Freight bill orchestration end to end for a manufacturing OEM

The challenge

The OEM processed 600 to 800 inbound freight bills per week across 12 plants. Each bill arrived as a PDF, was matched to a GRN by a clerk, run through a tax computation spreadsheet (GSTIN, commodity code, lane), and placed in an approval queue before MIRO posting. The cycle took three days on average. At any point, INR 35 to 50 million in freight liability was sitting unposted - a permanent provision buffer held by finance.

The approval queue covered 100 percent of bills including the 90 percent that required no human judgement. Disputes lived in email threads with no audit trail attached to the freight order and no SLA for resolution.

The approach

Interwork deployed a TMS that captures GRN from the gate pass or weighbridge at each plant, computes tax at source using GSTIN, commodity code, and carrier lane, and auto-posts MIRO in ERP for bills that match cleanly. Bills that do not match go to an exception queue. The exception rate in steady state is five to eight percent of volume.

Disputes were migrated from email to structured tickets attached to the freight order. Each ticket carries an SLA counter from submission, a named owner, and a resolution path. The OEM head office dashboard shows query volume, type distribution, and carrier-level SLA performance in real time.

The outcomes

• 100% of freight bills captured - no manual PDF processing
• 94% of bills auto-posted to MIRO without clerk touch
• Approval SLA reduced by 50% - exception queue only
• Freight reconciliation backlog cleared within 90 days of go-live
• INR 35-50M in working capital returned from the provision buffer

The finance team eliminated the freight liability provision buffer. The OEM head office, for the first time, had real-time visibility of carrier performance and dispute resolution SLA across all 12 plants.