.

Fee authorization

Fees get checked against the terms you actually agreed to: whether a delivery or fuel surcharge applies at all, whether it's billed on the basis your terms set, per ton, per load, or per mile, and whether the same charge shows up twice under a different name. A fee with no basis in your terms gets flagged instead of quietly paid.

From the paper

One corpus invoice bills an aggregate delivery charge at $8.75 a ton against material priced at $8.00 a ton, on the same 22.08-ton load, freight costing more than the rock itself and printed that way on purpose. Another prices its fuel surcharge per loaded mile with a printed twenty-mile minimum, a different basis than per-ton or flat. Your terms decide which basis applies, not a default we assume.

Tax errors

Sales tax gets checked against what should and shouldn't sit inside the taxable base, not just the rate charged. Freight and fuel surcharges are taxable at one supplier and excluded at another, and the base has to match what your terms and your state actually require.

From the paper

One corpus aggregate invoice taxes freight and fuel right along with the material: $12,004.35 in the base at 6.25%, tax of $750.27 printed exact. Material alone would have taxed at $744.90. The same supplier, a different state on the account, excludes freight from the base entirely. The base moves by jurisdiction; the check moves with it.

Gross, tare, net: the vocabulary of the aggregate scale ticket

On aggregate paper, the ticket is the proof document the same way the delivery ticket is on a ready-mix job, just printed in a different vocabulary.

The scale ticket carries three weights: gross (the loaded truck), tare (the empty truck), and net, the difference, and what you're billed for. We're familiar with that vocabulary and read it the way your scale operator does. One corpus ticket prints gross 38.90, tare 14.42, net 24.48 tons, the language a rock ticket speaks. Quantity, rate, fee, and tax checks work off what's printed on the ticket and the invoice, the same way they do for any material. Scale-weight verification itself, confirming that gross minus tare actually equals what got billed, isn't part of the audit today.

See a sample dispute package

A dispute package traces every disputed line back to its ticket, its rate, and the term it breaks. See what one looks like before you send us your first month.

See the sample package

First audit free

Send us last month's full stack: every aggregate invoice, every signed ticket. We check every line and send back what doesn't hold up. No cost for your first month.

Start your first audit