Logistics Invoice Automation: From Four Days to One

The company runs freight, customs-brokerage and warehousing operations for retail and industrial clients through Sohar port, the free zone and warehouses in Muscat. As volumes grew, logistics invoice automation stopped being a nice-to-have.

The accounts team received around 2,500 invoices a month from shipping lines, hauliers and port operators, as PDFs and scans, some in Arabic and some in English. Staff keyed each one into the ERP by hand, then matched it to the shipment file.

Meanwhile, the clearance team copied commercial invoice and packing list data into the customs portal manually. The result:

• An average of four working days between closing a shipment and invoicing the client.
• Storage and handling charges left off invoices because they sat in a different system.
• Frequent amendments to customs declarations caused by small keying errors.
• Predictable overtime at every month-end close.

The problem was not headcount. It was a complicated procedure and duplicated data across three systems that did not talk to each other.

We applied our Discover → Simplify → Automate → Evolve method, starting with simplification before any automation.

Discover and simplify

We mapped the shipment cycle from document receipt to payment collection and found seven data-entry and review steps that could be merged or removed. We standardised the service-charge list and made the ERP shipment file the single source of truth.

Automate

• Intelligent document reading: a model extracts data from incoming supplier invoices, commercial invoices and packing lists in Arabic and English, with a confidence score per field. See intelligent document processing.
• Automatic matching: each supplier invoice is matched to the shipment file and PO; only discrepancies reach an accountant.
• Customs-portal bot: prepares the declaration from extracted data, leaving review and final submission to the licensed clearance officer. See RPA.
• Automatic invoicing: when a shipment closes, storage, handling and transport charges are pulled from the warehouse system and a draft client invoice is raised for review.

Governance and data protection

The solution runs in the company's regional cloud tenant, with separate permissions for the accounts and clearance teams and a log showing who reviewed each document and when. Every financial or customs approval stays with an authorised employee: automation prepares the work, it does not make the decision for the team.

Evolve

Every month we review the cases routed to people and use them to improve the model and rules. Explore more in logistics and document automation.