All right, everyone. Thank you for joining us for module twenty six, which talks about invoicing. Now, there is not much information that we're going to or a lot of time that we're going to spend on this. It's just going to give you a basic overview of what invoicing and the procedures to properly invoice items and what they look like and things of that nature. So let's take a quick overview, guys, of invoicing. all right so first things first let's talk about how invoices um well let's just talk about the process of invoicing from beginning to end okay so here we have you the broker okay so what happens is once a truck driver completes a load one or two things are going to happen okay it's possible that they may send you an invoice, okay? However, it's likely, unless this truck driver is just very well off and has, you know, a good stable financial situation, he's probably not going to want to invoice you directly because with most brokers, there is a in just a minute, okay? So most drivers are not going to want to wait, sixty to ninety days to be paid out. So what they may decide to do is sell their invoice to what is called a factoring company, okay? What a factoring company does is they take invoices from clients, okay? And then they pay out the client, okay? And what happens is they actually, the way that factoring companies make money is that they take a portion of whatever the invoice was, they take a percentage of that amount. So for example, if this driver had a load that he just completed that paid two thousand dollars, the factoring company may take invoice and say, here, we'll go ahead and pay you out, but it's going to cost you two percent, something along that lines. So, you know, instead of the driver getting paid out two thousand from the factoring company, he may get paid, you know, nineteen hundred and sixty dollars or something, something like that. And the factoring company may keep forty. okay refactoring company is different some charge one percent two percent three percent four percent somewhere along those lines okay so what will likely happen is once a truck delivers their load again unless they're well off they are going to instead of sending you the invoice they're going to give the invoice to the factoring company the factoring company will pay them you know minus a small percentage and then what will happen is the factoring company will invoice you. Okay. Um, and they don't mind, they don't have a problem waiting for six to nine days, uh, for that to be paid because trust me, they are very well off company. So they, they have all the time in the world. Um, you know, at least whatever is on the agreement. Whatever the agreement states as far as the timeframe for payout, they are very much capable of waiting on that, okay? So that's how invoicing goes from this side of the fence, okay? Now, as a broker, you will also be invoicing as well. Now, I'm pretty sure you know who you're invoicing, right? you're going to be invoicing the shipper, okay? You're invoicing the shipper because the shipper was the one that initially gave you the load that you gave to the driver to transport, right? So now that the load has been complete, you want to invoice the shipper, okay? So that you can be paid because in order to pay These guys, you need your payment from over here so you can take your cut out of it and then pass it along to them, right? So that's how it works. Now, shippers typically have anywhere from a forty five to ninety day payout time frame. So the reason that a broker would have that amount of time is to try to. what's the word I'm looking for is to provide that cushion in between time, you know, so typically if a shipper is going to pay out in forty to forty five to ninety days, a shipper wants to I'm sorry, a broker wants to have an agreement with a carrier that says, hey, you know, we are typical payout time frame is sixty to ninety days, which means that we're basically waiting to get this money so that we can pay you your money. OK, so. When you're creating your broker agreement, be mindful of the payout timeframe that you have in there, okay? Because you don't want to be in a situation where you're promising you're going to pay a driver out in thirty days when the shipper's not going to pay you out from anywhere to forty-five to ninety days. That can put you in the hole very fast, okay? So anyway, What happens is within forty five to ninety days, shipper is going to pay you. OK, and then you in turn are going to either pay the driver or if he sent his invoice to the factoring company, you're going to pay the factoring company. OK, which brings me to my next point. You as a broker need to have some working capital. OK, that is very important. Um, you need to have some type of working capital. I don't want to throw out a number, but you know, it's important for you to have that in the event that something happens. Um, I'm trying to give an example, you know, maybe the shipper is behind on paying you out. And instead of are not going to want to wait a hundred days they're going by your agreement you know whatever your agreement was which says hey uh you're supposed to pay us out in ninety days top so where's the money you know and you don't want those kind of problems because then that will impact whatever credit that you have established with either this carrier or this factoring company So, you know, if you're late on paying your bills, all that is being accounted for. They're taking notes of that, you know, and they