Reconciling weighbridge tickets, delivery tickets and invoices at a quarry
Every load that leaves a quarry exists four times: as an order line, a weighbridge ticket, a signed delivery ticket and an invoice line. Reconciling them means proving, for each load, that the four describe the same truck, the same material and the same tonnes, and holding the ones that do not until someone with the right to decide has decided. This guide gives the identity of a load, the rules for tare and units, how to find missing and duplicate tickets, who may correct what, and a worked day of ten loads with every anomaly resolved.
- Published
- Sources checked
- Reading time
- 17 min
- Written by
- Mirage Metrics team
Scope: aggregates, sand and stone sold by weight from a quarry weighbridge, with owned and subcontracted trucks. It covers the method and the controls, not the choice of weighbridge hardware or software. The legal points are jurisdiction-labelled and limited to what the cited texts say.
Decision snapshot
- Best suited to
- Quarry managers, weighbridge and dispatch leads, finance and credit control, and whoever owns the weighbridge software and the ERP at a site that bills customers by the tonne.
- Inputs needed
- The day's weighbridge tickets with tare source and timestamps, the delivery tickets as signed, the open orders, the vehicle and haulier lists with stored tares, the draft invoice lines, and the exit camera or gate log if there is one.
- What can be automated
- Matching tickets to orders, delivery tickets and invoice lines; sequence and duplicate checks; flagging stored tares against weighed ones; building invoice lines from tickets; comparing customer weights with tickets; routing each anomaly with its evidence.
- What requires human approval
- Voiding a ticket after departure, accepting a return, correcting a billed quantity, deciding a load with no ticket, accepting a variance with a customer, and changing tolerances or stored tares.
- When this approach is insufficient
- When trucks regularly leave without being weighed, or tickets are written by hand: fix the gate first. Also when the contract does not say which weight governs: no reconciliation can settle a dispute the contract leaves open.
What identifies one load across systems
A load has no single identifier that every system shares. The order lives in the ERP or the dispatch tool, the ticket in the weighbridge software, the delivery ticket on paper or in a driver app, the invoice line in billing. Reconciliation starts by deciding which fields carry the identity from one to the next, and by making the ticket number the spine: every other record should point to it.
| Field | Created in | What it is for | How it goes wrong |
|---|---|---|---|
| Order number | Sales or order desk, in the ERP or dispatch tool | Says what was sold: customer, product, site, price basis | Truck loaded against the wrong order, or against none |
| Vehicle registration and fleet number | Vehicle master; read at the gate by a camera or typed by the operator | Links the weighings of one truck and its stored tare | Plate typed wrong, trailer swapped, unknown haulier truck |
| Haulier and driver | Haulier list, driver card or the operator's entry | Who carried the load, who signed, who gets paid | Subcontracted truck recorded as the quarry's own |
| Ticket number | Weighbridge software, one per weighing transaction | The spine of the reconciliation: every other record should point to it | Reprints issued under a new number; voids without a reason |
| First and second weighing timestamps | Weighbridge indicator or its software | Order the events; show whether the tare was weighed today | Clock drift between the weighbridge PC and the ERP |
| Product or grade | Order, then the loader's or operator's selection | Prices the line and moves the stock | 0/20 loaded on a 0/31.5 order; product changed on the ticket afterwards |
| Loading point and destination | Dispatch, loader terminal, delivery site on the order | Proves where the material came from and went | Delivered to the wrong site of the same customer |
| Delivery ticket number | Printed with the weighbridge ticket, or written by hand | What the customer signs; what the customer's accounts payable will compare | A handwritten note with no ticket behind it |
| Invoice line reference | Billing, in the ERP | Closes the chain: which tickets each line bills | A line with a quantity and no ticket numbers |
When a record carries no ticket number (a handwritten delivery ticket, an invoice line keyed from the order), match it on a composite key instead: vehicle, order, product and a time window. A composite match is a proposal for a person to confirm, never a silent link.
