A tray of crumpled delivery notes
Drivers bring the paperwork in when they are back at the yard, which might be Friday for a driver on nights out. Some of it is in the door pocket, some has coffee on it, and one CMR is missing a page. The office sorts it, finds the load for each one, and marks it as delivered in the transport system. Only then can the invoice go out.
Some customers will not pay without a POD attached, so even the loads that were invoiced early come back with a query.
The paper is the bottleneck, not the office
The office is not slow. The paperwork has to travel physically before the process can start, and once it arrives it has to be matched by a person because nothing links the piece of paper to the job except a reference someone has to read.
- Signed paperwork stays with the driver until the truck returns.
- Customers' delivery notes all look different, with their references, not yours.
- Missing signatures or clausing are only found in the office, days later.
- Invoices wait until every POD for a customer's batch has arrived.
- Scanned PODs are filed separately and have to be found again when a customer asks.
What waiting costs
Every day between delivery and invoice is a day added to when you get paid. For a haulage firm paying fuel and wages weekly, that gap matters. Lost or damaged PODs lead to disputed invoices. Clausing, where the consignee noted a shortage or damage, is discovered long after the moment when it could have been dealt with. And office staff spend a large part of the week sorting paper.
How we get PODs back on the day
- Drivers use a simple phone app, or a feature in the driver app you already have, to capture the signed paperwork at the delivery point. The app is set up around the load the driver is on, so the photo is attached to the right job without typing.
- Where the customer signs on the screen instead, the signature, name and time are recorded with the delivery location.
- An extraction step reads the delivery note for references, signature presence and any handwritten notes, and flags clausing, missing signatures or unreadable images for the office.
- Once a load has a clean POD, it is marked delivered and its invoice is released for approval in your transport or accounts system.
- The POD image is attached to the invoice, or uploaded to the customer's portal where they require that.
- The paper copies still come back for your records, but nothing waits for them.
| Stage | Paper process | Electronic capture |
|---|---|---|
| POD reaches the office | When the truck returns | At the moment of delivery |
| Matched to the job | By hand, by reading the note | Attached to the load in the app |
| Problems spotted | Days later | Flagged the same day |
| Invoice released | After sorting | Once the POD is clean |
What changes in the office
Invoices can go out once the POD is in, rather than when the paper finally reaches the office. Clausing and missing signatures are dealt with while the driver can still remember what happened and the customer can still check. The office stops sorting paper and starts dealing with exceptions. When a customer asks for a POD six weeks later, it is attached to the invoice already.
Does your office do any of this?
- PODs come back in batches when drivers return.
- Invoices wait for paperwork.
- Customers query invoices because the POD was not attached.
- Clausing is found days after delivery.
- Someone spends hours a week sorting and scanning delivery notes.