A Complete Walkthrough
Follow one shipment from a pile of PDFs to a cleared, consistent set of documents - told as the questions you'll ask and what CargoLint does at each step.
This walkthrough follows a single shipment from start to finish. Rather than list features, it follows the questions you actually ask while clearing a shipment, and shows how each answer hands you to the next step.
Meet the shipment: a supplier in Shenzhen has sent you a commercial invoice, a packing list, and a bill of lading for one container of goods. Here is how it goes from your inbox to cleared paperwork.
”I have a stack of PDFs for one shipment. Where do I start?”
Upload them together. From the Dashboard or Documents page, add all the files at once. CargoLint asks where they belong with the Group as picker - choose Create a new shipment and give it a reference you recognize (a booking number or file number). Because you uploaded them together, they’re bundled into a single shipment.
A shipment holds one document of each type - invoice, packing list, bill of lading, certificate of origin - which is exactly the set customs looks at together.
Tip: Upload the whole shipment in one go. Grouping is automatic, and the cross-checks (below) start the moment the second document finishes.
See Uploading Documents and Working with Shipments.
”How do I know CargoLint actually read each document correctly?”
Each document is processed on its own first. CargoLint extracts the fields - parties, dates, totals, line items - and assigns every field a confidence score. The document’s status moves from Processing to either Pending Approval (read cleanly, ready for one-click sign-off) or Review (something needs a human eye: a low score, HS codes to confirm, or a degraded scan). Any field below 78% confidence is flagged so you know precisely where to look instead of re-checking everything.
See How Document Extraction Works, Understanding Confidence, and Document Statuses.
”The documents are read - but do they agree with each other?”
This is the question single-document tools can’t answer. Once at least two documents in the shipment finish processing, CargoLint runs cross-document consistency checks automatically, and re-runs them whenever a document is added or reprocessed (or on demand with Re-evaluate). It’s the same comparison a customs officer makes: do the invoice, packing list, and bill of lading tell the same story - same parties, same quantities, same values, same origin?
See Shipment Consistency Checks.
”One document has fields it wasn’t sure about. How do I fix them?”
Open it from the Review Queue. The side-by-side editor puts the original image on the left and the extracted fields on the right, with the low-confidence fields highlighted. Click a field, compare it against the original, correct it, and Approve. The document leaves the queue and is marked complete.
”The shipment says the documents don’t match. Now what?”
Open the shipment to see its Consistency Checklist. Each finding carries a severity (critical, warning, or note), shows the conflicting values observed on each document, explains in plain language what the mismatch means, and links straight to the documents involved. You fix the problem at its source - correct the document that’s wrong - and the checks re-run against the new values.
See Shipment Consistency Checks.
”A line item has no HS code, or the wrong one. How do I classify it?”
In the review editor, click the HS code field to open Find HS Code. Describe the goods in plain trade language and CargoLint’s AI returns ranked Harmonized System codes, each with its full description and a confidence score. When a classification is ambiguous, it asks one-click attribute questions - material, use, form - to narrow it down. Apply the right one with Use this code.
”I keep classifying the same products. Do I have to redo this every time?”
No - this is where the product catalog pays off. As you review line items, CargoLint matches each line to your catalog by shipper plus product code or description. A catalogued product brings its saved HS code with it; a line whose code differs prompts you to update the catalog; an uncatalogued product prompts you to add it. Classify a product once and it’s reused on every future shipment.
The catalog is curated - you decide what goes in - so it stays a clean, trusted reference instead of filling with noise.
See Managing the Product Catalog.
”What about the companies - do I retype the shipper and consignee every time?”
No. Parties - shippers and consignees - are saved automatically when you approve a document, and recalled by name or address as you type, so a known company fills in with one click. CargoLint also warns about near-duplicates (the same address under a different company, or the same company at a new address) so your parties stay clean.
Unlike the catalog, parties are learned - they fill in from the documents you approve. A company can be both a shipper and a consignee across different shipments, and CargoLint tracks both roles.
See Managing Parties.
”The goods on the document are wrong. Can I change the line items?”
Yes. Add, edit, or remove line items - descriptions, quantities, values, HS codes - directly in the review editor. Because the line items feed the shipment’s cross-checks, your edits flow straight into the consistency results and the catalog prompts.
”A corrected or missing document just arrived. How do I bring it in?”
Use Add documents on the shipment page. CargoLint processes the new file, and because the shipment changed, it automatically re-runs the consistency checks against the updated set - no need to re-evaluate by hand. Uploading a newer version of a type replaces the old one for checks, so swapping in a corrected document is often faster than fixing findings one by one.
”I need a document I don’t have, like a packing list. Do I have to make it by hand?”
Not if you have the invoice. CargoLint can generate a packing list from approved invoice data: open the invoice, click Generate Packing List, review the preview, and download the PDF. So a document in a shipment can come from an upload or be created from data you already hold.
See How to Generate Packing Lists from Invoices.
”The next shipment just arrived. Do I start over?”
The same loop, but faster. Create a new shipment at upload, drop in its invoice, packing list, and bill of lading, and the cycle repeats - extract, review, check, classify. Except now your catalog already knows the products and your parties already include these companies, so extraction recalls more and you correct less. The product gets sharper with every shipment you clear.
What’s next
- Quick Start - The fastest path to your first processed document
- Working with Shipments - The shipment lifecycle in depth
- Shipment Consistency Checks - Every cross-document check and what each severity means
- Managing the Product Catalog and Managing Parties - The catalog and parties that make each shipment faster than the last