Autopilot technology
for your freight
Digitize your paper trail
Autonomous logistics document management
Transformational for over 120 Amazon Fulfillment 3PLs, freight audit, supply chain finance, factoring, freight forwarders, and logistics pioneers
Digitize, receive, sort, group, and organize shipping data from containers to LTL to parcels automatically
Accelerate your shipments, receiving, inventory inspections, and cycle times up to 31%
Blind arrivals and exceptions are no sweat
Read shipping labels even from Amazon or if the barcode is not scannable
One Master Directory
to rule them all
Vendor, shipper, carrier, and business master directory to look up and validate over 20M businesses, names, addresses
Supporting shipping partners, standards, and documents around the world, including for over 120 Amazon 3PLs:
Capture and organize all of your shipping documents
No matter the origin, format, country, or language
Supporting the shipping industry leaders and carriers and shippers around the globe:
Capture, validate, match, and reconcile bills of lading, invoices, POs
Instantly
Import paper and PDF packing slips straight into into your inventory and accounting system
Get SKUs, quantities, prices, units of measure, and match them with your POs, invoices, and contracts in a second
Integrate with Email, QuickBooks, Shopify, Bill.com, SAP, and WMS
Key fields extracted and validated:
Shipper
Addresses
Consignee
Dates
Waybill number
Transport Details
Line items
UN or ID numbers
Shipping names
Class
Packing Group
Quantities
Packaging
Packing instructions
Names
Signatures
Types of documents supported:
Air, maritime, land, rail, and freight
Bills of Lading (BOLs)
Proof of Deliveries (PODs)
Rate confirmations
Invoices
Lumpers
Packing lists
Receipts
Customs forms
Waybills
Manifests
Customs forms
Insurance forms
Bill of Materials (BOMs)
Match shipments across multiple different documents, down to line items
Lookups and reconciliation:
Addresses
Buildings
Dates
Scan geolocation
GPS coordinates
Date and time stamps
SKUs
Quantities
Units of Measure
Merchants, vendors IDs
Shippers
Insurance
Shipping names
Item Descriptions
Prices
Know what is in a package even without opening it
Move your shipments at the speed of light
Go beyond tracking numbers to get comprehensive data from shipping labels,
including package and item descriptions
Optimized for freight forwarders, 3PLs, and warehouses that receive high volumes of packages, orders, or returns
Bill of Lading Digitization
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A “bill of lading” is a document that provides information about shipped cargo and serves as a contract between the sender and receiver of the goods. It was originally used in maritime shipping but now covers all forms of transportation, including sea, rail, road, and air.
The bill of lading:
Proves that goods were shipped from one location to another,
Confirms that they have been received by the carrier, and
Proves delivery to their final destination, including any mentions of damage or loss.
A carrier, such as a trucking company, railway, or airline, issues the bill of lading to confirm the receipt of goods into its custody. The bill of lading includes details about the number of packages, their contents and weight, as well as information about the consignee, carrier, and shipper. It is a crucial element of international trade and serves as a legal contract between the shipper and the carrier for transportation services. The shipper agrees to pay for transportation costs and assume risks, including the potential loss or damage of goods in transit.
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A bill of lading (BOL) is a critical document for the transportation of goods and materials across the globe, whether purchased online or in person.
The shipping process often involves multiple intermediaries, such as transport from a manufacturing facility to a port, transport by boat to another country, unloading from the boat and loading onto a train, and finally transferring from the train to a truck for delivery to the final destination. During this journey, the cargo may be lost, damaged, or stolen.
The global shipping industry is massive, with the marine shipping marketing alone worth approximately $8 billion per year and a worldwide commercial shipping fleet numbering nearly 100,000.
To efficiently track all of these shipments, companies must adopt accurate and rapid automated processes instead of slow and error-prone manual ones. Automated bill of lading data extraction is a key part of modern shipping and can save companies significant costs by reducing mistakes and lost goods.
Photon’s automated document processing technology uses AI-powered optical character recognition (OCR) to transform messy unstructured documents, like bills of lading, into structured data that can be imported into databases. This automation helps eliminate costly processing bottlenecks, maximizes processing efficiency, and ensures reliable results.
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The following are the common data fields in bills of lading:
Name and address of the shipper
Name and address of the recipient
Name and address of the carrier
Name and address of the payer
Origination
Vessels transporting the goods
Route
Destination
Purchase order numbers
Pickup date
Description of merchandise
Description of contents
Special markings
Quantity
Dimensions
Weight
Description of primary packaging
Cartons, Crates, Drums, Rolls, Pallets, Containers, Freight class
Hazardous material designation
Special handing instructions
After extraction and transformation into structured data, each item can be used as an expense categorization.
Get up and running in one day via email, API, web app, or mobile app
Languages supported: Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish
Achieve global visibility across all of your shipping and logistics teams.
Get real-time notifications, Advance Shipping Notices to your email, phone, app, SMS, Microsoft Teams, Slack, or shipping portal.
Track and trace shipments from ships to containers, freight to parcels to SKUs
Digitize IATA Dangerous Goods Declaration forms
Manually processing paper and PDF IATA Dangerous Goods Declaration forms, Bills of Lading, packing lists, and other shipping documents is tedious and error-prone.
Speed up your shipments by 31%. Using AI, automate the extraction, validation, and reconciliation of data from these forms.
Catch wrong declarations, errors, and mistakes instantly in real-time before it is too late. Prevent errors from becoming costs.
FAQ
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Capacity constraints: One of the biggest challenges for logistics companies and freight brokerages is finding available capacity. This can be especially difficult during peak shipping seasons or when there are unexpected increases in demand.
Competition: Freight brokerages face intense competition from other companies offering similar services. This can make it difficult to win new business and maintain existing relationships with carriers and shippers.
Margin pressure: Freight brokerages often operate on thin margins, which can be further squeezed by increasing competition, rising fuel prices, and other operating costs.
Technology: Keeping up with advances in technology is important for freight brokerages to remain competitive. This can include investing in new software and systems to improve efficiency and streamline operations.
Talent retention: Retaining top talent can be a challenge for freight brokerages, as the industry is often faced with high turnover rates. Finding and retaining skilled employees is critical to the success of these companies.
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Legal requirements: Many jurisdictions and countries have strict regulations governing the transportation of goods, which requires companies to maintain detailed records and documents for each shipment. This includes customs documents, bills of lading, and other documents required for customs clearance and tax purposes.
Record-keeping: Maintaining accurate records is critical for logistics and shipping companies, as it helps them track shipments, manage inventory, and ensure that goods are delivered to the correct destination on time. This requires the creation and maintenance of various documents, such as invoices, delivery receipts, and shipping manifests.
Communication: Paperwork is often used as a means of communication between different parties involved in the transportation of goods, such as the shipper, carrier, and recipient. For example, a bill of lading serves as a contract between the shipper and carrier, outlining the terms and conditions of the shipment.
Data management: In today's digital age, many logistics and shipping companies are still reliant on paper documents as a means of managing and storing data. While electronic records are becoming more common, they may not be accepted by all parties involved in the transportation process, which can lead to the need for physical copies of documents.
Overall, the logistics, freight, and shipping industry is complex and requires the coordination of many different parties and processes, which can lead to a significant amount of paperwork being generated.
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Coercing a fragmented industry, especially thousands of small businesses, to change behavior and adhere to data standards proves futile.
Artificial Intelligence is hence a solution to be able to read, understand, organize, and capture data of messy and diverse formats into a common standard that senders, receivers, and all parties can communication and collaborate around.
Photon Commerce’s solutions are like Google Translate for any business document, to streamline communication and collaboration for businesses around the world.