Freight claims caught before the window closes.
We encode each carrier’s and co-op’s claim rules against the receiving data you already keep, so claimable events flag inside the window.
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NVIDIA
Anthropic
The claim was lost on the dock, not in the filing.
From operators we have sat with: inventory and pricing managers at multi-store hardware retailers in a national co-op, 19–23 stores on Epicor Eagle-class systems — not shopping for software, drowning between the receiving dock and the inventory adjustment.
The missed freight claim window
Item booked as received 78 days ago, now past the 30-day co-op claim window and over the dollar limit — it ends as an inventory adjustment.
The shortage surfaces weeks later
The damage or shortage shows up at the next count, weeks after the carrier’s claim window closed — by then it is a write-off, not a claim.
Return to vendor, returned too late
Dead stock sits because nobody tracked the vendor’s return window — RTV items age past the deadline and the credit dies with it.
Every carrier’s rules are different
Each carrier and the co-op sets its own window, dollar limit, and required documentation — the rules live in nobody’s head, so nothing gets checked.
Landed cost creeps untracked
Demurrage accruals go untracked and land in landed cost — another recoverable dollar nobody flags before it hardens into the P&L.
An expired window turns a claim into a write-off.
What the manual way looks like at a multi-store retailer where freight claim management is a spreadsheet, a filing cabinet, and one person’s memory. Your numbers will differ — the first store we reconcile puts figures on yours before anything gets built.
From anonymized engagements — inventory managers at multi-store hardware retailers in a national co-op
We encode your claim rules.
No new system for your team to learn. The claim rules your best person carries in their head become the catch at receiving.
- 01
Reconcile one store’s receipts
We reconcile one store’s last quarter of receipts against carrier and co-op claim windows — what was claimable and expired unfiled. That gap starts the rule set.
- 02
Encode the claim rules end-to-end
Per-carrier and co-op windows, dollar limits, required documentation, and RTV deadlines — documented against the receiving data you already keep, yours to keep.
- 03
Receiving flags the claimable event
Receipts check against the encoded rules; claimable events flag inside the window with documentation assembled. Exceptions land in a queue with days left shown.
The claim isn’t lost in the filing. It’s lost on the dock.
The claims-filing firms recover a percentage of what you already caught. The software holds the shipment data — it doesn’t hold your co-op’s claim rules. We encode those, so the catch happens at receiving, inside the window.
Our AI does the reading — every receipt, blind-received item, and shortage against your encoded carrier and co-op rules — and your rules do the judging: claimable events flag inside the window, documentation assembled; the rest reaches a person.
Led by Peter Enestrom.
Asked by inventory and pricing managers.
The straight answers, before you book anything.
A freight claim is a formal demand for payment made to a carrier when goods arrive short, damaged, or not at all — the shipper or receiver asks the carrier to make the loss good under the contract of carriage. Each carrier and contract sets its own filing window, dollar limits, and required documentation, which is why two identical shortages can have completely different outcomes. Most of the freight claim process is rule-checking — window, dollar limit, documentation — which is why it can be encoded.
In practice, almost nothing — cargo claims and freight claims both describe a claim against a carrier for goods lost, short, or damaged in transit. Cargo claim is the older term and more common in ocean and international shipping; freight claim is the domestic trucking and LTL usage. The mechanics are the same: a per-carrier window, documentation requirements, and a deadline that does not move.
The window is set per carrier and per contract, not by a single standard — some run months, some run weeks. Co-op programs add their own layer: in one anonymized client context, a national co-op’s claim window ran 30 days with a dollar limit, and an item received 78 days earlier had missed both. The only safe answer is to know each window before the receipt, not after the loss.
Blind receiving is booking a shipment as received without verifying its contents against the order — the paperwork says received, and the shortage or damage surfaces weeks later at the next count. By then the carrier’s or co-op’s claim window has usually closed, so a recoverable freight claim becomes a permanent inventory adjustment. The fix is catching the claimable event at the dock, inside the window.
Return to vendor is the reverse-logistics path for dead, damaged, or unsaleable stock the vendor has agreed to take back for credit. Every RTV agreement carries its own return window and documentation requirements, and items that age past the deadline lose the credit. RTV deadlines belong on the same encoded rule set as carrier claim windows — flagged with days left to return, before the vendor window closes.
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Tell us where your team loses hours. We will come back with a straight answer on whether AI can help, what it would take, and what it would pay.