Guide
Bill of Lading automation: how to stop rekeying BOLs
A Bill of Lading is the document everything else hangs off: it proves the shipment, names the parties and sets the terms. It is also the document most often retyped by hand, three or four times, into three or four systems.
What a BOL has to tell you
Before automating anything, agree on the fields your operation depends on. Most teams need the same core set, and anything beyond it is nice to have.
- Identifiers: BOL number and PRO number
- Parties: shipper, consignee, carrier and any third party billing
- Lane and timing: origin, destination, ship date and delivery date
- Freight detail: weight, piece or pallet count, commodity description, NMFC or class if present
- Equipment: container numbers, trailer number and seal numbers
- Terms: prepaid or collect, special instructions, hazmat flags
Why manual BOL entry keeps failing
The problem is rarely effort. It is that BOLs arrive as faxed scans, phone photos and dense PDFs, in a different layout from every shipper, usually at the end of the day when someone is rushing.
- Transposed digits in BOL and PRO numbers break invoice matching later
- Weight and piece counts entered from the wrong block cause billing disputes
- Seal and container numbers get skipped, then matter during a claim
- The same document is typed into the TMS, the accounting system and a spreadsheet
What good automation looks like
Template-based OCR breaks the moment a shipper changes its form. A model that reads the document the way a person does handles new layouts without setup, but it still needs a human checkpoint.
- Classify the document first, so a POD never gets treated as a BOL
- Extract into a fixed, named field set rather than loose text
- Score confidence so uncertain documents get looked at, not trusted blindly
- Keep the original page beside the extracted fields for a two-second check
- Record who edited and approved what, and when
A workable rollout
Start narrow. Take one week of BOLs from your busiest lane, run them through, and compare the extracted fields against what your team keyed. You will know within a day whether the output is trustworthy and where the edge cases are.
- Week one: run a real batch and review every document
- Week two: spot-check only the low-confidence ones
- Week three: define the export layout your TMS import expects and save it as a template
How LogiDeck handles it
Upload a batch of BOLs, and each one is classified, extracted and queued for review with a confidence score. Fields sit in an editable table next to the original file, edits and approvals are logged, and approved shipments export as CSV in a layout you define, or as JSON.
Common questions
- What is Bill of Lading automation?
- Bill of Lading automation means software reads each BOL — PDF, scan or photo — and extracts fields like the BOL and PRO numbers, shipper, consignee, lane, dates, weight and pieces, so staff stop retyping them into a TMS or spreadsheet.
- Which fields should be extracted from a BOL?
- The core set is the BOL and PRO numbers, shipper, consignee and carrier, origin and destination, ship and delivery dates, weight, piece count, commodity description, container and seal numbers, and payment terms.
- How do you automate BOL data entry?
- Upload a batch of BOLs to a tool like LogiDeck, let it classify and extract each one, review the fields beside the original document, approve, and export the results as CSV or JSON for your TMS.
- Does BOL automation still need a human check?
- Yes. Good automation scores every extraction with a confidence value and keeps the original page beside the extracted fields, so a reviewer approves or corrects before data reaches other systems.
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