Automated transport order entry means an AI agent reads each transport order as it arrives by email, PDF, Excel or portal, takes out the addresses, time windows, goods and references, checks them against the customer and the rate agreement, and creates the order in your TMS or ERP. A person approves only the exceptions.
Most planners know the morning routine. A shipper emails a PDF with 3 pickups, another pastes a load into the email body, a third sends an Excel sheet with 40 rows and one changed delivery date halfway down. Someone opens the TMS and types it all in again, field by field, before planning can start. At Lleverage we think that retyping step is the part to automate first, because every error made there travels to the driver, the warehouse and the invoice.
We build AI agents for order processing in the systems you already run, for companies that make, move and sell physical products. This article covers what the agent reads from a transport order, how it checks it, where the order lands and which orders stay with a person. If you want to see it on your own order inbox, book a demo.
What is automated transport order entry?
Automated transport order entry is software that turns an incoming transport order into a complete order record without anyone retyping it. The order still arrives the way the customer sends it. The change sits on your side: the agent reads it, fills the fields a planner would fill and leaves the planner with the orders that need judgement.
It applies to 2 kinds of business. A logistics service provider receives orders from shippers and creates them in its TMS. A shipper that runs its own transport, or books it out, receives requests from sales, customers or plants and creates the shipment in its ERP. In both cases the input is messy and the target system is strict.
The work differs from sales order entry in what the order describes. A sales order is a list of articles and prices. A transport order is a movement: from where, to where, when, what, how much and under which agreement. Our post on sales order automation from email to ERP covers the article side, and this one covers the movement.
Why do transport orders still arrive by email?
Because EDI is rare outside large companies. According to Eurostat's 2025 survey of EU enterprises with 10 or more employees, 5.6% made sales through EDI-type messages. In the same Eurostat survey, firms with 10 to 49 people came to 3.75%. Eurostat put firms with 250 people or more at 27.81%, so EDI lives at the large end of the market.
A logistics service provider often sees the same split in its own customer base. The large accounts send structured messages or use the portal. The long tail emails, and it emails in whatever shape its own system produces: a PDF transport instruction, a spreadsheet export, a forwarded email chain with the real instruction 4 messages down.
Moving those customers to EDI puts the setup cost on them, which our post on EDI alternatives for customers who will never do EDI sets out. Their orders keep coming by email, and someone on your side has to enter each one.
What does the agent read from a transport order?
The agent reads the order the way a planner does: it finds the customer, the movement and the conditions, wherever they sit in the message. A pickup address can be in a PDF header, a delivery window in the email body and the customer reference in the file name. The agent pulls them together into one order.
| Field | Where it often hides | What the agent does with it |
|---|---|---|
| Customer | Sender address, signature, letterhead | Matches it to the customer record |
| Pickup and delivery addresses | PDF table, email text, a site name only | Matches them to known addresses or flags a new one |
| Time windows | Free text such as "before 10:00" or "Tuesday morning" | Converts them to the date and time fields the system expects |
| Goods | Pallet counts, packaging type, weight, volume | Fills the load lines and checks the totals add up |
| References | Order number, shipment number, booking reference | Copies them so invoicing and tracking can find the order |
| Instructions | Tail lift, booking a slot, temperature, dangerous goods | Carries them into the order and flags anything unusual |
Formats vary per customer, so the agent learns each customer's habits. One shipper always writes the delivery window in the subject line. Another sends 2 files, where the second one corrects the first. The rules your planners keep in their heads become instructions the agent follows, and a person approves each change to those instructions.
How does the agent check an order against the customer and the rate agreement?
The agent checks each order against your own records before it exists in the system. It confirms the customer, matches each address, tests the time windows against what is possible and looks up the agreed rate for that lane and load. Anything that does not match goes to a person with the reason attached.
The checks a planner makes by habit, written out:
- The sender belongs to a known customer and is allowed to order for it.
- Pickup and delivery match addresses on file. A new address or a site name the agent cannot place goes to a person.
- The delivery window comes after the pickup window, the date is a working day for that site and the lead time fits the agreement.
- Pallet count, weight and volume fit the load type, and the totals on the order match the lines.
- The lane, load type and surcharges are covered by the rate agreement with that customer, wherever it lives: in the TMS, the ERP or a spreadsheet.
- The same reference has not already been entered from an earlier email.
The rate check matters most for margin. An order on a lane outside the agreement is a quote request in disguise, and a planner who is busy will often enter it at the nearest rate. The agent stops there and asks the person who owns that customer, so the price is set before the truck is.
Which systems can the transport order land in?
The order lands in the system you already run, written through that system's own interfaces, so it checks the order the same way it checks one typed by hand. Nothing is migrated and no second database holds a copy. The agent fills the same fields your planners fill.
