At the bay
Read the slip from a photo
What happens when you photograph a packing slip, what it can and cannot read, and what to do when it gets one wrong.
On the Business plan and above you can photograph the packing slip and have the part numbers and quantities pulled off it, instead of typing them. The photo is taken on the phone that is already in the receiver’s hand.
What it reads
- The vendor name printed on the slip.
- The PO number, if the supplier quoted it.
- Each line: part number, description, and the quantity shipped.
Those lines are then lined up against the order already on file, and you get a list to correct rather than a blank form to fill in.
Put another way
Somebody reading the delivery note aloud to you while you count the pallet. They can misread a smudged digit, which is exactly why you are looking at the goods and not at them.
What makes a photo readable
- Fill the frame with the slip. A slip in the corner of a photo of a warehouse is mostly warehouse.
- Flat, not curled. A crease through a column of numbers loses the column.
- Any orientation is fine, and so is a photograph taken at an angle.
- A picture a person can read is a picture the software can read. If you cannot read it on your screen, it cannot either.
Limits worth knowing
- Photos up to 12MB. Phones set to maximum resolution occasionally exceed that; the app says so rather than failing silently.
- Photographs and PDFs only.
- Reading takes a few seconds. The page updates itself when it is done, so there is nothing to refresh.
Worth knowing
If it fails, nothing is lost. The delivery is still there, you can retry the read, or pick the purchase order and type the quantities. A failed photo never blocks a delivery.
What it never does
It never decides what arrived. It proposes numbers off a piece of paper, and the person at the bay corrects them against the goods. Nothing is recorded until a human confirms it.
Did this page miss something?
If you came here with a question and left without the answer, that is a fault in the page rather than in the question. Tell us what you were trying to do and we will write it up, usually the same week.