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Solution · Legal & complianceEvery damage report opens a file with its deadlines counted from the delivery date
Claim files complete before the deadline, not after it
A damage report from any channel opens a claim file, pulls the evidence your systems already hold, names what is missing, and starts recovery against the carrier and the insurer.
Executive summary
The customer deducts the damage; the note, the photographs and the temperature record are in four places.
We build the claim as a record rather than a thread.
The file exists from the first hour, so a position is prepared while the evidence is still retrievable and the windows are open.
the claim record and the load in the TMS; WMS handling events; the SharePoint claim archive
Business problem
Claims and liability
A cargo claim is not correspondence. It is a file with dates attached, and the dates belong to the delivery rather than to the office. What the company pays depends less on who was at fault than on what it can show, and when.
The evidence almost always exists somewhere. The signed note with the consignee's remark is in a mailbox or an archive, the photographs are in a driver application or on a phone, the temperature record sits in telematics as long as retention allows, the order and the subcontracting chain are in the TMS. None of it is indexed by claim, so a person becomes the index and fetches each item by email from whoever might have it.
That search runs against a clock the office does not control. Where the CMR governs the carriage, reservations for damage that is not apparent must be sent within seven days of delivery, Sundays and public holidays excepted; for delay the period is twenty-one days; Article 32(1) allows one year to bring an action. When the load was subcontracted, the notification owed to the carrier who moved the goods runs from that same delivery, not from the day the deduction landed. So the desk triages: large claims get a file, small ones get absorbed.
How it works today
Channels and systems differ between operators; the sequence rarely does.
- PersonA damage report arrives as an email, a portal message, a remark on a returned delivery document or a phone call
- WaitingIt waits in whichever mailbox it landed in until the desk works through the backlog, typically days
- PersonA case is opened in a spreadsheet, then evidence is requested one email at a time from four systems and three people
- Risk of errorThe notification window is counted, if at all, from the day the office noticed rather than the delivery
- WaitingThe subcontractor is chased when somebody remembers, and recovery is raised only where the amount justifies the work
- Risk of errorThe insurer is notified late, or not at all, below an amount nobody has written down
- PersonThe file closes when the deduction is accepted, and the reasoning survives as a sentence in an email
Why the current process costs more than it appears
Nobody planned this work; it accumulated.
- Evidence is cheap on the day of delivery and expensive a month later. Photographs are deleted from phones, telematics records age out of retention, and the warehouseman who saw the pallet remembers a different one.
- Weight decides the ceiling, and nobody files it. Where the CMR governs the carriage and the 1978 Protocol applies, liability is capped at 8.33 units of account per kilogram of gross weight short, so a file without the packing list lacks the number that limits the exposure.
- Recovery follows workload rather than entitlement. A desk assembling every file by hand writes off the claims too small to justify the assembly, and those are most of them.
- Nobody prices the exposure while it is open. Claims live in mailboxes rather than a register, so the amount at risk this quarter is answered with an estimate.
Cost of inaction
A missed window does not produce an argument. It produces a payment, entered as a deduction on a freight invoice or a goodwill credit, and neither entry records that the loss belonged to somebody else. The rows above count desk time only: nothing about the small claims never passed on, the deductions accepted because a note could not be found in time, or what a poor loss record costs at the next renewal.
Volume makes this worse in a way hiring does not fix. Every new contract adds a customer whose terms differ, every new subcontractor a party whose response time is unknown, and the desk answers by triaging harder. It becomes visible at a renewal, and by then the loss record has been made.
A plausible organisation with realistic proportions. The figures are there to be recalculated on your data; they are not a client result.
A Central European logistics group: a groupage network with three cross-docks, two contract-logistics warehouses, 90 vehicles of its own and around 300 subcontracted carriers; a TMS, a WMS, Microsoft 365 E3, a claims desk of four.
260 claim files a month: roughly 150 damage in transit or at a cross-dock, 60 shortages, 30 delay claims, 20 total losses and refusals. About 60% of the underlying loads moved on a subcontracted carrier.
Reports arrive through four channels into three mailboxes. A spreadsheet holds the open cases, evidence is requested by email, and the deadline is whatever the handler remembers.
Around 55 minutes per claim of gathering and chasing before anyone can take a position, and a recovery leg opened for large claims and skipped for the rest.
Every report opens a file with its dates calculated from the delivery; robots attach the evidence your systems hold, name what is missing and task whoever can supply it; the recovery notice and the insurer pack come out of the same file.
In the modelled case the file is complete while the windows are open, recovery is opened on every claim instead of the large ones, and the desk spends its day deciding claims rather than finding documents. It is a design intention expressed as a model; no client's numbers are behind it.
Proposed solution
We build the claim as a record rather than a thread. A report arriving in any channel creates a file with its reference, the load, the loss type, the amount claimed and a set of dates: the delivery, your customer's admissibility window, the window on the leg you must pass on, your policy's notification period and the limitation date. The rules that produce those dates belong to the claims lead.
