A long statement and a short amount of patience
The member statement lands as a PDF or a spreadsheet. Outbound consignments with a hub charge, a trunking charge and any surcharge. Inbound consignments you delivered, each with the delivery payment due to you. Then a block of adjustments: re-weighs, service failures, claims, fees.
Somebody, usually the depot manager or the person who does the accounts, sits with it and your own consignment list and ticks lines off. It takes days. Most lines are fine. The ones that are not are buried among the ones that are, and some periods the checking simply does not get finished before the next statement arrives.
Why it is so slow to check
The statement is organised the network's way. Your records are organised your way. Nothing lines them up except a person.
- Consignment references are formatted differently in the two sets of data.
- A single consignment can appear on several lines: base charge, surcharge, adjustment.
- Inbound delivery payments depend on size band and service, which you have to look up.
- Adjustments often refer to consignments from earlier periods.
None of this needs judgement for most lines. It needs judgement for a few, and a machine is better at finding those few.
What an unchecked statement costs
Charges you do not agree with, and delivery payments you did not receive, can pass without challenge simply because nobody got to that line. Networks usually have a window for querying items, and once it passes the question is closed.
The time cost is plain too. The person checking is usually the person who should be running the depot, and statement week is when customer queries and staff rotas get less attention than they need.
There is a knowledge cost as well. When only one person understands how the statement is laid out and how to check it, their holiday becomes the period nobody looks at, and the next statement arrives on top of the unchecked one.
How the statement matcher works
- We read the statement in whatever format the network issues, including spreadsheet exports and, where needed, PDFs.
- Each line is normalised: consignment reference, charge type, size band, service and amount.
- Lines are matched to your own consignment records, whether those sit in your transport system, the network portal export or a spreadsheet.
- For each match we check the size band and service against what you booked, and the amount against the tariff table you give us.
- Unmatched lines, mismatches and adjustments go into a review list with the reason stated, for example 'billed as full, booked as half'.
- You mark each one as accepted or queried, add a note, and export the queries in the format the network asks for.
| Result | Meaning | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| Matched and agrees | Booking and charge line up | Nothing |
| Matched, amount differs | Band, service or rate differs | Review |
| On statement, not in your records | Unknown consignment | Investigate |
| In your records, not on statement | Charge or payment missing | Check next period or query |
What to accept and what to query is your decision. The matcher narrows hundreds of lines to the ones worth looking at.
A shorter statement day
Checking becomes a review of a short list, with the evidence beside each line. Queries go to the network with the booking details attached. Missing delivery payments are spotted in the period they belong to.
Over time you can see which types of adjustment recur, which is useful when you talk to the network or to your own customers about how they declare pallets.
Does this describe your period end?
- Checking the member statement takes days.
- Some statements are never fully checked.
- You suspect some inbound delivery payments are missing.
- Adjustments arrive that you cannot trace.
- Query deadlines pass before you get to them.