Leveraged Supply Chains

Episode 5: Exceptions ≤3%, Disputes Down — The Upwell Freight AR Playbook


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In this episode of Leveraged Supply Chains, Andrew Stroup sits down with Charles “Charley” Dehoney, Co-Founder & CEO of Upwell, to demystify freight brokerage AR and show how operators pull exception rates below 3% and drive disputes down—without piling on back-office burden. Definitions (freight brokerage AR): exception rate = % of invoices rejected at submission by the payer’s AP (portal/EDI/email) for rule/format issues, missing docs, or rate/PO mismatches; dispute rate = % of submitted invoices later challenged for amount/terms or documentation (accessorials, detention, lumper, POD).

You’ll hear about:

  • The submission flow where exceptions are caught early (ingest → validate → enrich → route → submit/collect → reconcile) and what to automate vs. leave human-in-the-loop.

  • Upstream root causes that create both exceptions and disputes (missing references, wrong formats, absent docs) and a practical “block-and-tackle” playbook to fix them.

  • A real-world scale example: an enterprise brokerage reducing manual touch to ~4% of ~42k monthly invoices by auto-presenting the rest—freeing experts to focus on the true edge cases.

  • Where automation won’t move the two numbers yet, and how to stage your rollout to get wins now while you clean the data and rules.

  • Team design: exception queues, SLAs, and capturing tribal billing knowledge so improvements stick across lanes and payers.

On-air benchmarks to track:

  • Exception rate ≤3% (scrutinize weekly if you’re above it), dispute rate trending down, top exception/dispute reasons, documentation completeness, and first-pass submission quality.

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Leveraged Supply ChainsBy Leverage AI