by Brian Gibbs

For small businesses, learning how to save on shipping costs may seem like a challenge, but the reality is there are more ways than ever before to be cost-effective when it comes to small business shipping solutions. E-commerce shipping solutions, discount shipping rates, and small parcel auditing are among these ways – to help businesses save dollars on their shipping spend. Keeping these e-commerce shipping strategies in mind, consider how the below five tips can help your unique business reduce shipping costs and gain more profit in return.

• Introduce Parcel Auditing into Your Shipping Strategies
  Parcel auditing is among the best ways to save money on small business shipping costs. Parcel auditing services – such as that from Refund Retriever – deliver shipment billing clarity on:
• charges made in error
• duplicate charges
• charges with no services provided
• unexpected surcharges and more

Once identified, this automated service applies for refunds from UPS or FedEx – respectively – then seamlessly collects the money owed to the shipper. Sounds simple enough... right? It is.
The hardest part? Simply signing up – which, as it turns out – isn’t that hard at all. Learn more here

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• Know Which Carrier Offers the Best Rate for Every Shipment
  Details matter when it comes to finding low cost shipping for small businesses. Knowing the fine-print details of every package you send – including weight and dimensions – can help you better identify who to ship it with... as well as why. Quite simply, that why is dollars. More specifically, your dollars.  The details that create each shipment you make will impact business shipping rate differences between shipping carriers – thus, you need to choose wisely. Being familiar with current commercial shipping rates and having a multi-carrier shipping strategy can help you achieve this.

• Negotiate Your Carrier Contracts
  It can often be both overwhelming and confusing for small businesses to understand their FedEx and UPS contracts. Incidentally, understanding them is exactly what they need to do. To help, invest in experts to help you manage your contract negotiations – including UPS contract negotiations and FedEx contract negotiations – to best suit your shipping needs. Here are a few considerations to balance in your agreement.
• Tier Discount Rates
• Incentive Discount Rates
• Accessorial Fee Incentives
• DIM considerations
• Zone/Weight Service Distribution
• Minimum Shipment Charges

Carrier service agreements are an integral part to reduce shipping costs for small businesses.  The result will lower shipping spend while enhancing business profitability along the way. To learn more about the importance of contract negotiation, click here.

• Welcome Integrations into Your Shipping Strategy
  One stop shops often exist but the reality is, your business has a lot of players that impact its’ operations. Working with trusted external partners – such as First Mile and Refund Retriever –
  is vital in order to reduce shipping costs for small businesses. Yet working with partners that also partner with like-minded yet non-competitive businesses is important for your business, as
  well. Be sure to identify the integrations your external partners have to best optimize – and save – on your shipping spend. For a full list of First Mile partners, click here.

• Use Data to Optimize Every Action You Make
  Want to truly save money? Don’t let the human touch alone help you do this. Through data, however, you can increase your shipping efficiencies from a variety of angles – including the auditing of late packages and identifying intelligence through reports – as well help you make more strategic shipping decisions that can help – you guessed it – save money and reduce shipping costs for your small business.

• Reduce Shipping Costs for Small Businesses

Finally, as you aim to make more informed decisions in your future parcel actions, remember that Refund Retriever can help! Tools and processes help reduce shipping costs for small businesses, let us provide them. Discover more about Refund Retriever here.

Brian Gibbs | President of Refund Retriever
Brian Gibbs founded Refund Retriever in 2006 while running his first eBay based business and seeing the shortcomings of other shipment auditing companies. Refund Retriever's primary focus is FedEx and UPS parcel invoice auditing. After graduating from Texas A&M University in 2001, he then graduated from the University of Houston in 2004 with a JD and MBA. Gibbs has been  featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur and other publications discussing parcel auditing, shipping, ecommerce and more. Learn more at www.refundretriever.com or call (800) 441-8085 for more information.