Evidence collection is deterministic and unglamorous, which is the point. Robots take the load reference and fetch what your systems hold: the note and any remark on it from the archive, the order, the rate and the subcontracting chain from the TMS, the handling events from the WMS, the temperature record from telematics, the photographs from the driver application. UiPath Document Understanding reads what arrives as a document: the damage report and protocol, the invoice that establishes value, the packing list that fixes weight, the repair quotation. What cannot be fetched becomes a named gap, with an owner and a date.
People are asked for exactly what is missing, in Microsoft Teams, with the claim reference and the deadline on the card. A file that passes the completeness rule for its loss type reaches the desk with everything attached, a recovery notice drafted from the transport order's terms and an insurer pack indexed as the policy asks.
UiPath Document Understanding pre-trained models for invoices, packing lists and bills of lading, plus a model configured on your own damage reports; Validation Station in UiPath Action Center; UiPath Orchestrator queues, triggers and audit; UiPath Integration Service connectors for Microsoft Outlook 365 and Microsoft OneDrive & SharePoint; Action Center tasks inside Microsoft Teams; Microsoft SharePoint under Microsoft Purview retention; Power BI
The claim record, the deadline rules per loss type and contract, the evidence map, the completeness rules, the collection robots, the gap tasks and their escalation, the document templates and the reporting
The TMS and the WMS through whatever interface each product offers, usually a scheduled file exchange or an API; the telematics export; customer portals where a report sits behind a login
How the automated process works
- AutomationA report in the claims mailbox, a portal message, a reservation flagged on a returned transport document or a depot form opens a claim file in an Orchestrator queue
- AutomationDocument Understanding reads the report, protocol, invoice, packing list or quotation and returns the consignment reference, the delivery date, the packages and weight affected, the amount claimed
- SystemA robot matches the file to the load and order chain in the TMS, then calculates every date from the delivery: your customer's window, the window on the subcontracted leg, the insurer's period, the limitation date
- AutomationEvidence already held is filed against the claim: the note and its remark, the proof of delivery, the WMS events, the telematics record, the photographs, the order and the rate
- PersonWhat is missing becomes a task in Microsoft Teams naming the claim, the item and the date it is due; the subcontractor gets the same request by email
- PersonThe complete file reaches the desk with the recovery notice and insurer pack drafted; liability and the position taken are decided by a person
- AutomationEach morning the open files are aged, those approaching a window escalate in Teams, and exposure and recovery feed a Power BI view
Human-in-the-loop model
Automation handles
- Opening the file from any channel, reading the documents and matching the claim to the load and order chain
- Calculating every date from the delivery and warning before each falls due
- Collecting the evidence that exists, and naming, assigning and chasing what does not
- Assembling the recovery notice and the insurer pack, and recording who supplied what, and when
People decide
- Liability: what is admitted, what is contested, what is offered
- Whether a loss is passed to the subcontractor, to the insurer, or carried
- The rules: notification periods per contract, completeness per loss type, the wording of the notices
Before and after
Systems and integrations
Where a rule suffices we do not use a model. Where judgement is needed, a person decides.
Inputs
- claims mailbox in Outlook
- customer portals
- reservations flagged on returned transport documents
- a depot damage form
- subcontractor replies
Automation layer
- UiPath Orchestrator
- UiPath Robots
- UiPath Document Understanding
- UiPath Integration Service
- UiPath Action Center
Target systems
- the claim record and the load in the TMS
- WMS handling events
- the SharePoint claim archive
- Power BI
Human touchpoints: evidence tasks and deadline warnings in Microsoft Teams; Validation Station for unreadable scans; the claims-desk decision
Technologies used
reads damage reports, protocols, invoices, packing lists, quotations; Validation Station for the unreadable
Aopen the file, collect the evidence, run the daily ageing, retries and audit
Awatches the claims mailbox, files the documents
Aevidence gaps and the desk decision as tasks with due dates
Aevidence requests, deadline warnings, recovery status
Athe claim file, with customer, carrier and loss-type metadata under Microsoft Purview retention
Aopen exposure, recovery rate, deadline compliance, damage by carrier and lane
Asources of the load, the order chain, the rate, the events, the temperature record
CIllustrative economic model
Start by questioning the assumptions.
Gathering is the only part of a claim that behaves like a repeatable task, so it is the only part priced here: the note and its remark, the photographs, the temperature record, the order chain, the subcontractor's answer. What the loss costs and what is finally recovered sit outside the arithmetic. €23 an hour is a fully loaded claims-desk cost in Central Europe, and every input is illustrative.
Run the numbers on your data
An illustrative estimate from your own inputs. It models released capacity; it is not a promise of savings.
