BravoTran, a financial automation platform built for freight forwarders and customs brokers has announced the launch of BravoTran Cash Application, a solution that automates the matching of incoming customer payments to the correct invoices.

Cash application is the accounts receivable task of applying each incoming payment to the right open invoices, typically by cross-referencing the customer's remittance advice — the notification identifying which invoices a payment covers — with billing records and bank deposits. When those documents sit in separate systems, matching payments by hand is slow, and until payments are applied, receivables records can lag behind the cash a business has actually received.

The product connects incoming payments with customer remittance advice, original invoices, and bank deposit information, then closes confirmed matches directly in CargoWise, the widely used logistics platform from WiseTech Global that freight forwarders and customs brokers rely on to manage shipments and accounting in a single system. Rather than requiring accounting teams to manually search across CargoWise, email, and bank statements, the solution routes only exceptions that need human review into a centralized workflow.

The launch extends BravoTran's automation beyond accounts payable into cash application on the receivables side. It is already live, with freight forwarders processing real payments through the platform and additional customers onboarding this week.

Turning a Manual Search Into an Automated Match

BravoTran Cash Application is built around a simple principle: people should handle exceptions, not routine matches. The solution automatically gathers the information needed to determine where a payment belongs, including incoming customer payments, remittance advice, original invoices, bank deposit information, and customer and invoice data within CargoWise, which stays current in real time as invoices post, are credited, or are reversed.

Once a match is confirmed, the transaction closes directly in CargoWise. Only payments that cannot be confidently matched are routed for review.

"We built BravoTran Cash Application to make the straightforward transactions disappear from the workload and put human attention where it delivers the most value," said Tom Durrenberger, CEO of BravoTran.

Automation That Scales With the Business

For freight forwarders, manual cash application creates a difficult equation: more customers and shipments mean more payments, and more payments mean more work, often a one-to-one relationship between transaction volume and headcount. The pattern is amplified in freight forwarding, where each shipment typically generates its own set of invoices and charges that all have to be reconciled against incoming payments. BravoTran Cash Application breaks that link, allowing forwarders to process more payments without adding proportional staff.

The company notes several expected benefits:

• Reduced manual labor: teams no longer search multiple for information that can be matched automatically.
• Faster cash application: finance teams gain a timelier view of what has been paid and what remains outstanding.
• Improved accuracy: automated matching reduces manual entry errors.
• Sharper focus: effort is spent on exceptions that genuinely require judgment.

Built for Freight Forwarding

Durrenberger said the automation also creates a valuable data trail for forwarders. Once payments, remittance information, and invoices are consistently matched and tracked, finance teams gain greater visibility into payment behavior, including which customers pay late, where discrepancies occur, and where billing issues may be delaying payment.

"We looked into other systems, but they were more expensive and not created for our industry. BravoTran's Cash Application was built specifically for freight forwarders, which not only increases efficiency but costs significantly less," said Laurie Zailski, Director of Accounting at Rogers & Brown. "Their system allows us to focus more on higher-value work, while giving us faster, more accurate visibility into our cash."

BravoTran Cash Application is available initially to U.S.-based freight forwarders and customs brokers operating on CargoWise. It is offered as part of the broader BravoTran Receivables suite and can also be purchased as a standalone product, separate from BravoTran Payables. The announcement did not specify a timeline for availability beyond that initial U.S.-based CargoWise user base, so any broader rollout remains a development to watch as onboarding continues.

Source: Globalfintechseries