On the ERP side, the ERP integrations we work with are SAP (S/4HANA and ECC), Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Finance and Operations, Navision, Infor, Exact, AFAS, Epicor, Ridder iQ, IBM AS/400, Oracle and NetSuite. A shipper that books transport from one of these creates the shipment there.
No TMS is on that list by name. A TMS with an API is connected as a custom integration, with its credentials stored securely and access limited to the actions the agent needs. A TMS without an API is worked through its screens, with the access a person has. A carrier or customer portal with a login and no other way in is handled the same way. On-premise systems are reached without opening them to the internet.
On the inbox side, the agent reads Outlook or Gmail mailboxes and the attachments in them: PDF, Word, Excel and CSV.
Which transport orders should a person approve?
A person should approve every order the agent is unsure of, and decide where that line sits. The agent scores how sure it is of each order. Below your confidence line a person decides, above it the order is created on its own. Only you move the line, and you can move it back at any time.
In the first weeks the line sits high and a planner approves every order. That is how the agent earns trust: the planner sees each order next to the original email and approves or corrects it. Orders that typically stay with a person even later:
- A lane or load type outside the rate agreement
- A new pickup or delivery address
- A time window that cannot be met with the agreed lead time
- Dangerous goods or a temperature requirement the agent has not seen for that customer
- A change to an order that is already planned
Each exception arrives as a request with the original message, what the agent found and what it needs: confirm the customer, supply a missing reference, choose between 2 addresses. The planner answers and the order carries on. Every action is logged with what the agent read and decided, which our page on AI governance and control covers.
"It’s a matter of building trust in the organisation with these kinds of initiatives. You can’t just throw something like this over the fence." Cees Maaskant, General Manager, Xpol
How does an AI agent compare with the other ways to automate transport order entry?
The options differ in who does the work and which orders they leave behind. EDI and portals move the typing to the customer, templates read only the layouts they were built for, and an AI agent reads what arrives and checks it. They also combine, with EDI for the large accounts and an agent for everyone else.
| Option | What the customer does | What your planners do | Orders it leaves behind |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manual entry | Nothing new | Read and type every order | None, at the cost of hours |
| EDI | Builds and maintains a connection | Maintain mappings per customer | Every customer not connected |
| Customer portal | Types the order into your portal | Handle orders that bypass it | Customers who keep emailing |
| OCR templates | Nothing new | Build a template per layout, fix misreads | Email text, new layouts, spreadsheets |
| AI agent on the inbox | Nothing new | Approve the exceptions they are given | Orders below your confidence line, with a reason |
Templates need a closer look, since they ask nothing of the customer either. They work while a customer's PDF layout stays the same. Each new customer needs a new template, each layout change breaks one, and orders written in the email body fall outside them. Our post on automating order processing without replacing your ERP goes into why the reading step is the hard part.
How do you start with transport order entry automation?
Start by counting. Take 1 month of transport orders and sort them by channel: EDI, portal and email. Then sort the email pile by customer and format. That count shows how many orders an agent would take and which customers to start with.
A rollout we would recommend runs in 3 steps:
- Pick the 5 to 10 customers who send the most emailed orders and connect the agent to that order inbox.
- Run supervised: the agent prepares each order and a planner approves it in the TMS or ERP. Corrections turn into proposed changes to the agent's instructions, which a person reviews before they go live.
- Lower the confidence line customer by customer, once the approvals show the agent gets that customer right.
The first process typically runs supervised within a few weeks, built by our forward deployed engineers with your team. The planners who know the customers stay in charge of the rules, and the exceptions still go to them.
Frequently asked questions
Can AI read transport orders from PDF, Excel and email text?
Yes. The agent reads transport orders from PDF attachments, Excel and CSV files, Word documents and the email body, including orders where the details are spread over several of them. It learns each customer's format from their own orders, so a new layout does not need a template before the agent can read it.
Does automated transport order entry work with our TMS?
It works through the TMS's own interfaces. A TMS with an API is connected as a custom integration, limited to the actions the agent needs. A TMS without an API is worked through its screens with the access a person has. The order is checked by the TMS the same way as one a planner types in.
What happens when a transport order does not match the rate agreement?
The agent stops before it creates the order and sends it to the person who owns that customer, with the lane, the load and the reason it did not match. That person sets the price or approves the order. The order then carries on into the TMS or ERP with the decision recorded.
Do our customers need to change how they send transport orders?
No. Customers keep sending orders by email, PDF, spreadsheet or portal, the way they do today. The agent reads them on your side. Customers who already send EDI keep doing so, and the agent handles the orders that arrive any other way.