Every vendor holds a different version of the same load.
What Providence replaces — and what you can keep
A rating consolidator quotes the load. An audit provider checks the invoice months later, using a different engine. A document vendor keys the paperwork. A BI tool reports on whatever survived. None of them were built to reconcile with each other, and the gap between them is your margin.
Show me on my own freightThe stack, category by category
Find the row that is costing you money. You do not have to take the others.
| Category | Who you are probably paying | What Providence does instead |
|---|---|---|
| Rating | project44, Banyan, the SMC3 rate API | Hybrid rating: carrier APIs, your own contracts and internal logic reconciled into one quote — so a shipment that would not rate through a single feed still rates.Rating Engine |
| Freight invoice audit | Cass, Navix, or any post-audit provider working after settlement | The same engine that quoted the load audits it, while the freight is still moving — so a reweigh is a correction instead of a dispute.Live Audit |
| Carrier data & documents | An outsourced document-processing vendor billed per load, or a back-office AI tool such as Lighthouse.ai | Status, weights, dimensions, charges and paperwork returned continuously — including from carriers whose API never exposed them.Carrier Data Sync |
| Settlement | Manual reconciliation between your TMS and your accounting system | A load with an open variance does not reach an invoice. We produce the invoice and record the payment — we never hold your money.AR/AP & Settlement |
| Reporting | Power BI, Tableau, or a dashboard you still have to interpret yourself | Root-cause analysis on your own freight, built by people who have argued these charges with carriers.Business Intelligence |
Vendor names are examples of each category, not an exhaustive list, and the comparison is about how each category is built rather than how well anyone executes it. A post-audit provider is not doing its job badly by working after settlement — that is what a post-audit provider is.
Why they never agree
It is not that the vendors are bad at their jobs. It is that each one holds a different version of the same load. The rating vendor knows what was quoted. The carrier knows what was delivered. The audit provider knows what was billed. Nobody holds all three at the same moment, so a discrepancy is only visible once somebody manually lines up three systems — which is why it gets found at settlement, if it gets found at all.
Running them off one record removes the reconciliation step rather than automating it. The audit already knows what was quoted, because the thing that quoted it is the thing doing the audit.
Replace one thing, not your stack
Nothing on this page requires taking the row below it.
Keep your TMS
Point it at our rating endpoint and nothing else about your operation changes. It is all available over the API or MCP.
Priced on transactions
Not seats, not licences, not dev-hour change orders. A narrow use stays cheap, so starting with one row is not punished.
One row is a real answer
Our largest account came in for rates alone and has never taken the rest. That is a legitimate outcome, not a failed sale.
Four questions worth asking your current stack
Ask us the same ones, and hold us to the answers.
When you add a carrier for a new customer, what does that cost you?
In time, and on the invoice. Configuring the same carrier repeatedly for different customers is a line item worth adding up.
Once the rate comes back, where does it get keyed next?
If the answer is "into our own system", you are paying for a connection and then paying a person to carry it across the gap.
When the invoice does not match the quote, who finds it, and when?
The gap between when a discrepancy becomes knowable and when it is actually known is where the money goes.
Has your customer already been billed by then?
A variance found before you invoice is a correction. The same variance found afterwards is a credit, and a conversation you did not want to have.
How the gap opens
The failure modes this page is about, written up in detail.
Why Your Quote Doesn't Match the Invoice
A quote and an invoice disagree for a short list of repeatable reasons. Most of them are decided before the freight moves.
Nov 2025Rating & QuotingCarrier API, Consolidator, or Your Own Rating Logic?
Three ways to price LTL, three different failure modes. The question isn't which one wins — it's what happens when the one you chose is wrong.
Feb 2026LTL for BrokersBlanket Rates or Your Own Carrier Contracts? Both, In That Order.
Blanket rates get you selling on day one. Your own contracts pay better but take volume you don't have yet. The order matters more than the choice.
Dec 2025Which row is costing you the most?
Tell us what you are paying today and for what — including configuration charges — and we will show you the same freight running through one record.