House bills of lading drafted from the shipper's instructions, for your documentation desk to issue.

Today the booking is confirmed, the box is packed, and the shipper sends its instructions: an email, its own form, sometimes last month's bill with changes written over it. A documentation clerk keys the house bill from them, compares them with the commercial invoice and packing list, chases the container and seal numbers, sends the shipper a draft to approve, and only then issues the bill and passes the master bill details to the carrier.

In the proof of concept, AI does the keying and the comparing. It fills every box of your own house bill form from the instructions and the booking, then lists each place where the instructions, the invoice and the packing list disagree: a carton count, a weight, a consignee address, a mark. Every box points to the line it came from. Nothing is issued, signed, released or sent to a shipper or a carrier.

The shipper's words, carried as given. Under the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act, the bill shows the leading marks the shipper furnished in writing before loading started, the number of packages or pieces, or the quantity or weight, as the shipper furnished them, and the apparent order and condition of the goods. The shipper is deemed to have guaranteed those marks, numbers, quantities and weights and must indemnify the carrier for errors in them, while the carrier need not show a figure it has reasonable ground to doubt or no reasonable means to check. So the draft copies marks, counts and weights exactly as the instructions give them, and when the invoice or packing list says something else, both figures go to your clerk instead of one being picked.

What CBP will not accept on cargo bound for the United States. The cargo declaration rules in 19 CFR 4.7a reach every bill, whoever issues it. The number is unique, up to 16 characters with the issuer's SCAC as the first four, and never reused for three years. The quantity is the lowest external packaging unit, so 10 pallets holding 200 cartons are declared as 200 cartons, never as one container or 10 pallets, and FAK, general cargo or STC will not pass as a description. On each house bill the shipper is the foreign vendor, supplier or manufacturer rather than the NVOCC or forwarder, and the consignee is whoever takes delivery here; on a bill to the order of a named party, that party is reported as consignee and anyone else to contact goes in the Notify Party field. Every container number and every seal number is listed. Under 19 CFR 4.7, an NVOCC with an FMC license or registration and an international carrier bond may send its own house bill data to CBP's Automated Manifest System; otherwise it gives the full data to the vessel carrier to send.

Your tariff, your co-loads and your rate agreements. The FMC treats a shipment as all the cargo under a single bill, and 46 CFR 520.4 has an NVOCC's published tariff include a sample of each bill of lading it uses, terms and conditions legible. When your cargo is co-loaded with another NVOCC, 46 CFR 520.11 has the tendering NVOCC name the receiving one on the face of each bill affected, and a receiving NVOCC that issues its own bill to the tendering one is presumed to treat it as a shipper. Under 46 CFR 532.5, a negotiated rate arrangement must be agreed before the cargo is received, and an amendment reaches only shipments not yet received. The draft names the bill form, the co-load note and the rate agreement it relied on, and flags an amendment dated after the cargo came in.

Order bills, hazardous cargo and wood packing. Federal bill of lading law covers bills a common carrier issues for carriage from a state to a foreign country: a bill to the order of a consignee is negotiable, naming a party to notify does not change that, and a straight bill must say nonnegotiable or not negotiable. A bill carrying a hazardous material description is a shipping paper under 49 CFR 171.8, and 49 CFR 172.202 fixes the basic description in order with nothing between, as in the rule's own example, UN2744, Cyclobutyl chloroformate, 6.1, (8, 3), PG II, plus the number and type of packages, such as 12 drums. On a paper shared with other freight those entries go first, in a contrasting color or behind an X in a column headed HM, and a move partly by vessel may follow the IMDG Code instead under 49 CFR 171.25, so the draft names the rule it used. Imported wood packaging needs the 7 CFR 319.40-3 mark, meaning the IPPC symbol, the producing country's ISO code, a producer number and HT or MB for the treatment, and an inspector at the first port can order unmarked wood reexported at once, so crates, skids or pallets on the packing list become a question in the draft.

Containers, weights, and what your reviewer watches. A container number is three letters for the owner, a U for a freight container, six digits and a check digit that exists to catch numbers mistyped or misread, so the draft tests the check digit on every number before it lands on the bill. Since July 1, 2016, SOLAS regulation VI/2 has made the shipper named on the bill of lading or sea waybill responsible for the verified gross mass of the packed container, weighed whole or built from every package plus the container's tare, so the draft keeps the cargo weight from the packing list apart from any figure that includes the box. Your reviewer, the person who knows your house bills best, usually the documentation supervisor, looks hardest at a shipper or consignee copied from the booking party instead of the instructions, a count that mixes pallets with cartons, a description too vague to manifest, a seal number that belongs to another container, and freight terms that don't match the booking.

If your reviewer says yes, new bookings run through the same job for about 30 days, with a draft house bill ready as soon as the shipper's instructions arrive.

Every draft waits for your documentation desk, which corrects it, sends any draft to the shipper for approval, and issues and releases the bill from your own system. The AI never issues, signs or releases a bill of lading, never transmits manifest, ISF or EEI data, and never contacts a shipper, a consignee, a carrier or CBP.

Drafts in the live month are graded against the success criteria your owner signed before the test.