Orders, vehicles, weighings, deliveries: four records, one chain
The four records have different lifetimes. An order spans many loads; a vehicle spans many weighings; a ticket describes one load; a delivery confirms one ticket. Getting these cardinalities right is most of the work: a model that assumes one order per truck per day breaks on the first customer who orders 300 tonnes.
| Record | One per | Links to | Must hold |
|---|---|---|---|
| Order | One per customer purchase, often several days or weeks of loads | Many loads | Customer, product, site, ordered quantity, price basis, unit of sale |
| Vehicle | One per truck or trailer combination | Many weighings | Registration, haulier, stored tare and the date it was taken, maximum gross |
| Weighing (ticket) | One per load leaving or arriving | One load; a return gets its own ticket | Ticket number, gross, tare and its source, net, times, product, order, vehicle |
| Delivery | One per load delivered | One ticket | Delivery ticket number, signature, time, site, any quantity the customer records |
| Invoice line | Per load or per period, per order | One or many tickets | Ticket numbers billed, quantity, unit, price |
- A load is one ticket. One truck, one departure, one weighed net. A truck and trailer weighed together are one load; uncoupled and weighed separately, they are two weighings summed into one load, and the ticket should say so.
- A return is a new ticket. It refers to the original ticket and never overwrites it.
- An invoice line names its tickets. Whether it bills one load or a day of loads, the list of ticket numbers is what makes it checkable.
Tare, gross, net and units
| Weight | What it is | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Gross | Vehicle and load on the deck, weighed | Always weighed on the day |
| Tare, weighed | Empty vehicle on the deck, weighed on the same visit or the same day | The strongest basis for a net |
| Tare, stored (preset) | A value saved in the weighbridge software from an earlier weighing and reused | Saves a weighing; wrong as soon as the truck changes (trailer, crane, fuel, mud, body) |
| Net | Gross minus tare | The quantity sold, in tonnes, unless the contract says otherwise |
Stored tare against weighed tare
A stored tare saves the truck a second trip over the deck, which is why most sites use them for regular hauliers. It is also the most common source of a wrong net that nobody sees: the haulier fits a different trailer, adds a crane, or the body carries a few hundred kilos of wet fines, and every load is billed on yesterday's truck. Four rules keep it under control:
- Every stored tare carries the date it was weighed and who saved it, and expires after a period you set.
- The ticket shows whether the tare was weighed or stored. OIML R 76-1 asks for a preset tare to be printed with the net calculated from it, marked PT.
- Each time a truck with a stored tare is weighed empty, compare the two; above a threshold you set, the stored value is replaced and the loads billed since it was last confirmed are reviewed.
- A stored tare is never edited to make a net look right. It is replaced by a weighing, with the old value kept in the log.
Units
Quarries sell by the tonne because the weighbridge weighs in kilograms or tonnes. Bill in the unit of the ticket. Convert to cubic metres only when the contract specifies it, and then only with the density the contract names for that product; the density is a commercial term, not a physical constant of "sand". With an invented contract density of 1.6 t/m³ for 0/4 sand, a 27.20 t load is billed as 27.20 ÷ 1.6 = 17.00 m³, and the ticket still says 27.20 t. Round once, at the invoice line, to the precision the contract states, and keep the scale interval of the instrument in mind: a weighbridge that reads in 20 kg steps cannot settle a 10 kg dispute.
Legal-for-trade weighing, by jurisdiction
A weighbridge used to bill customers by weight is, in most jurisdictions, a regulated instrument. The points below state only what the cited texts say; your own obligations depend on your instrument, its approval and the use you make of it, and your verifier or the authority in charge of legal metrology is the one to confirm them.
- International recommendation (OIML). OIML R 76-1 is the international recommendation for non-automatic weighing instruments, which is what a weighbridge weighing a stationary truck normally is. It defines a preset tare value as one introduced into the instrument (keyed in, recalled from storage or sent through an interface) to be applied to other weighings, and requires that when a net calculated from a preset tare is printed, the preset tare is printed too, marked "PT" or in full words (T.5.3.1 and 4.7.3). Its maximum permissible errors do not apply to net values calculated from a preset tare (2.2).
