A delivered LR that has not been billed looks like a small paperwork delay. We think it is one of the most expensive habits in a transport office.
Every transport owner knows the feeling at month-end: a pile of delivered LRs that nobody has billed yet, waiting for a POD, a GRN, a customer’s cycle, or simply someone’s time. It is tempting to see this as a timing issue. The freight will be billed eventually, so what is lost? Quite a lot, and most of it does not show on any report.
A trip is paid for before it is billed. Diesel, tolls, the driver advance and fooding go out while the truck is on the road. The freight comes back only after the bill is raised and the customer’s credit period runs. Every day between delivery and bill is a day added to the front of that credit period, not absorbed by it. The customer’s clock does not start until the bill reaches them.
So the real cost of an unbilled LR is the cost of carrying the trip’s expenses for longer. For a transporter funding diesel from a working-capital line, that is interest. For one who is not, it is the next trip that cannot be funded, or the vendor who is paid late.
The second cost is less obvious. A bill raised the day after delivery is backed by fresh evidence: the POD photo, the GPS track, the detention hours, the person at the consignee who remembers the truck. A bill raised five weeks later is backed by whatever survived. PODs go missing in cabins. The consignee’s store manager has changed. A short-delivery query that would have taken one call now takes a meeting.
That is why late bills attract more disputes, and why detention and other extra charges are the first thing to be dropped: nobody can prove them any more. The freight may still be collected; the extras often are not.
No one is careless. The gap sits between teams, and gaps between teams are where nobody looks.
| Measure | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Billing lag | Days from POD to bill, by branch and by customer |
| Unbilled value | Freight on delivered LRs that has not been billed yet |
Neither needs a new report if the LR, the POD and the bill are the same record. If they sit in three places, you will need someone to compile them, which is part of the problem.
We would not start with a new billing policy. We would start by making the POD arrive where the bill is made. In SCM for Transporter, the driver sends the POD photo on WhatsApp; OCR reads the LR number, stamp, signature and date, matches it, and billing is unblocked. Delivered LRs with POD can then become bill drafts, grouped by the customer’s billing cycle, and the invoice PDF goes out on WhatsApp. An alert (AR-15) sends accounts a digest of LRs unbilled for more than seven days, every day at 17:00.
Then the owner gets to make a deliberate choice: bill daily, weekly or by cycle. What changes is that the lag becomes a decision rather than an accident.
An unbilled LR costs you the interest on money already spent, the extra charges you can no longer prove, and the goodwill used up in disputes that a fresh bill would have avoided. For the process side, see unbilled LRs: closing the billing gap and POD pending: getting billed faster, and the rest of the SCM for Transporter guides.
Because the trip's expenses are already paid and the customer's credit period only starts when the bill reaches them, so every day of lag extends the time you carry those costs.
Billing lag (days from POD to bill) by branch and customer, and the value of delivered LRs that are not yet billed.
Often, because the evidence behind the bill, such as the POD, GPS track and detention hours, is harder to find weeks later.
See it on your own data. SCM for Transporter runs the bilty, e-way bill, trips, billing and accounts in one system. Book a 30-minute working session with an engineer.
