Capturing data from bills of lading, packing slips and freight invoices

One shipment, one packet

Freight paperwork rarely arrives one document at a time. A single shipment produces a packet: the shipper's packing slip, the bill of lading (BOL), sometimes a scale ticket or pallet labels, the signed delivery receipt (proof of delivery, or POD) and, later, the carrier's freight invoice. Whoever scans at the dock or in the office usually drops the whole packet in the feeder at once.

That is good news for data capture. Every document in the packet shares a few identifiers, so once you capture them consistently you can link the order, the shipment, the delivery and the bill together. It is also the reason freight capture goes wrong: if the splitting or the identifiers are off, the whole packet is misfiled.

Here is one real-looking packet, taken from the fictional freight sample documents that ship with CapturePoint 6. We use it as the worked example throughout this guide.

Notice the PRO number. The packing slip and the BOL's barcode carry 4650769992, while the BOL prints it as 465-0769992. Same number, two presentations. Decide on one stored format (digits only is the safest) or your matching will miss.

The fields worth capturing

Capture what someone will search by or check against, not everything printed. A short, reliable field list beats a long one that needs constant correction. These are the fields most operations end up using.

Bill of lading

• BOL number and PRO number: the two keys. The BOL number links to your order; the PRO links to the carrier's paperwork.
• Ship date, shipper, consignee, carrier name and SCAC (the carrier's four-letter code).
• Customer PO or shipper reference, when printed.
• Freight charge terms: prepaid, collect or third party. This decides who should receive the freight bill.
• Handling units, total weight and, for LTL, the freight class per line. These are what the carrier will bill on.
• Hazmat yes or no, and trailer and seal numbers if your customers or auditors ask for them.

Packing slip

• Packing slip number, order number, customer PO, ship date, ship-to.
• Line items: item number, description, quantity ordered, quantity shipped and quantity backordered. In the sample packet, line 1 shows 51 ordered, 50 shipped and 1 backordered; that one unit is the thing customer service will be asked about.

Delivery receipt (proof of delivery)

• PRO number, delivery date, consignee, pieces delivered, who signed.
• Exceptions: short, damaged or refused pieces. Capture at least a yes or no for "exception noted" so these never slip through to payment unnoticed.

Freight invoice

• Invoice or freight bill number, PRO number, BOL reference, bill-to party, invoice date and due date.
• Charges: linehaul, fuel surcharge and each accessorial (liftgate, residential or inside delivery, detention, redelivery and so on), plus the total. Capture them as line items so the math can be checked.

Why freight paper is messy

Freight documents are some of the hardest paper an office scans. Knowing why helps you set realistic rules.

• Multi-part forms. A BOL, packing slip or POD is often a two to four part form, so one document arrives as several nearly identical pages (shipper copy, consignee copy, file copy). Each copy carries the same barcodes.
• Many layouts. Every carrier and shipper has its own BOL and invoice layout, and the same customer may use both a straight short-form BOL and a VICS BOL. A fixed template per layout is a lot of upkeep.
• Rough scans. PODs are signed on a clipboard at a dock and often come back faxed or photocopied, with stamps, signatures and skew.
• Pallet labels. A placard sheet has a different pallet barcode on every page but the same PRO number, which confuses simple splitting rules.
• Handwriting. Exception notes and piece counts are often written by hand. Route those to a person.

Splitting a scanned stack into documents

Before any field is read, a long scan has to be cut into documents. Get this wrong and every field after it is attached to the wrong record. There are four common ways to decide where a document starts:

CapturePoint 6 offers exactly these four choices under Document starts: automatically, at matching barcodes, automatic plus matching barcodes, or only at separator sheets. It reads barcodes as it reads each page, and you can also use a barcode as the source of a field such as the PRO or order number.

Matching paperwork to orders

Capture only pays off when the paper is tied back to something: the sales order, the purchase order or the carrier bill you are about to pay. Decide your keys first.

• Packing slip and BOL to the order: order number or customer PO.
• BOL to POD and freight invoice: PRO number, with the BOL number as a backup.
• Freight invoice to your rate: the BOL (weight, class, terms) and the agreed rate or rate confirmation.

Checks that catch real money

1. Who pays. If the BOL says collect or third party, a freight bill addressed to you deserves a second look.
2. Billed versus shipped. Compare the invoice's weight and pieces with the BOL, and pieces delivered on the POD with pieces billed.
3. Accessorials. Liftgate, detention or redelivery that are not on the BOL or the rate confirmation need approval.
4. Duplicates. The same PRO billed on two invoices, or a batch invoice that repeats a PRO you already paid.
5. Math. Line charges should add up to the total, and the fuel surcharge should match the agreed percentage.

In CapturePoint 6 you can check captured values against your own lists. Export open orders or your carrier list as a CSV, add it as a lookup list, and a field such as the customer PO is looked up in it; a match can fill other fields from the same row, and when a value fits more than one row equally well, the document waits for a person instead of guessing. Line-item math is checked too, and a line that does not add up is flagged in review.

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Filing so anyone can find a shipment

Most freight lookups start with one number: a customer calls with a PO, a carrier calls with a PRO, or AP asks about an invoice. Build names and folders around those numbers, and keep the whole packet together.

• Pick one primary key per folder level and stick to it; mixing PO and PRO folders is how packets get split up.
• Put a date in the name in year-month-day order so files sort correctly.
• Decide what happens when a value is missing (for example, a POD with no PRO goes to a "No PRO" folder for review).
• Save searchable PDFs so a number buried on page three can still be found by search.

CapturePoint 6 builds folder and file names from any captured field, previews the folder tree on your real documents, and never overwrites: a second file with the same name gets "-2". Each document can arrive as a searchable PDF (optionally PDF/A), a data file with every captured value and a text file, in a folder on your network or in Ademero Content Central. A job can also send each finished PDF, with its values embedded, to SharePoint or OneDrive (Microsoft 365 work or school accounts), Google Drive, Dropbox or Nucleus One.

Setup checklist

Where software fits, and where it does not

Capture software reads, splits, checks and files. It does not replace your TMS, audit carrier rates against your contracts on its own, or decide a freight claim. Use it to get clean, searchable records and the numbers your other systems need.

• Paper at the dock or in the office, scanned on a Windows PC: CapturePoint 6. It reads and extracts on the PC itself, comes with a ready-made Freight sample job (bills of lading, packing slips and freight invoices) and notices new document types in your paper and suggests them. Help articles are at help.ademero.com/capturepoint.
• Carrier invoices and PODs that arrive as PDFs and should feed another system: Paige, Ademero's cloud service. Send documents in and get clean data back by download, SFTP or webhook. See help.ademero.com/paige.
• A long-term, searchable shipment archive with permissions and retention: Content Central.

Comparing approaches for PDFs in general? Read how to extract data from PDFs.