Cost recovery
Invoice auditing
Your waste invoice is not a fixed cost. We read every line of it, every month, and put back what should not have been charged.
Small charges, every month, for years
Waste invoices are built to be difficult. Rates drift upward between renewals, surcharges appear as percentages of a total that itself keeps moving, and charges for services that were never delivered sit on the bill for months because nobody reconciles them against the site.
Standard accounts payable checks are not built to catch this. An invoice that arrives in the expected range, from the expected vendor, on the expected date gets approved. We check it against the contract and against what actually happened on site.
What we look for
Most of what we recover falls into a short list of recurring problems. None of them are dramatic on a single invoice. All of them add up over a contract term.
Rate increases outside the agreement
A base rate that has moved more often, or further, than the contract allows.
Percentage surcharges
Fuel, environmental and administrative fees charged as a share of the invoice, so they grow every time anything else does.
Service that was not delivered
Missed pickups billed as completed, or a schedule that was reduced on site but never on the account.
Overage and contamination fees
Recurring penalties that usually mean the container is the wrong size or the recycling stream needs different signage, not that you owe the fee every month.
Ghost accounts
Billing that continues for a site you closed, a container that was removed, or a duplicate account opened during a vendor merger.
How the review runs
1
Send the paperwork
A recent invoice and the service agreement for each site. That is enough to start. If you cannot find the agreement we can usually request it.
2
We reconcile it
Line by line against the contract terms and against the service the site is actually receiving, then back through prior billing periods where it is worth doing.
3
We pursue the credit
We raise it with the hauler and follow it through to a credit on your account. Then we keep checking, because a rate that is right this quarter drifts by the next.
Send us one invoice and find out
The review is free, it takes about a business day, and you are under no obligation to change anything.