A shipment is a chain of commitments, hand-offs, documents and charges rather than a pin on a map. We build operational systems that preserve the relationship between customer order, handling units, legs, events, proof and financial settlement.
One consignment may travel through collection, cross-dock, line-haul, port, customs and final delivery using several carriers and currencies. Planned, accrued and actual cost must be allocated without losing which leg or handling unit caused it.
A signature image alone may not prove the right goods reached the right location under the agreed conditions. Time, geolocation, recipient, item exceptions, photographs and device synchronisation need a defensible chain linked to the delivery stop.
Missed slots, rolled sailings, failed deliveries, split loads and damaged freight invalidate the original plan. Systems must re-plan remaining work while retaining the original promise, event history and responsibility for additional charges.
Orders become pallets, parcels or containers, are consolidated, deconsolidated and sometimes relabelled. Visibility fails when tracking only the shipment header rather than maintaining parent-child handling-unit relationships at each hand-off.
Invoices include fuel, waiting, accessorial, dimensional and out-of-area charges that may arrive after delivery. Automated matching needs contract versions, measured quantities and documented exceptions, not a comparison with one quoted total.
Generic ERP usually records a despatch and perhaps a tracking number. It rarely represents consolidation, leg-level capacity, equipment compatibility, time windows, trans-shipment or the commercial consequences of an exception. Teams then plan in spreadsheets and enter only the final totals, losing operational explanation.
We model consignments, handling units, stops, legs, resources and events as related but independent records. Plans can change without erasing execution history. Cost ledgers separate quotation, expected carrier cost, accrual, invoice and customer charge so margin is explainable at shipment and leg level.
Carriers and customers may offer modern APIs, EDI messages, portal downloads, spreadsheets or only scanned documents. Telematics devices generate frequent positions while ports and customs brokers publish sparse milestone events. The integration design normalises these signals without presenting inferred data as confirmed fact.
Each event retains source, source time, receipt time and confidence or confirmation status. Idempotent ingestion handles repeat messages; sequence rules tolerate late arrival. Document capture links labels, manifests, customs references and proof to the operational record, while partner-specific mapping remains versioned and testable.
Initial discovery follows representative shipments from booking to settlement, including failures and manual workarounds. A pilot is bounded by service type, depot or trade lane so planners, warehouse teams, drivers and finance can validate the full lifecycle. Open consignments are migrated only with sufficient event and cost context.
Expansion adds partner connections, optimisation and customer self-service after core transaction quality is stable. Cutover includes device provisioning, label continuity, offline delivery capture and fallback dispatch procedures. Daily controls reconcile loaded units, undelivered stops, missing proof, uninvoiced shipments and unmatched carrier charges.
It records expected and actual revenue and cost against each leg, service and accessorial charge, then allocates shared amounts by an agreed basis. Late carrier invoices update the financial view without rewriting the operational plan.
Yes, an authorised device can capture stop, recipient, timestamp, signature, photographs and exceptions while offline. Synchronisation protects against duplicate submissions and flags conflicts or incomplete evidence for review.
Yes, through APIs, EDI, files or controlled imports according to carrier capability. Each connector maps status, identifiers, documents and charge codes into a common model while retaining the original source reference.
Shipment tracking follows the commercial movement, while handling-unit tracking follows individual parcels, pallets or containers through consolidation and splits. Both are needed when only part of a shipment is delayed, damaged or delivered.
Invoice lines are matched against contract rates, executed services, measured quantities and approved exceptions. Differences outside configured tolerances are routed to review with the relevant shipment evidence.
Share the workflows, records, exceptions and integration boundaries the system needs to support. We will help define the technical scope.