In today’s high-speed business world, parcel shipping expenses are a quiet hemorrhage for many organizations’ bottom lines. As a manufacturer, a retailer, or a service company, the costs associated with shipping, particularly for big-volume shippers, can build up rapidly. But what businesses fail to understand is that their current shipping contracts have hidden beyond-savings charges and unfavorable conditions. How do you uncover and recover those lost dollars? A thoughtful, data-driven contract negotiation process.
At Renaissance Advisory, we assist entrepreneurs in converting regular expenses into measurable cost savings opportunities, without requiring them to change vendors or alter operations. Perhaps the most underutilized but effective tool within our advisory arsenal is negotiating parcel contracts. When done right, it’s not merely about shaving a few cents—it’s about revolutionizing the way your business manages parcel expenses altogether.
Let’s walk through how the contract negotiations process works, where hidden parcel fees are often buried, and how combining it with other strategies—like tax return programs—can unlock even more value.
What is the Contract Negotiations Process?
Parcel carriers like UPS and FedEx operate under complex pricing structures. While their published rates are publicly available, most businesses operate under customized agreements based on their shipping volume, zones, package weight, and other variables. These contracts can span dozens of pages and include layered surcharges, minimums, and pricing incentives.
The process of contract negotiations is the organized review and reorganization of these contracts to better reflect the shipping behavior of your company. It’s about leveraging your shipping information to drive negotiation, negotiating better terms that are reflective of your reality of use and necessity.
Here’s an example of how a standard process of contract negotiations goes:
Data Collection & Analysis
We start with gathering historical shipping data. These are invoices, active contracts, and a complete breakdown of frequency of shipping, destinations, package weights, and so on.
Audit for Hidden Fees
The devil is in the details. We review carrier contracts to look for typical categories of fees that sneakily raise prices: residential delivery surcharges, address correction fees, dimensional weight minimums, fuel surcharges, and so on.
Benchmarking
With industry intelligence and proprietary benchmarks, we analyze your existing contract against what’s standard for companies in your industry and volume class.
Strategy Development
We don’t renegotiate haphazardly—we create a tailored negotiation strategy that focuses on the highest-potential ROI areas.
Negotiation Execution
As your representative, Renaissance Advisory negotiates with your carrier on your behalf, using data-driven arguments to negotiate improved rates, waived fees, or increased discount levels.
Implementation & Monitoring
After new terms are established, we still track invoices and shipping activity to verify that savings are being realized and maintained in the long term.
The good news? This whole contract negotiation process is accomplished with absolutely no interruption to your existing shipping operations.
Where Are the Hidden Parcel Cost Savings?
The majority of companies ink carrier contracts and never give it a second thought, thinking that their “discounted” rates are as good as it gets. But those contracts have concealed expenses like:
- Minimum charges that keep discounts from coming into play on small packages
- Accessorial charges that mount rapidly (e.g., Saturday delivery, large packages)
- Poorly designed volume incentives that fail to mirror your shipping behavior
- Fuel surcharges that fluctuate without notice
By reviewing these contracts through a formal contract negotiations process, companies are generally able to save between 10% and 30% in annual shipping expenditure—with no compromise in service level.
Beyond Contracts: Layering in Tax Return Programs
Whereas most cost-saving strategies only go as far as operational costs, Renaissance Advisory takes this a notch higher by incorporating financial recovery tools such as tax return programs. Such programs detect missed tax credits and deductions from past years and recoup capital that’s rightfully yours.
The combination of parcel contract negotiation and tax return programs is potent. One addresses real-time cost savings, the other addresses past financial recuperation. Together, they make an overall savings plan that addresses both forward-looking and backward-looking prospects.
Getting to Know Tax Return Programs
Tax return programs are comprehensive examinations of previous tax filings—usually for as much as three years previous—to spot forgotten opportunities such as the R&D tax credit. Although most connected with tech and manufacturing, the R&D tax credit in reality covers a variety of industries engaged in qualifying actions such as making processes better, creating software, or product-testing new goods.
When Renaissance Advisory examines your history of tax filings, we:
- Assess suitability in multiple classes
- Compute possible credits that were lost
- Create amendments and manage documents
- Be fully IRS compliant for peace of mind
Better still, our tax return software is performance-based too. If we don’t recover anything, you pay nothing. This removes totally the financial risk for your company.
Why Layering Matters
Most advisory companies sell upfront, piecemeal services—either contract reviews or tax credit filing. Renaissance Advisory does more. We layer our services to combine them in ways that help companies not only save money but also enhance cash flow and profitability on the margin.
- Save lower parcel costs through better contract negotiation
- Recover overpaid taxes through tax return programs
- Enhance financial resilience without modifying vendors or processes
- Maintain 100% IRS-compliant and audit-ready
It’s a complete package solution meant to benefit business owners who desire to expand without sacrificing their margins.
Why Renaissance Advisory?
Renaissance Advisory is not your typical consultant. We have a fundamental philosophy: businesses shouldn’t pay for advice unless it brings quantifiable returns.
Here’s why clients rely on us:
- 100% Contingency-Based: We get paid only when you save.
- No Disruption: We work behind the scenes with no interference to your day-to-day activities.
- Clear Process: You receive transparent reporting on each step of the contract negotiations process and tax return program.
- Hands-On Experience: We offer insider expertise, data intelligence, and extensive carrier relationships.
Record of Results: Our clients consistently save five to seven figures by way of our strategic reviews and negotiations.
See What You Could Be Saving
If your company ships packages on a regular basis and you’ve never gone back over your carrier contract, you’re probably leaving dollars on the floor. And if your CPA has not conducted a retroactive analysis of your tax returns for unclaimed credits, you could be overpaying without realizing it.
It’s time to correct that.
Schedule your complimentary consultation with Renaissance Advisory and see how our contract negotiations process and tax return programs can help you reclaim lost dollars—and channel them into growth.
Let’s begin converting operational expenses into opportunity.
Speak with an advisor today.
You’ll be amazed at what we uncover.