Issue TWW-2026-09-07, Monday, September 7, 2026
The operation in this walkthrough is illustrative, built to reflect a typical dry-LTL shipper: a 33-person distributor of hydraulic hose and fittings, running a 29,000 square foot building and about 60 inbound purchase orders a month. The workflow and the arithmetic are real. The company is not.
The line
PO 7318 goes to Kettleridge Hose Supply against an accepted quote: $14.60 per hose assembly, delivered, freight included. Line 1 is 260 assemblies at $14.60, or $3,796.00. Line 2 is 400 crimp fittings at $3.25, or $1,300.00. The PO totals $5,096.00.
A delivered price means the freight is the vendor's, prepaid and folded into the unit cost, so no carrier freight invoice exists here.
The truck arrives on one pro number. The bill of lading declares 6 cartons, the driver hands over 6, and the receiver counts 6 and signs the delivery receipt clean. That is the correct call. The carrier delivered what it accepted, so nothing here is a carrier failure or a carrier claim.
Four documents, four different questions
An hour later the cartons are checked in against the PO. Four records exist, and no two agree.
- The quote says what the vendor agreed to charge: $14.60 per assembly, delivered.
- The purchase order says what you bought: 260 assemblies and 400 fittings.
- The delivery receipt says what the carrier handed over: 6 cartons, matching the bill of lading.
- The receiving record says what arrived: 236 assemblies, not 260, because the vendor never shipped the other 24. Line 2 counts 400, correct.
Then the invoice arrives. Kettleridge bills the full PO quantity of 260, prices it at a current list of $15.10 rather than the quoted $14.60, and adds the 400 fittings, for a total of $5,226.00.
The invoice and the purchase order agree on quantity. Both say 260. No comparison between them can find the 24 missing units, because neither knows they are missing. Only the receiving record knows that 236 arrived. You cannot settle the money until you settle the count, and the count only exists if somebody captured it at the dock.
[IMAGE: the receiving screen, PO 7318 line 1, 260 expected against 236 received]
What the $480.40 is made of
- Owed for what arrived, at the quoted price: 236 x $14.60 = $3,445.60, plus $1,300.00 of fittings = $4,745.60.
- Invoiced $5,226.00, minus $4,745.60, is a gap of $480.40.
- Price variance on the 236 units that did arrive: 236 x $0.50 = $118.00.
- Units invoiced and never delivered, at the billed price: 24 x $15.10 = $362.40.
The two pieces sum to $480.40 exactly, 9.4 percent of a $5,096.00 order. A normal operation having a normal month.
Closing PO 7318 as fully received would also carry 24 phantom assemblies at $14.60, $350.40 of stock not on the shelf that the reorder point fires against. A consequence, not a second recovery.
Who owes which piece
The $362.40 is a vendor chargeback against the purchase order and the packing slip, provable only because the receiving record captured 236 against a PO line of 260, with a reason, at the dock. The $118.00 is a purchasing question, settled against the quote by whoever approves the invoice.
Pieces are counted against the delivery receipt at the tailgate, the carrier's document and the carrier's relationship. Units are received against the purchase order line after the driver leaves, the vendor contract and the vendor chargeback. Nobody signs or counts against a purchase order at the tailgate.
The fix
Inbound shipments sit in a real dock queue, worked one at a time against the PO. Receiving runs line by line, and anything over, short or damaged is captured on the same check-in screen with a required reason, so the 24 short assemblies are recorded with a cause. Received stock posts to inventory with a bin location and a reason-coded movement record, and anything held back for a discrepancy stays out of available stock until resolved. That is Warehouse Essentials, $79 a month, or the 37-day free trial.
LanePilot Warehouse, at $119 a month, adds the vendor chargeback letter drafted from a receiving discrepancy, and PO-to-invoice reconciliation, comparing the invoice total against the PO total within 5 percent. Watch what that does here: $5,226.00 against $5,096.00 is 2.6 percent, so it passes and flags nothing. It is a total check, not a line-by-line match, and the 24 short units stay invisible to it. LanePilot drafts the chargeback letter from the receiving record. You send it. It does not contact, negotiate with, or file anything with your vendor or your carrier.
Run this on your own dock
One. Ask whether anyone compares the invoice to the receiving record, or only to the purchase order. If it is the purchase order, every unit a vendor bills but never ships stays invisible.
Two. Pull last month's delivered-price orders and check the billed unit price against the quote. A drift to current list is the quietest overcharge there is.
A vendor scorecard with no short lines is rarely a vendor with no short lines. It usually means the receiving record was written from the PO instead of the count.
The operation described is illustrative. Quote, purchase order, receiving and invoice records are demonstration data.