The collections desk for freight forwarders
Forwarders are banksthat don’t charge interest.
You pay carriers in days and get paid in months. Receivables AI runs the polite, relentless collections desk that closes the gap — chasing in the right tone, tracking every promise, knocking off every receipt. The hard calls stay yours.
DSO daily · escalations human · Tally & CargoWise
01 · THE SQUEEZE
You’ve already paid for the freight. Your customer hasn’t.
The forwarding cash cycle is structurally upside down: carriers, airlines and truckers are paid in days — much of it in advance — while customers settle in sixty to ninety. Every shipment you move is a small loan you make, interest-free, from the thinnest margins in B2B.
And the desk that should close that gap — your accountant, between filings, with a phone and a memory — is the least equipped desk in the building.
of Indian B2B invoices are overdue at their due date
Atradius Payment Practices Barometer, India
average delay beyond due date before Indian B2B invoices turn to cash
Atradius Payment Practices Barometer, India
of B2B invoices in India are ultimately written off as bad debt
Atradius Payment Practices Barometer, India
of ultra-long payment delays (180+ days) are never paid at all
Coface Asia Payment Survey
03 · THE GATE
Easy reminders, automatic. Tough talks, to you.
Anything past 60 days, any dispute, any hint of legal — the desk stops. It hands you the customer’s full payment record and three drafted paths, and waits. Escalations never auto-fire, because relationships aren’t a workflow step.
THE DESK BRIEFS · YOU DECIDE · NOTHING FIRES ALONE
The desk never fires any of these on its own. It briefs; you decide.
05 · TONE IS THE RELATIONSHIP’S MEMORY
Same overdue invoice. Three different letters.
One generic dunning template burns your Gold accounts and barely registers with your Bronze ones. The desk writes to each customer the way their history deserves — and you can edit every word before it earns auto mode.
Hi Marco — hope the Ajman consignment landed well. Invoice INV-2381 crossed thirty days on Friday; could you let me know when it's scheduled? No rush if it's already in your run.
Hello Fatima — a reminder that INV-2107 (AED 8,220) is now 11 days past our agreed NET-30. We'd appreciate payment this week; the statement of account is attached for reconciliation.
Dear Sir — INV-1962 (₹3,18,400) is 31 days overdue against agreed terms. Kindly clear the outstanding by Friday. Further bookings will require settlement of dues. This account is flagged for review.
06 · BUILT FOR HOW FREIGHT ACTUALLY GETS PAID
The realities global tools ignore.
Western AR software assumes one invoice, one payment, full value. Freight in India and the GCC doesn’t work that way — and pretending it does is why your accountant still does everything by hand.
Statement-of-account knock-off
Your customers pay the monthly statement, not individual invoices. One lump-sum receipt gets applied across eleven invoices automatically — the way your accountant would, without the marathon.
TDS-short receipts (India)
Every Indian receipt arrives short by design — the customer withheld tax. Generic tools flag it as a short-pay dispute. This desk splits receipt vs TDS receivable and keeps the ledger honest.
Post-dated cheques (GCC)
A cheque in hand is not cash in bank. PDCs are tracked to their deposit dates, chased before they bounce, and never counted as collected until they clear.
Detention & demurrage disputes
The invoice is blocked because a D&D pass-through arrived six weeks late. The desk separates the disputed line from the clean balance — and collects the clean balance now.
No POD, no payment
The payment clock doesn't start until a signed POD reaches accounts. The desk knows which invoices are waiting on paper, and chases the paper — not the customer.
Interagent settlements
Your overseas agent owes you on five jobs; you owe them on three. The desk nets partner balances to one clean settlement per cycle, the way forwarder networks actually pay each other.
THE LOOP CLOSES
On-time payers get better quotes. Automatically.
Receivables AI is one desk of the FreighAI platform. Payment history feeds credit-aware quoting: when Cascadia pays day 36, the next RFQ already knows — NET-30 offered, no risk buffer. Collections stops being a back-office chore and starts pricing your risk.