Inbound receiving visibility for your clients, from the dock door to available.

Receiving is where the paperwork and the freight meet for the first time. The ASN (advance ship notice, the list of what the client says is on the truck) says 20 pallets. The receiver counts 18. The driver is waiting, the next truck is at the gate, and the shortage gets written on the BOL (bill of lading), or not.

After that, the inbound sits in a state the WMS often does not show the client: unloaded but not checked, checked but held, waiting for labels, waiting for putaway. The client sees nothing until it is available, and when something is wrong they hear about it days later, with no photo of how it arrived.

1. Input. The ASN or purchase order for each inbound, read from your WMS or the client's file, and each client's receiving rules: what needs a photo, what counts as damage, who is told about a shortage.
2. Capture. The receiver scans the pallets or cartons as they come off the truck and takes photos on the scanner or phone they already carry: the trailer on arrival, the seal, any damage, the signed BOL. Each photo is stamped with the time and the dock door.
3. Check. The scanned count is compared with the ASN while the driver is still there. A shortage, an overage or an item that was not expected shows on the receiver's screen, not in a report the next morning.
4. Exception. By default, a receipt with a discrepancy cannot close until the receiver picks a reason and attaches the photos and the driver's notation. Damaged pallets go into a held status and are not made available.
5. Record. Each inbound moves through statuses the client can read: at the door, receiving, held with a reason, awaiting putaway, available. Every step carries its time and its evidence.

• Your WMS keeps the receipt. We read expected receipts from it and write the confirmed receipt back where it accepts one, through its API or export. What is possible depends on that system. Cargohold covers receiving, putaway and cycle counts on scanners in its warehouse management module.
• The client view is new. Each client sees only their own inbounds, with the status, the reason for any hold and the photos. It can be a login or a link you send, and it is built the way the rest of our custom internal tools are, around your process rather than a template.
• On the devices at the door. Scans and photos run on the scanners, phones and tablets your receivers already use. For a busy door where a fixed camera or station makes more sense than a handheld, we also do custom hardware.

The receiver decides what they see on the floor: the count, the damage, the reason. A supervisor decides whether a held receipt is released, and your account manager decides what the client is told about a shortage and when. Which statuses a client can see, and whether they see photos, is your choice per client.