When a customer contests one line, split the invoice's fate: request payment of the undisputed balance now, and route the contested line — with the carrier’s pass-through invoice attached — to a human conversation. Ninety percent of the cash stops waiting for ten percent of the argument.
Why D&D lines block invoices
Detention and demurrage arrive late (often weeks after delivery), come from a carrier tariff your customer never saw, and feel like a penalty. So the customer does what logistics customers do: they short-pay or go silent on the whole invoice. Industry studies put freight invoice error/dispute rates at 5–15% — and D&D lines are disproportionately represented.
The separation playbook
- Diagnose the silence: is this invoice unpaid, or is one line disputed? The reply usually tells you if someone actually parses it.
- Acknowledge fast, in writing: "the ₹38,000 detention line is under review; could you process the balance of ₹3,82,000 this week?"
- Attach the evidence: the carrier's original D&D invoice, the free-days terms, the container timeline — before they ask.
- Bill separably next time: contested-prone accessorials on their own line items (or invoices) never take the freight down with them.
The upstream fix
Recurring D&D disputes are usually an information problem: customers who get proactive delay warnings dispute less, because the charge stops being a surprise. That's a tracking-desk job — and one more reason collections improves when the whole lifecycle runs on one platform.
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