- France. Weighing instruments used for one of the regulated purposes, commercial transactions among them, fall under the legal metrology decree no. 2001-387 of 3 May 2001. The holder must use a certified instrument, have it verified periodically by an approved body (every year for weighing instruments other than those of 30 kg or less used for direct sale to the public), keep a metrological logbook where the rules for the instrument category require one, and have repairs done by a State-identified repairer; an instrument with a red sticker or an expired green one must not be used (DREETS Pays de la Loire, 2023). The ministry gave the same periodicity in a 2021 answer to the Senate (JO Sénat, 23 September 2021).
- Great Britain. Under section 11 of the Weights and Measures Act 1985, weighing equipment of a prescribed class may not be used for trade unless it has been passed by an inspector or approved verifier as fit for that use and bears an undefaced stamp saying so; using it otherwise is an offence (s. 11(1) to (3)).
- United States. NIST Handbook 44 sets specifications, tolerances and other technical requirements for commercial weighing devices and is adopted by many state, local and some federal weights and measures authorities (NIST, 2026 edition); whether it binds you depends on your state. Its scales code requires a vehicle to be commercially weighed on a vehicle scale as a single draft, not by adding separately weighed ends, with two narrow exceptions (section 2.20, UR.3.3).
What it means for reconciliation
Reconciliation sits around the regulated weighing, never inside it. The ticket the instrument produced is evidence and stays as issued; a correction is a separate record that points to it. Keep the instrument's verification status with the day's tickets, so a customer who questions a weight can be shown that the instrument was in date.
Missing and duplicate tickets
Missing and duplicate tickets are found by counting, not by reading. Each check below compares two lists that should have the same members; the anomaly is whatever appears on one list and not the other.
| Check | How it shows up | Who acts |
|---|---|---|
| Gap in the ticket sequence | Ticket numbers are consecutive; a missing number is listed | Weighbridge operator explains it; a void without a reason goes to the quarry manager |
| Ticket without a delivery ticket | The ticket exists, no delivery ticket or signature came back | Dispatch chases the driver or the haulier; the load is not invoiced until the delivery is confirmed, if your contract requires a signature |
| Delivery ticket without a ticket | A signed delivery ticket matches no ticket | Held: no weighed quantity exists; finance and the quarry manager decide on the basis the contract allows |
| Exit without a ticket | The exit camera, the barrier log or GPS shows a loaded truck leaving with no ticket | Held, same as above; the weighbridge outage or bypass is logged |
| Duplicate ticket | Same vehicle, same order, same gross within a few scale intervals, a few minutes apart, no tare weighing in between | Weighbridge operator voids one with a reason; the void is reviewed |
| Reprint | Same ticket number printed twice | No action on quantities; the reprint is logged so billing never counts it twice |
The sequence check has a blind spot worth knowing: a truck that leaves during a weighbridge outage leaves no gap, because no ticket was ever issued. Only an independent record of the exit (a camera, a barrier log, GPS, the loader's count) finds it.
Returns, cancellations and corrections
Three different events, often recorded the same way, which is how billing ends up crediting the wrong load. Keep them apart:
- Cancellation (void): the ticket should not exist. A load aborted at the deck, a ticket on the wrong order caught before departure, a duplicate. The ticket is kept, marked void, with a reason.
- Return: the material came back. Refused on site, wrong grade, contaminated. The truck is weighed in, a return ticket refers to the original, and the material goes back to a stockpile you name.
- Correction: the weighing happened, but the quantity to bill is different. A stored tare found wrong, a load split between two orders. The ticket is unchanged; a correction record carries the new billed quantity.
| Action | Who may do it | What the audit trail holds |
|---|---|---|
| Void a ticket before the truck leaves (wrong order, wrong product, aborted load) | Weighbridge operator | Reason from a fixed list; original kept, marked void |
| Void a ticket after the truck has left | Quarry manager | Reason, evidence (camera frame, driver statement), linked replacement ticket if any |
| Issue a return ticket | Weighbridge operator | Reference to the original ticket; return reason; who accepted the return |
| Correct a quantity for billing (for example, a stored tare found wrong) | Quarry manager, with finance informed | Original ticket unchanged; correction record with old value, new value, basis and approver; customer informed |
| Accept a variance with a customer | Finance or sales, per your delegation | The variance, the evidence on both sides, the decision and the credit note or invoice it produced |
| Change stored tares, product lists, tolerance rules | Systems owner, on request from operations | Change log: old and new value, date, requester |
Quantity variances and tolerances
A variance is a difference between two quantities that should describe the same thing. Name each comparison, because each has different causes and a different owner.
