Why Does Transport Administration Take So Much Time? 7 Causes and Solutions
Every trip produces an order, a schedule, a CMR, a weighbridge ticket, a delivery, a trip sheet, hours and an invoice. For a haulage company with thirty trucks, that means hundreds of documents a day, and most of them still pass through human hands. Below are the seven causes we encounter most often, each with the digital solution that takes the work away.
Transport administration takes time because the same data passes through human hands more than once.
Seven causes, from duplicate entry to manual checks, and for each one the digital step that removes the manual work.
In transport, administration is not a side issue but a second process that runs alongside every trip
A trip is physically finished once the driver has unloaded. Administratively, it only begins then: the POD has to come in, the weighbridge ticket has to be matched to the order, the hours have to go to payroll and the invoice has to go out. So if you want to reduce the administration, look at each trip and ask which steps people are doing that a system could do just as well.
The seven causes below follow the order in which they occur during a trip: from order intake to reporting. They apply just as much to companies with a TMS as to companies that plan in Excel. The difference lies in how many systems talk to each other, not in which systems you have.
- Duplicate entry of the same order
An order arrives by email, gets typed into the TMS, entered again in the on-board computer and, at the end of the month, once more in the accounting package. Four times the same address, the same order number and the same arrangement, with four chances of a typo. When something changes, all four places have to be updated again. Solution: a single entry point and integrations. The order goes automatically from the TMS to the on-board computer and to the accounting system. You can read how such an integration with the on-board computer works on our page about a transport planning API.
- Retyping documents: CMR, weighbridge ticket, pallet slip
The driver takes a photo of the CMR and the weighbridge ticket and sends it via WhatsApp or the app. At the office, someone retypes the weight, the licence plate, the order number and the recipient's name into the TMS. Illegible signatures and photos of half a slip mean follow-up questions to the driver, who is already back on the road. Solution: document recognition. Software reads the CMR or weighbridge ticket, extracts the fields, links the document to the right order and only presents doubtful cases to an employee. See AI document processing for freight documents and CMR.
- Separate systems without integrations
The TMS, the on-board computer, the accounting package, the time-tracking system and the clients' portals were each bought separately and don't talk to each other. The bridge between them is a CSV export on Monday morning, or an employee working in two screens at once. Every export is a moment when data goes out of date or a column shifts. Solution: the TMS as the source, with API integrations to the other systems. Which integrations a TMS needs as standard is covered on our page about building a TMS.
- Manual checking of purchase invoices and hours
A subcontractor's invoice is laid next to the trip list to see whether the number of trips and the rate are correct. The driver's hours are compared with the tachograph and the on-board computer before they go to payroll. Toll invoices and fuel cards are broken down per vehicle. These are checks that almost always turn out fine, and that is precisely why they cost so much time for so little result. Solution: automatic checks with rules. A system compares invoice lines with the agreed rates and the trips driven, and puts only deviations on a worklist. Hours from the on-board computer are pre-filled; the employee checks the exceptions instead of everything.
- Trip sheets and PODs arrive on paper
On Friday the driver hands in a folder of trip sheets and signed consignment notes. The back office sorts them by order, scans them and discovers that the signature is missing on two deliveries. Invoices waiting on a POD go out a week later, and in the event of a claim someone has to dig out the folder from three months ago. Solution: a driver app with digital proof of delivery. Signature, photo and timestamp go straight into the TMS for each stop, and the invoice can be sent the same day. See our page about a proof-of-delivery app.
- Email as a work queue
Orders, changes, status queries, claims and invoices all land in the same Outlook folder. Whether someone has picked something up is shown by a flag, or by nothing at all. A client who asks at half past four where their load is gets an answer from the planner, who phones the driver and then emails the reply. The solution: a customer portal where clients see the status, POD and invoice for their own shipment and enter new orders themselves. The status query disappears from the inbox and orders arrive in a structured form. On the custom transport software development page you can see how such a portal fits into a project.
- Reporting that is done by hand
Revenue per vehicle, load factor, empty kilometres and the number of trips per client come from three exports that are merged in Excel. The monthly report takes a day and is ready on the tenth of the following month, by which time the figures can no longer be influenced.
Start with the cause that recurs most often each day, not the most expensive one
It is tempting to start with reporting because management is asking for it. But reporting is the end of the chain. Most of the work sits in the steps that recur on every trip: entering the order, processing the document, collecting the POD.
A simple count helps you choose. Take one ordinary Tuesday and tally, for each administrative step, how often it occurs: how many orders were retyped, how many weighbridge tickets were entered by hand, how many PODs were chased by phone. Multiply that by the time each one takes. The step with the highest number is the first one you automate, even if it looks small. If you want to convert that into a cost per year, use our manual administration calculator.
This article covers the causes one by one. If you notice that the administration grows linearly with every extra vehicle, you have a scaling question: in what order do you intervene, and what do you do first? We answer that question in your transport company is growing, but the administration grows with it. If the problem lies mainly in the planning itself, read transport planning in Excel: when does it stop working?.
causes that recur at almost every transport company.
entering each piece of data once is the goal: one source, with everything else reading from it.
documents that are still retyped once recognition and integrations are in place.
Frequently asked questions
The questions transport companies ask us most often about this.
Do we need to buy a new TMS before we can automate our administration?
Usually not. Document recognition, a driver app with POD and automatic invoice checking can run alongside an existing TMS, provided that TMS allows an integration. Only if your current system has no API or does not support the core of your process does replacing it become part of the solution.
How reliable is document recognition with handwritten CMRs and weighbridge tickets?
Printed fields such as order numbers, licence plates and weights are recognised well; handwritten remarks less so. That is why a good solution includes a review step: fields with low confidence are put to a staff member, and the rest goes straight through. The aim is for your staff to review exceptions, not every document.
Our drivers are not digitally minded. Will a driver app still work?
An app that asks for just three things per stop (photo, signature, remark) is simpler for most drivers than keeping a paper folder. What matters is that the app works offline at loading locations without coverage, and that the driver never has to type in anything the planner already knows.
What is the difference between a connection and an integration?
In practice the words are used interchangeably. By an integration we mean that two systems exchange data automatically via an API, with no export or manual step. A CSV file that is uploaded weekly is not an integration in our book, because a person is still in the loop.
Can clients keep using their own portal if we build a customer portal?
Yes. Large shippers often work with their own transport portal or EDI messages, and that won't change. A custom customer portal is intended for the clients who currently work by email and phone. For the larger parties, you build an integration with their portal, so their orders also come in without retyping.
Where should you start if you recognise all seven causes?
With the step that occurs most often each day, usually document processing or the POD. Both can also be automated independently of the TMS and deliver visible results straight away for the back office and the drivers. Integrations between systems come next, and reporting follows naturally once the data sits in one system.
Further reading
Haulage company grows, administration grows with it
Why the pressure on the office grows in step with the business, and the order in which you break that pattern.
Read more CalculatorWhat does manual administration cost per year?
Enter people, hours and wage costs to see what the manual work costs and what it frees up.
Read more PlanningTransport planning in Excel: when does it stop working?
Six signs that your fleet planning no longer scales, and four routes forward.
Read moreWhich cause costs you the most time?
Briefly describe which systems you use and which of the seven causes you recognise. We'll offer non-binding advice on which step will remove the most manual work first.