It’s been a month, and your client still hasn’t paid the $8,000 they owe you for the work you completed last month. You have bills to pay, but you don’t feel they value the work your truck drivers did when payments come in later and later. This is one of the most frustrating parts of working in the trucking industry, yet it’s also common.
When you get a client who pays quickly, it’s easy to manage your own expenses. When one pays a bit later for whatever reason, it drags you down. You end up paying your own bills late or facing interest charges, and those late fees and interest quickly add up. That harms your business credit score, making it harder to secure loans or qualify for low interest rates.
If you aren’t analyzing data on the payments you receive, you’re missing an opportunity to pinpoint ways to improve your monthly cash flow. Learn how to analyze your data and identify potential cash flow issues before they arise.
What Are Factoring Analytics?
Your business generates data every day. Cleared payments from the past months and years, unpaid invoices, and your paid and unpaid creditors help pinpoint your month-to-month expenses and income.
Real-time and historical data make it easy to analyze when cash flow is optimal and when it is lean and concerning. Factoring analytics is the science of using that information to turn invoice financing into a financial tool that helps you predict cash flow issues.
Three Data Sets You Need to Analyze and How to Do It
When it comes to factoring analytics, there are three main components to analyze. Not only do they ensure you have a stronger cash flow, but they also help you avoid many of the frustrations.
1. Analysis of Historic and Current Cash Flow
Many trucking company owners, especially independent drivers, tend to monitor their bank balances month to month. Static bank balances do provide important information, such as whether there’s enough money in the bank to pay your bills. Predictive cash flow forecasting is better.
Data analysis examines historical and real-time data to assess how balanced your earnings and spending are. You learn when you’re paying bills, when you’re being paid, and whether you’re spending more than you earn.
If there are shortfalls, what months and situations caused the decline in income or increased debt? This information helps you develop stronger payment and savings habits, which are key to a stable cash flow. If your rates don’t match the amount of fuel you use, you’ll discover you’re not charging enough and can even get recommendations for what you should be charging.
2. Client Behavior
Analyzing a potential client’s behavior helps avoid late payments. Reviewing months or years of credit reports pinpoints when a client has paid late.
Suppose the broker’s average payment time was 12 days three years ago, increased to 24 days a year ago, and is now 30 days. Slower payments indicate financial trouble.
Are there brokers or shippers with a high rate of short pays, meaning they only pay a portion of the invoice total? They can indicate a client is problematic.
Short pays often occur when the shipper claims items were damaged or missing. They also happen when a trucker is blamed for delivering a load late. They can also result from the broker or shipper disagreeing over who is paying tariffs or what the client promised to pay the trucking company.
3. Risk and Fraud Detection
Every day, trucking company owners risk working for a problematic broker or shipper. They’re also at risk of being defrauded. Lessen your risk by following these rules.
- Be cautious about taking work where the broker or shipper offers to pay you far more than average if you hesitate to take it. Watch out for a company quoting a rate well above the market rate.
- Don’t agree to haul a load until you’ve confirmed the broker or shipper’s phone number using the DOT’s SAFER tool. If the number you have doesn’t match what SAFER shows, call the number listed in SAFER and verify it’s an actual job with that company.
- Never agree to haul a load if the broker asks you to pose as another hauler.
- Research any information the broker or shipper presents you with. Insurance paperwork can be faked, so scrutinize paperwork and call for verification if you suspect something is wrong.
- Run a business credit check and review the broker or shipper’s payment history. If there’s a long history of late or nonpayment, don’t agree to transport their goods. It’s unlikely they’ll suddenly pay you on time when dozens of other companies are still waiting.
While you could have an employee dedicated to continually analyzing the numbers, reading credit reports, and researching brokers and shippers, AI is faster and more thorough. AI cannot work alone, however. You do need an office worker who can prompt the AI on which datasets to examine. That worker must fact-check the AI to ensure no mistakes were made.
Look for apps or platforms that are compatible with your TMS system. You want to be able to look at predictive features instantly. You want apps that track incoming payments, cleared payments, and slower-than-normal broker payment speeds. Other helpful AI tools:
- Alerts you to slow-paying brokers and shippers.
- Analyzes how much fuel you’re likely to burn on the trip and determines whether the job will be profitable.
- Estimates your bank balance in a month based on current spending and load rates.
- Predicts load-level factorability to help you rule out loads that may be less profitable.
Use Freight Factoring to Stay Competitive
Freight factoring is one of the wisest ways to maintain a steady cash flow. As you analyze your payment history and identify weak spots with customers who aren’t as timely as you need them to be, contact Saint John Capital about factoring those invoices.
For a small fee, we handle billing and payment collection for that client. In the meantime, we issue an immediate payment so you have the cash in hand that afternoon. You avoid late fees and damage to your credit report. Plus, you no longer worry about frustrating, time-consuming collections.
Make the most of factoring analytics in 2026. It’s a great way to build a competitive edge and ensure steady cash flow, even amid fluctuations in loads and trucking opportunities.
Saint John Capital helps you get paid immediately for the hard work you do. Sign up for free online to see how our customizable freight factoring arrangements ensure you get paid quickly and have the funds to keep your trucks on the road.
