Why packing slips are a pain point
An incoming packing slip is rarely a neatly structured document. Supplier A delivers a PDF with a barcode and an article number that matches your purchase order. Supplier B sends a handwritten slip on the pallet. Supplier C uses its own product numbers, which you first need to translate into your own article codes. And supplier D sometimes delivers more than ordered, sometimes less, without explanation. The employee in purchasing or the warehouse has to sort all of this out, manually enter it into the ERP, and reconcile the purchase order. That takes time. It also increases the risk of errors during invoice verification later: if the packing slip was posted incorrectly, the three-way match (purchase order, packing slip, invoice) no longer adds up.
What automated packing slip processing concretely solves
dottle reads the incoming packing slip, identifies the relevant fields (supplier, item description, quantities, delivery date, reference number), and automatically links them to the corresponding purchase order in your ERP. If an article code is missing or the supplier uses a different coding scheme, dottle flags the discrepancy. An employee approves, corrects where necessary, and the slip is posted. The result: no more manual data entry, immediate flagging of quantity discrepancies, and a packing slip processed within minutes rather than later in the day or the following morning. That matters when you are handling multiple incoming deliveries per day and the administration would otherwise fall behind the warehouse receipts.
How does matching with purchase orders work?
Matching is the core of packing slip processing: the packing slip describes what was delivered, the purchase order describes what was ordered. dottle reads the packing slip and looks up the corresponding purchase order number, either via the order number on the slip itself, via the supplier's reference number, or via a combination of supplier and item data. When a discrepancy surfaces, for example a delivery of 98 boxes when 100 were ordered, it is flagged. The employee decides: post the slip as delivered, or follow up with the supplier. What dottle does not do: independently decide that a discrepancy is acceptable. That is intentional. The decision stays with the user.
When does automation not make sense here?
To be straightforward about the trade-offs: automating packing slips is not worthwhile in every situation. With fewer than twenty to thirty incoming packing slips per week, the time savings are too small to justify implementation. If supplier packing slips are consistently hard to read, handwritten, and incomplete, the quality of the source data is the problem, not the processing. Automation does not fix that. If article codes differ completely by supplier and no translation table is available, the mapping step requires so much manual work that the gains are limited. And if the process itself is not defined, who checks what, which discrepancies are acceptable, you need to establish that first before automating. A system reinforces an existing process; it does not repair a missing one.
Which formats can dottle read?
Packing slips arrive as PDFs (digital or scanned), as Excel files, as images, or sometimes as email attachments. dottle processes all of these formats without requiring you to set up a template for each supplier. That matters in wholesale, where supplier bases of dozens or hundreds of parties cannot be managed with fixed templates per sender. New suppliers are added without a separate implementation project.