Matching settlements to loads

From the dispatch text to payday: how a load becomes a settlement, and how to check nothing was missed.

An owner-operator leased to a carrier never sends an invoice. The carrier pays a settlement for each load, usually by direct deposit, and the paper trail is what lets you check it. Here is the whole loop, and where the checking happens.

From dispatch to payday

1. The order comes in. A dispatcher texts the driver the day before — a line or two and a photo of the delivery receipt. The driver confirms date, time and place.
2. The driver runs the load — pickup or live load, any stop-offs, the delivery — filling in the trip envelope as they go.
3. The receiver signs the bill of lading. Signed, it is the proof of delivery, and the load is done.
4. The driver sends in the paperwork — order, signed bill, fuel slips — to the carrier, which is what starts the settlement, and to you.
5. The settlement arrives. One per load, several to a sheet, each with its own number. Fuel bought on the carrier's card comes off here.
6. You match it to the load. Load number, miles, extras, the fuel deduction. Anything that doesn't line up goes back to the carrier.
7. The pay run. Once a week, for each driver, the loads that are done: see how driver pay is figured. You pay through your bank and mark the run paid.
8. The driver gets a statement — every load and every line, so nobody has to ask.

Two different numbers

The settlement is what the carrier paid you. The driver's pay is what you pay them. They come from the same load but they are not the same figure, and one is not a share of the other: the settlement is your revenue, the driver's pay is your biggest expense. LoadTally records the first and figures the second, side by side on the load.

What gets missed, and how it shows

The trouble with a stack of sheets is the load that isn't on any of them. A settlement that never came. A stop-off the carrier didn't pay. Miles that are 40 short of what the map says. Finding those by hand means going back through the pile.

In LoadTally you photograph the settlement sheet and every line on it lines up against a load you already have. What matched is marked. What is still waiting on a settlement stays in its own list until it arrives. Where the carrier's figure and yours disagree, the load says so, with both numbers.