Bill of Lading vs. Freight Invoice: What to Extract

Bills of lading and freight invoices travel together but serve different purposes — and hold different data. Knowing which fields to extract from each makes reconciliation far cleaner.

What a bill of lading (BOL) contains

The BOL is the shipping contract: shipper and consignee, origin and destination, piece count, described commodity, weight, and the BOL number. It's the source of truth for what was tendered.

What a freight invoice contains

The invoice is the bill: the carrier's invoice and PRO numbers, billed weight, linehaul, fuel surcharge, accessorials, and the total due. Billed weight and class here are what you audit against the BOL.

Reconciling the two

The reconciliation is BOL weight vs. billed weight, tendered accessorials vs. billed accessorials. Extracting both documents into the same column layout — which the converter does automatically — turns that into a one-glance comparison.

Extract both in one pass

Upload the BOL and the invoice together; the converter pulls the reference numbers, lane, weight, and charges from each into structured rows so you can line them up side by side.

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