Freight billing from rate confirmations, BOLs and PODs.

The truck delivers and the POD comes back: an email from the driver, a scan from the carrier, a photo through a tracking app. Today someone on your billing desk finds the load, opens the rate confirmation, checks the POD against the BOL, works out which extra charges are owed and which have proof, and builds the invoice.

In the proof of concept, AI does that same read on copies of loads your team already closed. It drafts the billing for each one and lists anything it would hold back, with the reason. Nothing posts and nothing is sent. Your reviewer compares each draft, load by load, with the invoice that actually went out.

Finding the load. One load can carry five numbers: your load number, the shipper's BOL number, the carrier's PRO, one or more customer PO numbers, and a pickup or delivery appointment number. The POD often shows only the shipper's number or the carrier's, so the draft has to find the load from whichever one is legible and say which number it matched on. Two loads that share a PO number are a common way a packet lands on the wrong record. Some shippers pay through a portal that can reject an invoice that doesn't match their records, so the draft carries the references each customer asks for.

Reading the POD. The POD decides whether the load bills at all. The reviewer looks for the consignee's signature and printed name, the delivery date, and anything written beside them: a short count, "2 cases crushed", a refused pallet, a seal number that doesn't match the BOL. A clean signature bills. A notation goes to whoever handles OS&D before the shipper sees an invoice. A multi-stop load needs a signed POD for every stop, and a missing second page is a common reason a packet sits.

Accessorials and their proof. This is where money gets left behind or argued over. Detention needs an in time and an out time, from the BOL, the POD, the driver's log or tracking, plus the free time the rate confirmation allowed. A lumper charge needs the lumper receipt from the dock, showing the facility, date and amount. Layover needs the reason the truck sat overnight and who approved it. A TONU, truck ordered not used, needs the cancellation in writing. The draft lists each charge with its proof beside it, or holds it as unsupported.

The rate confirmation that governs. A load can carry more than one rate confirmation after a stop is added or a rate is renegotiated, and billing follows the last signed version. On a brokered load the packet answers two questions at once, and an accessorial the carrier earned doesn't always pass through to the shipper; that depends on the customer's terms. So the draft keeps carrier cost and customer charge on separate lines. On a load you hauled yourself, the invoice should mirror the broker's rate confirmation line for line.

What your reviewer watches. Your reviewer is the person who knows your billing best, usually the billing lead or AR manager. They look hardest at the calls a template gets wrong: a charge billed without backup, a load billed on an outdated rate confirmation, a POD read as clean when the receiver wrote a shortage in the margin, and a packet matched to the wrong load.

Once your reviewer says yes, billing runs on newly delivered loads for about 30 days.

Each draft waits for a person on your billing desk to approve it before an invoice goes to a shipper or anything posts in your TMS. Held loads stay held until someone clears them. The reviewer keeps the same comparison, so the live run is judged the way the test was.

Nothing else is added in those 30 days. The next job is priced on its own.