RETALLY Evidence Standard: ten rules for freight audit findings you can defend.

What this standard governs

The RETALLY Evidence Standard is a public operating rule set for historical freight audits, post-payment freight recovery, and Second-Look audits. Its purpose is to stop the most common credibility failure in recovery work: collapsing estimated differences, validated findings, approved claims, and realized recovery into one attractive but misleading number.

The standard governs the evidence chain from invoice and shipment identity through commercial authority, independent recalculation, human review, customer authorization, claim status, settlement, reversals, and final fee-eligible recovery.

The ten evidence rules

1. Freeze the population. Define scope and exclusions before measuring results.
2. Establish identity. Tie the invoice to the shipment or economic freight obligation.
3. Resolve authority. Use the applicable contract, tariff, rate confirmation, quote, amendment, schedule or rule.
4. Use the correct effective date. Do not silently substitute current or inapplicable rates.
5. Recalculate independently. Preserve the facts and assumptions needed to reproduce the expected charge.
6. Route ambiguity to human review. Material uncertainty may resolve to review or rejection.
7. Exclude pre-existing and duplicate value. Known findings, automatic credits and existing claims are not ours.
8. Require customer authorization. Validation alone does not authorize outside recovery action.
9. Link settlement once and account for reversals. Do not double-attribute the same economic recovery.
10. Call value recovered only when eligible value actually posts. Estimates and unpaid claims are not recovered funds.

One savings number is not enough

Second-Look audits are delta tests

Existing controls get credit for their own results. Where available, incumbent findings, automatic credits, active disputes and known matters are frozen before RETALLY measures net-new value.

Read the Second-Look Recovery Audit.

Automation assists. Evidence governs.

Automation may assist ingestion, matching, calculation, prioritization and evidence assembly. Material ambiguity remains subject to human review. A model score or anomaly flag does not replace the commercial source that controls the billed charge.

Evidence hierarchy for a freight recovery finding

A strong finding usually depends on multiple evidence planes rather than one invoice export. The relevant set varies by mode and issue, but the hierarchy commonly includes:

1. Economic identity. Invoice, shipment, PRO, tracking number, BOL, load, or other identifiers that establish what was actually billed.
2. Commercial authority. Contract, tariff, customer-specific rate schedule, rate confirmation, quote, amendment, discount table, fuel rule, or accessorial provision that governed the charge.
3. Shipment facts. Weight, class, dimensions, lane, service level, delivery event, appointment, dwell, reweigh, reclassification, or accessorial evidence.
4. Independent calculation. Re-performance of the charge with the applicable rate basis, units, minimums, discounts, fuel, accessorials, currency, and rounding.
5. Review disposition. Human acceptance, rejection, or unresolved status with the reason preserved.
6. Authorization and claim evidence. Customer approval, exact submitted claim or correspondence, and carrier response.
7. Settlement evidence. Credit, refund, remittance, account adjustment, cash receipt, or another engagement-defined realized benefit.
8. Counter-events. Reversals, returns, voids, offsets, duplicate settlements, or later corrections that reduce or eliminate realized value.

False positives the standard is designed to reject

• a current rate applied to a historical shipment whose older rate controlled;
• a missing rate treated as a zero-dollar expected charge;
• a corrected invoice chain counted as multiple independent overcharges;
• a credit already in flight presented as a new recovery opportunity;
• an incumbent auditor's existing finding re-labeled as RETALLY savings;
• a provisional claim amount treated as cash recovered;
• one economic recovery counted through several invoice, claim, credit, or remittance records;
• a later reversal ignored because the original credit looked favorable.

What a Recovery Evidence Pack should show

For each validated finding, the buyer-visible evidence pack should make the invoice/shipment identity, billed amount, expected amount, controlling authority, authority effective date, supporting evidence, finding category, confidence, reviewer disposition, unresolved issues, customer authorization, claim status, carrier response, settlement reference, gross credit, reversals, net realized recovery, attribution state, and fee-eligible realized recovery inspectable.

See the fictional recovery-status example.

Use precise recovery language

A candidate difference requires review. A validated finding survived evidence gates. An approved claim is not necessarily paid. Actual recovered funds are eligible realized benefits that posted, net of applicable reversals.

RETALLY Evidence Standard FAQ

Limits

This is an operating methodology, not a legal opinion, accounting standard, carrier rule, certification or guarantee of recovery. Material changes require a new version and effective date.

Apply the standard to your freight population

Questions: email RETALLY. 715 Yorktowne Road, Pottsville, PA 17901.