Analyst Freight Payment

Packaging Corporation of America•Lake Forest, IL

4d•Hybrid

About The Position

This position follows a hybrid work model, with 3 days per week onsite at our Lake Forest, IL office. The specific onsite schedule may vary based on team needs and individual responsibilities. This job is necessary to support the automated freight payment process for the Corrugated Division. Staff is required to control the quality and flow of carrier contract rate documents, bills of lading, invoices, funding, business rules, financial controls, other 3rd-party factors needed to rate and pay carrier invoices; address carrier invoicing problems. Staff focus is to keep invoice payments through the system accurate and timely. Support plant accounting staff with system training and use. The automated freight payment process involves controlling the quality and movement of a few thousand carrier contract specifications between the plants/corporate and the freight payment company for approximately 300 carriers for 80 box plants, plus warehouses, for the invoices of about 376,000 shipments per year. The annual freight spend through this process is $164mm. This process alleviates the review, preparation, approval and payment of invoices manually by the individual plants. The environment is constantly changing with new/changed rates, new/changed carriers, 3rd-party software updates, security requests, business rules, audits, and financial/process controls of the system. Controlling the resulting obligations and funding on a regular basis is critical. Having a small central corporate staff provides consistency and control on the environment that affects a significant cash expense for the Company.

Requirements

Business experience with freight payables is preferred.
Excel, Word, email are essential.
Experience working with remote locations and with various levels of staff/management is preferred.

Nice To Haves

equivalent to 4-years of college preferred.

Responsibilities

Reconcile the freight payment funding requests (obligations) to actual carrier invoice processing results prior to authorizing funding to be released from PCA’s bank account.
Update control reports and logs with each funding.
Control contract rates from the plants/corp to the freight payment company.
Address payment disputes and issues.
Monitor the payments and pending/holding status for the “top 20” carriers at least twice per week, looking for payment backlogs or gaps in payment flow that could result in a carrier declining to do business with PCA.
Audit a percentage (quantity subject to auditor guidelines) of invoices each week to assure the system is working consistently and accurately.
Develop and implement business rules and/or tolerances for the freight payment company to use when calculating payments on behalf of PCA.
Learn and use the full complement of the freight payment vendor’s invoice management and reporting/history tools for efficient navigation of problem definition, resolution, reporting to plants, carriers, and management.
Be able to train plant accounting staff/others as needed in the use of the system.
The Freight Pay Analyst is responsible for knowing and following policies and procedures of the Company; for sharing information that would benefit other members of the team; finding ways to improve the delivery of service to our internal and external customers.
As a member of the Freight Payment and Administration Department, and the PCA Team as a whole, the Freight Analyst is expected to continually strive to strengthen our business philosophy of meeting needs and exceeding expectations for our customers.