When I first took over as Controller, I joined a finance team that had very little understanding of freight forwarding.
And when I started asking questions—why do we not understand our core business?—I was met with the dreaded words:
“It’s just how it’s always been.”
The reasoning?
You don’t need to understand how a widget moves from a warehouse in Guangdong to a consumer in Chicago to run AR reports or call customers about past-due invoices.
You don’t need to know how a container gets from China to Long Beach to pay a vendor bill.
And sure, you can operate that way.
But should you?
Not really.
You can swap out freight forwarding for any industry, and this still holds true:
Finance teams are far more effective when they understand the business they support.
In freight forwarding—logistics—supply chain—this disconnect is especially dangerous.
Here’s why:
We had a collections team that didn’t know how to spot missing shipment documents—and operations was stuck answering finance’s questions instead of moving freight.
We once paid the wrong Evergreen—$50,000 to the trucking company instead of the ocean carrier. A costly mistake that came down to a simple misunderstanding.
And there was this ever-present friction:
- Operations said they were doing finance’s job.
- Finance said ops didn’t know how to do theirs.
So I made it my mission to fix two things:
1. Repair the relationship between Finance and Operations
Operations isn’t just another department—they are our internal customer.
And finance? We’re a shared service.
That shift in mindset mattered.
We needed to recognize that without operations, we wouldn’t have jobs.
But at the same time, operations needed to understand that they had a role to play in maintaining clean data, timely responses, and effective handoffs that finance could act on.
It’s not about blame—it’s about partnership.
2. Train Finance to understand Freight Forwarding
Do they need to be forwarding experts?
No. But they need to be functional.
They should:
- Know the difference between Evergreen the ocean carrier and Evergreen the trucking company.
- Understand how to read an arrival notice.
- Know what documents are required to support billing—and be able to get them without always asking operations.
- Recognize when an invoice doesn’t match service timelines or responsibilities.
Because no—paying an invoice isn’t just paying an invoice, and collections isn’t just sending an email.
If your collections team understands the basics of forwarding, they can proactively handle the easy stuff—freeing ops to focus on moving freight instead of chasing PODs or commercial invoices.
And when payables knows how to interpret shipment paperwork, you reduce errors, avoid duplicate payments, and control cash flow more effectively.
It’s not about building a team of freight forwarders in finance.
It’s about building a team that can speak the same language as the people they rely on—and serve.
Finance doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
We’re not just pushing buttons. We’re partnering with operations, with sales, with leadership—to drive smarter, faster, more aligned decisions.
If you’re in a similar place—where finance and ops aren’t aligned, or costly mistakes are slipping through the cracks—I can help.
Let’s build a finance team that understands the business behind the numbers.
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Angela Lambrecht
Helping finance and operations teams work better together | Logistics & Supply Chain Consultant | ALL2S Consulting LLC
ALL2S CONSULTING LLC 