Case StudyLOGISTICS & SUPPLY CHAIN

Automating Shipments, PODs Retrieval, and Invoicing in the C3 Portal for Leading Canadian Logistics Provider

IDW Extracts POs from Gmail, Creates Shipments in C3, Downloads PODs from Carrier Portals, and Processes 210 Forms via SFTP

Client Overview

A leading Canadian 4PL (fourth party logistics) provider managing coast-to-coast inbound transportation across the country. Operating an asset-agnostic, one-stop logistics ecosystem, the company connects suppliers with major national retailers. Its network includes 1,000+ vendor and customer shippers and 40+ carrier partners, enabling nationwide operations.

The Challenge

Understanding the operational bottlenecks

5-7 FTEs

Dedicated to only these processes

35%

Failure Rate In retrieval of PODs due to missing info

10-15

Manual Follow-ups per day to resolve issues

5-8%

Errors In data entry, invoices, and file acceptance exceptions

Time Intensive Shipment Creation

Staff had to download each purchase order PDF, type in weights, quantities, and dates into the C3 portal, an industry leader in dock appointment scheduling, which required switching between screens. The process was time-consuming and caused errors, requiring a second team member to check for mistakes.

Fragmented PoD Retrieval and Invoice Reconciliation

The team received PO lists from clients via email every day and had to identify the transportation correct carriers for each load. They would then log in to the respective carrier portal for each PO, download documents, rename files following strict rules, then file them on the network drive.

210 Form Fillout

For freight invoices, the finance team processed EDI 210 forms, the standard freight billing documents that motor carriers use to bill shippers for freight charges and provide detailed shipment information. They read the PDFs for billing details, typed them into a CSV, and used FileZilla for transfers. Even a small mistake, like a wrong decimal, would cause the ERP system to reject the file.

The IDW Solution

Intelligent automation across the entire workflow

Automated Shipment Creation

IDW monitors the Gmail inbox for vendor PO emails, downloads PDFs, and extracts data including vendor names, PO numbers, address, weights, quantities, and dates using intelligent vision. It matches this data with the internal database and flags missing fields or data issues. It then formats the data into a standard CSV, and uploads it to the C3 portal via API. Shipments are automatically created and are ready for approval, with no manual input.

Intelligent POD Retrieval

IDW checks daily TMS (Transportation Management System) reports from Gmail, identifies the right carrier for each PO number listed in the excel files, signs into each carrier's portal, downloads the relevant POD files, renames them as per the required format, and saves them in a shared drive. Afterward, it sends the operations team a status report with the files attached.

End-to-End Invoice Processing

IDW downloads freight bill PDFs from the dedicated invoices inbox, pulls out key details like invoice numbers, dates, linehaul, and fuel charges, and puts them into a CSV file using the database utility, prepared for the client's ERP. It uses FileZilla to securely connect to and upload the file to the client's SFTP server for payment processing, then archives the original PDF invoices for records.