Business benefits
- The file exists from the first hour, so a position is prepared while the evidence is still retrievable and the windows are open
- Recovery is opened on every claim, not only on the ones large enough to justify the assembly, which is where the absorbed losses sit
- Notification to a subcontracted carrier goes out on a date calculated from the delivery, not from the day the customer wrote
- An answer carrying the note, the photographs and the record reaches the customer earlier, and ends more disputes than a promise to look into it
The management view
- Exposure becomes a number instead of a feeling: claims open, amounts claimed, admitted and under recovery, by customer, carrier and loss type
- Deadline compliance is measured on the files rather than promised in a procedure, and a missed window becomes an event with a reason
- Damage stops being anecdotal: loss frequency per carrier, lane and cross-dock is a fact for the next rate negotiation
Board-level KPIs
Security and governance
Trust in automation is built on the audit trail, not on a promise.
- Each robot has its own identity and the narrowest rights that work: read on telematics and WMS records, write on the claim record alone, mailbox access scoped to the claims address
- Portal and system passwords are held in the credential store instead of a shared file, so rotating one does not require a developer
- The claim file, its documents and its decisions stay in your Microsoft 365 tenant, and the robots that assemble them run from the EU region of UiPath Automation Cloud
- Retention follows Microsoft Purview labels set to what your contracts, your insurer and the limitation period require; deadline rules and standard wordings are versioned and approved by the claims lead, which is what makes a missed window explainable
Why now
More of the freight your company sells moves on somebody else's truck, and every subcontracted leg adds a party you must notify inside a window counted from delivery. IRU's report published on 30 June 2026 puts unfilled truck driver positions in Europe at around 502,000, with some 660,500 European drivers expected to retire by 2030.
The modelled €5,482 a month is spent whether or not a claim is recovered, and it buys only the search; the losses absorbed because a file was never assembled sit outside that figure.
Assembling a file from systems that already hold the evidence is now configuration rather than a development project: pre-trained document models, connectors watching a mailbox and an archive, tasks completed inside Microsoft Teams.
Relevant executive roles
Deductions and goodwill payments stop being a cost of doing business and become a recovery rate with a number against it
Depots and dispatchers are asked for one named item with a date on it, instead of being chased for a file somebody else is assembling
Every claim gets the same file, the same clock and the same evidence, whatever its size and whoever is on holiday
Common questions and objections
That is the current process talking, and it is why the small ones are absorbed. When assembly costs minutes rather than an hour, recovery is worth opening on a claim of a few hundred euro, which is where the volume is.
The file does not wait for them. The notification goes out on the date calculated from delivery with what you hold, the request is timestamped, the answer chased on a clock. A carrier's response time becomes a figure for the next rate conversation rather than a complaint.
No. Robots open the file, fetch the evidence, count the dates and draft the notices. Liability, the amount admitted and the position taken belong to your claims desk, and every decision is recorded with its author.
When this is not the right solution
- Below roughly one claim a working day, where one experienced person carries the register and a folder of templates is the cheaper answer
- The delivery date and the order chain are not reliably recorded, so no clock can be started and no leg identified; the transport records come first
- Your transport orders say nothing about liability, notification or the documents a carrier must return; the contract terms come before any automation
A question for the next management meeting
For every euro our customers deducted from us last year, how many did we recover from the carrier or the insurer who was liable, and what happened to the rest?
Implementation approach
We start with one slice of the process and extend only once it is proven.
We deliver
- A read of one quarter of your claims: channels, loss types, amounts, assembly time, missed windows
- The claim record, and the deadline rules per loss type, contract and regime
- The evidence map: which system holds each item, how a robot fetches it, how long it survives there
- The document model for your damage reports, the completeness rules, the robots, the gap tasks in Teams
- The recovery and insurer documents, the claim archive with retention, the Power BI view and a runbook
We need from you
- Three months of claims with their evidence, the dates each was reported, answered and closed
- The notification and liability terms in your contracts and transport orders, and what your policy requires
- A process owner on the claims desk, and technical accounts for the mailbox, the TMS, the WMS and telematics
Stages
Discovery
One quarter of claims by channel, loss type and amount; where each piece of evidence lives
Design
The claim record, the deadline rules, the evidence map, the completeness rules, the security model
Build
Collection robots, the document model, the TMS and WMS integration, the Teams tasks
Validation
A replay on historical claims: would the file have been complete, would the window have been met
Go-live
One loss type and one branch first, then the rest, with hypercare and rule tuning
Departmental. Effort is driven by the number of systems holding evidence, how many notification regimes your contracts create, and whether a load and a claim share a reference a machine can match.
Seven days from delivery, and the photographs are still on somebody's phone.
Send us one quarter of your claims: loss type, amount, the date it was reported and the date the file was complete. You get back a deadline-compliance read on your own cases and an evidence map showing where each item already lives.
Age your open claims against the deadlinesThe neighbouring process usually has the same problem
Freight is delivered, invoiced and disputed before anyone finds the signed document.
View solution Legal & complianceInsurance policies, renewals and claims on one registerYour whole insurance programme is administered from one workbook and one person's mailbox.
View solution Finance & accountingFreight billed the day it is delivered, not the month afterOrders wait for the month-end billing run, and the accessorials written on a driver's note are never billed.
View solutionIndustries we deliver this in most oftenTransport & logistics