Industries · Logistics
Logistics
Shipping documents and freight invoices read and reconciled, so finance stops re-keying what operations already knows.
Where it gets stuck
Freight finance runs on paper the operation has already finished with
A shipment is closed in the TMS days before its paperwork reaches accounts. Most of what finance then does is rebuild what operations already knew.
Freight bills
Carrier invoices in every format
A 3PL with forty carriers gets forty invoice layouts, plus consolidated statements that bundle hundreds of shipments into one PDF. Each line is keyed by hand against the shipment it belongs to.
Freight bills
Rate audit after the fact
Contracted rates live in the TMS or in a spreadsheet. Checking base rate, fuel surcharge and accessorials line by line is the step that gets skipped when the queue is long, and overbilling goes through.
Proof of delivery
POD chasing
Customer billing waits on a signed POD that is in a driver's cab, a WhatsApp photo or a scanned bundle. Days of receivables sit behind a document that already exists.
Claims
Detention and demurrage
Detention, demurrage and damage claims arrive as emails with attachments. Whether to accept one depends on timestamps held in three systems that nobody reconciles routinely.
Customs
Compliance paperwork that must agree
Shipping bills, bills of entry and e-way bills carry values that have to match the commercial invoice and the ledger. The mismatches surface at audit, not at the time.
Close
Cost per shipment is a guess
Freight not yet billed is accrued by estimate because the carrier's invoice arrives weeks after delivery. Margin per lane is reported late and corrected later.
Documents and data
What arrives, and what it has to agree with
Each logistics document is a claim about a shipment. The work is to read it, then check it against the record that already exists.
Capabilities
What PTAS AI does with them
Reading is the first step, not the result. Every document is checked against a shipment, a rate and a rule before it reaches a person.
Read any carrier layout
01Invoices, LRs, PODs and statements extracted into typed fields with a confidence score per field, including photographed and multi-shipment documents.
Tie each document to its shipment
02Every document is matched to its shipment by LR, container or booking reference, so the dispatch, the POD and the carrier bill sit on one record.
Audit the rate
03Base, fuel surcharge and accessorials compared to the contracted lane rate, with the variance named and sized when it falls outside tolerance.
Route by exception
04Bills within tolerance go to posting. Rate variances, missing PODs and duplicate claims go to the person who can decide, with the evidence attached.
Accrue and post per shipment
05Freight cost posted per shipment and lane into the ERP, with the unbilled portion accrued from the dispatch record instead of estimated.
Keep the trail
06What was read, which rate applied, who approved and what posted, kept per shipment for the customer query and for the auditor.
The freight cost audit is the workflow we would build first. The rate card already exists, the variance is money, and the operations team knows which carriers to start with.
Worked example — freight cost audit · Illustrative example
Three systems, four agents and one human gate above a value you set. None of that is a product feature — it is a workflow assembled from parts that already exist.
Product
Which product carries it
DocPro reads the paperwork. FinSuite runs the payables that follow. Most logistics teams need both, in that order.
Integrations
Systems that can be connected
The TMS holds the shipment, the ERP holds the ledger and the carrier portal holds the invoice. The point is to stop re-keying between them.
TMS
Shipments and rates
SAP
ERP
Oracle
ERP
Microsoft Dynamics
ERP
Tally
Ledger
Carrier portals
Invoices and statements
Email and shared drives
Document intake
Customs and e-way bill data
Compliance records
Four integration methods: native integration where a system offers it, API integration, file or flat-file exchange, and custom integration for an in-house TMS. The systems named here are planning examples. Which method applies, and what is in scope, is confirmed during assessment.
See all integrationsOutcomes
What you can measure, and how
We do not quote numbers before we have seen your documents. We do agree the measures up front, and these are the ones that move first.
Freight bill cycle time
- Today
- A carrier invoice waits in a mailbox, then in a spreadsheet, then for a rate check.
- What changes
- Read, matched and rated on arrival. Only the variances wait for a person.
- How it is measured
- Days from invoice receipt to posting, per carrier, taken from the audit trail.
Overbilling caught before payment
- Today
- Rate checks are sampled, or skipped, when volume is high.
- What changes
- Every line rated against the contract, with variances sized and routed.
- How it is measured
- Value of variances flagged and recovered each month, by carrier and lane.
Billing held by missing PODs
- Today
- Customer invoices wait for a POD someone has to find.
- What changes
- PODs captured from any channel and attached to the shipment the day they exist.
- How it is measured
- Shipments delivered but not billed, counted weekly, with the age of each.
Accrual accuracy at close
- Today
- Unbilled freight is estimated and corrected the following month.
- What changes
- The accrual is built from dispatches without an invoice, at the contracted rate.
- How it is measured
- Difference between accrued and billed freight, month by month.
FAQ
Questions logistics teams ask
Our carriers send consolidated statements with hundreds of shipments on one PDF. Can those be read?
Yes. A consolidated statement is split into its shipment lines, each line is tied to its LR or container reference, and each one is rated and matched on its own. What you see afterwards is one list of lines that did not match, not a forty-page PDF to work through by hand.
The contracted rates live in our TMS and partly in spreadsheets. Where does the rate check run?
Against whichever source you nominate. During assessment we map where rates actually live, including the spreadsheet nobody admits to, and the audit uses that. If the TMS exposes rates through an API we read them there; if not, a file export works until it does.
Who decides on a detention or demurrage claim?
A person, with the evidence assembled. The agent gathers the free-time window, the gate timestamps and the contract clause, and it can accept claims below a value you set. Above that value it routes the claim to your operations lead with everything attached. We would not automate the decision on a disputed claim, and we say so.
We run an in-house TMS. Does that rule out integration?
No. An in-house system usually means API or file integration built to its shape, which is one of the four methods we scope. What it changes is the timeline, since there is no ready connector, and we would rather tell you that during assessment than discover it during delivery.
Keep reading
Related industries and solutions
Supply Chain
The purchase side of the same movement: order, receipt, invoice.
Read more →Manufacturing
Where the goods on the truck come from, and the match that follows.
Read more →Accounts Payable Automation
The payables cycle a rated freight bill enters.
Read more →Document Workflow Automation
Routing any document by rule, not only invoices.
Read more →Next step
Start with the freight bills
A month of carrier invoices and the rate card they should match. That is enough to show what the audit would have caught.