are not going to work with someone that is known for, they're not going to want to work with someone that's known for paying out, you know, late payments on a regular basis. Okay. So the more that happens, the worse that that looks and it reflects on your company and it could just potentially limit the amount of people that want to work with you, okay? So if something happens and this shipper doesn't pay out on time, you need to have the funds to pay these people on time, okay? Even though you don't have the money yet, you need to have some capital so that you can pay these people out on time and keep your reputation, your credit reputation very well, okay? So keep that in mind. You need to have some working capital. Okay. Very important. Now, as far as invoicing goes, I figured we could look at a couple of invoices. I want you all to kind of, you know, be familiar with what they look like so that you know what you're doing when you send one. Okay. So, This is what an invoice in general looks like. You're going to put your information up here. Okay. And then now let me just pause. And this will be shown in another slide. But unless you're just living in the stone ages, you're not going to have to manually fill out invoices, okay? Most invoices nowadays can be generated by what is called a TMS system, a transportation management system. You will learn more about that in this course as well if we have not already covered it, okay? But I just want you to have an idea of what they look like anyway, okay? Beforehand. So, you know, your information would be generated here. and then the customers which is the shipper their information would be here your tms system should be generating invoice numbers putting in the dates and all that stuff and then a description of what was um what was transported okay and then obviously here it would have whatever the amount is that is due by the shipper okay so let's look at one more pretty much the same thing company name um shippers info here, you know, the system should be generating an invoice number, which is just an identification number. Okay. So that, you know, if the shipper calls you or something and says, Hey, I need to talk to you about this particular invoice, you know, you or your secretary or whoever would say, well, sure. What's the invoice number? would provide the invoice number and that load should pop up in your TMS system, okay? So it's a way to identify the load in question, okay? And again, same thing, you're going to put the description, maybe you delivered eight steel pipes, okay? And you're gonna put the pricing information or the system is gonna put the pricing information here. Oh, sorry guys. Shipper is going to, I'm sorry, not shipper. The system will put all the pricing information in here. Okay. And then you're going to send this invoice off to, I'm sorry, send this invoice off to the shipper. Okay. So let's talk about the required documentation for submitting invoices. Now, every company is different. Shippers may want you to send specific documentation, but generally overall in the industry, what most shippers are going to request when submitting an invoice is the load confirmation that they sent you. Typically, when they are assigning you a load or tendering you a load, they're going to send some type of load confirmation that says, hey, this is what we need you to pick up. This is how much we're paying you for it. So they'll want you to submit load confirmation. They'll want you to submit the POD, which is proof of delivery. You should know what PODs are by now. I'm sure we've covered that in this chapter. So this is another important thing. Even if driver, going back to that first slide, guys, let's say the driver has a factoring company, so they're not going to be invoicing you. That will come from the factoring company. Even though the driver is not invoicing you, they still need to be sending you the POD immediately after that load is complete because you will need to provide that POD to the shipper with your invoice, okay? So that's important. You know, make sure your drivers know whoever you're assigning those loads to or brokering those loads to say, hey, you know, or you can even have that in your broker agreement. After the load has been complete, you have three days or X amount of days to submit the POD. OK, to you. They need to submit the POD to you and then you will submit that POD as a part of your invoice. Again, you need the load confirmation that the shipper sent you. You need the POD, which is the proof of delivery. And then you need the actual invoice that is generated by the TMS system, okay? It'll look similar to those two invoices that we just looked at. So typically, these are the three type of documents that the shipper is going to want you to send over when you're submitting an invoice. Sometimes they may need more documentation, sometimes less. But they will certainly specify that. you know in their paperwork if they provide you with any or you know verbal communication this is what is you know this is what we require okay so um that's it guys I told you this was going to be a very short chapter invoicing is is not too complicated so there's no need to um make it over complicated okay So that is going to conclude the end of this chapter. As always, I want to thank you for your time and I will see you in the next video. OK, guys, that will conclude the module on invoicing and it is pretty much basic self-explanatory. So we are going to move on to the next module.