Bill of lading reconciliation, every lift matched to the tickets, the supplier's invoice and the freight bill.

For each load your office gathers the terminal's bill of lading, with gross and net gallons by product; the supplier's invoice for those gallons; the carrier's freight bill; and the delivery tickets from every stop. Then someone confirms that product, terminal, date and gallons line up, that the supplier billed the right lift, that the carrier billed the right load, and that every gallon lifted turns up on a ticket or in your own storage.

In the test, AI does that matching on copies of closed loads and drafts one reconciliation per load: the bill of lading lines, the invoice lines they belong to, the freight charge, the tickets, and each difference written out with the document it came from. Nothing is approved, paid or posted, and your reviewer marks every draft against the one your team closed.

Every lift has two gallon counts. The IRS instructions for Form 720-TO define gross gallons as product measured without temperature or barometric adjustment, and net gallons as product corrected to 60°F and 14.7 pounds per square inch. On each disbursement the terminal operator reports net gallons, gross gallons for most products, the holder of the inventory, the carrier and its EIN, the date, the terminal control number the IRS assigned to that location, the destination state on truck and rail loads, and the number on the document handed to the carrier. On a truck lift that document is normally the bill of lading, so those are the fields worth reading first.

One state's rule shows how far basis can go. Utah's Tax Commission has licensed distributors pick gross or net on form TC-69, puts them on gross if they don't, and lets them change only on January 1 using form TC-106. Its rule defines a gross gallon as the U.S. gallon of 231 cubic inches and a net gallon as that metered gallon corrected to 60°F, wants purchases, sales and deductions on one basis, and has net filers show both amounts on every invoice, bill of lading and return, converted under the ASTM-API-IP Petroleum Measurement Tables. Compare a net bill of lading to a gross invoice line and you find a difference that isn't one, so each comparison in the draft names the basis on both sides.

The truck's meter keeps its own count. NIST Handbook 44, in the 2026 section on vehicle-tank meters, allows a meter to adjust volume to 60°F where state law doesn't prohibit it. Such a meter has to be able to indicate gross and net for testing, though not at the same moment, and once its compensator is active it stays in use unless the weights and measures office approves otherwise in writing. A ticket goes into the printer only immediately before a delivery begins, and never rides in the device while the truck is moving on a public road. A ticket can therefore carry compensated or uncompensated gallons, and uncompensated gallons on fuel that warmed or cooled after the rack will differ from the bill of lading for that reason alone. The draft says which kind each ticket shows before it compares anything.

The product on the paper has to match too. EPA's fuel rules have the seller hand over a product transfer document with both parties' names and addresses, the volume, the location and the date, and codes can stand in for that information except on paper going to a truck carrier, a retailer or a wholesale purchaser-consumer. Diesel paper states its sulfur standard, such as 15 ppm for ULSD, and fuel above that carries a statement barring highway, nonroad, locomotive and marine use. Summer gasoline names its vapor pressure standard, 9.0 psi or 7.8 psi or reformulated, and ethanol blends say E0, E10 or E15. Dyed loads add the IRS notice, DYED DIESEL FUEL, NONTAXABLE USE ONLY, PENALTY FOR TAXABLE USE, on all shipping papers. The draft checks that the grade lifted is the grade billed and delivered, and lists any mismatch.

The name on the bill of lading isn't always your supplier's. Under IRS Publication 510, in a two-party exchange between registered parties, made under a written contract before or as the fuel crosses the rack, the terminal records the receiving party as the one removing the product and that party owes the tax. A load can be lifted out of one company's inventory and invoiced by another. Split loads tangle things further: several products in separate compartments, a pickup at two terminals, one compartment dropped across two customers. One bill of lading can feed several tickets, and one ticket can draw on two bills of lading. Your reviewer, usually whoever closes out loads, will watch that each lift met the invoice line that billed it, that gallons were compared on one basis, that freight landed on the right load once, and that every leftover gallon is explained or held. Nothing here is tax or legal advice.

With your reviewer's yes against the success criteria, new loads get the same reconciliation for roughly 30 days.

Each draft waits for the person who closes out loads, and supplier and carrier invoices are approved and paid the way they are now.

Comparison keeps going on live loads. Anything further is your decision, priced on its own.