Improved Billing for Despatch Agency Shipments

UNCLAS STATE 061177 C O R R E C T E D C O P Y -- CHANGING HYPERLINK SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: ATRN AMGT AFIN KSEP SUBJECT: Improved Billing for Despatch Agency Shipments ¶1. Effective immediately A/LM is making an incremental change to improve the rate and billing processes. The Transportation Rate (formerly known as the aggregate rate) was established to provide the posts with a better tool for calculating transportation costs and to single bill customers to reduce the number of financial transactions (invoices) that posts were receiving. After processing numerous shipments over the past two years, one limitation became apparent: the Transportation Rate is predictable only on shipments consisting of a middle range of weights and cubes. ¶2. To address this limitation, A/LM is changing its process to use the actual amounts from accumulated invoices for each shipment to provide a single bill to the post. Posts will now be billed within 30 days of the expected ARRIVAL date of the items at the post instead of being billed when the shipment DEPARTS origin. This will give A/LM time to obtain the actual charges from each shipment handler and pass those charges on to the post. This process will greatly improve the accuracy of billing for most shipments, while maintaining the single billing concept. In those instances where A/LM cannot obtain the invoices within 30 days of the expected arrival of the freight at post, the published Transportation Rate will be used. The rate table will be updated on a quarterly basis to ensure more current and accurate information and should be used by post to estimate more accurate totals to obligate for transportation services. The link to the table is: http://lm.a.state.gov/index.cfm-?fa=user_list _content&Folder_ID=369 ¶3. Please address any questions or comments to TransportationQuery@state.gov ¶4. Minimized considered. CLINTON