| Comparison | What to expect | Usual causes of a difference |
|---|---|---|
| Ticket against delivery ticket | Should be identical when the delivery ticket is printed from the ticket | A handwritten delivery ticket, a product changed after printing, a ticket reissued |
| Ticket against the customer's receiving weight | Two instruments, two times, sometimes rain or spillage in between | Instrument accuracy, verification status of either scale, losses on the road, a stored tare |
| Delivered against invoiced | Should be identical when invoice lines are built from tickets | Quantities keyed from the order, a duplicate billed, a return not credited |
| Ordered against delivered | Normal to differ load by load; the order closes on the total | Truckloads rounded to a nominal tonnage, an order over-delivered |
There is no universal tolerance. The threshold between "accept" and "investigate" comes from the contract or, where it is silent, from your own written policy, and it may differ by product and by customer. Write down three things per customer: which weight governs (yours, theirs, or a rule for disagreements), the threshold above which a variance is investigated, and the period within which the customer can raise one. Without those, every variance is a negotiation.
Linking the loads to invoicing
The invoice is the last record in the chain and the one most often built from the wrong source. Build every invoice line from reconciled tickets, never from the ordered quantity and never by retyping the delivery ticket.
- A load reaches billing only once it is matched, or once its anomaly has a decision.
- Each line lists its ticket numbers, so a customer's accounts payable team can check it against the delivery tickets they hold.
- Held loads stay out of the invoice run and appear in a held list with their reason, so nobody forgets them at period end.
- Haulier payments for subcontracted trucks come from the same reconciled loads, so the quarry pays for what it billed and the haulier's own count is a cross-check, not the source.
- Period cut-off is by weighing time on the ticket, stated once, so a load weighed at 23:50 on the last day falls in one period only.
The same three-way logic, order against delivery against invoice, is what a shipper uses to audit carrier invoices; here the quarry is the one issuing the invoice, so the check runs before it goes out.
Worked example: one day, ten loads
Illustrative example, invented figures: one working day at a quarry, three customers, four trucks
Assumptions, all invented. Three open orders: O-501 for customer A (0/20 gravel), O-502 for customer B (20/40 aggregate), O-503 for customer C (0/4 sand). Trucks V-101 (the quarry's own), V-205 and V-412 (haulier H1), V-310 (haulier H2). The weighbridge prints the delivery ticket with the ticket. An exit camera reads plates. The weighbridge was offline from 13:30 to 13:50. Weights in tonnes. Customer B's contract says the quarry's ticket governs and that a difference above 1% with the customer's own weighing is investigated: an invented term for this example, not a norm. The billing system drafted the invoice lines from the ticket export and the delivery tickets before anyone reconciled them.
| Load | Ticket | Time | Vehicle | Order and product | Tare | Gross | Net |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| L1 | T-2041 | 07:05 | V-101 (own) | O-501, 0/20 | 14.20 weighed | 42.60 | 28.40 |
| L2 | T-2042 | 07:20 | V-205 (haulier H1) | O-502, 20/40 | 13.86 weighed | 41.96 | 28.10 |
| L3 | T-2043 | 07:40 | V-412 (haulier H1) | O-502, 20/40 | 14.06 weighed | 42.36 | 28.30 |
| L4 | T-2044 | 08:10 | V-310 (haulier H2) | O-503, 0/4 | 12.94 weighed | 40.14 | 27.20 |
| L4 | T-2045 | 08:13 | V-310 (haulier H2) | O-503, 0/4 | 12.94 weighed | 40.14 | 27.20 |
| L5 | T-2046 | 08:50 | V-101 (own) | O-501, 0/20 | 14.22 weighed | 43.08 | 28.86 |
| L7 | T-2047 | 10:30 | V-310 (haulier H2) | O-503, 0/4 | 12.96 weighed | 40.40 | 27.44 |
| L8 | T-2048 | 11:05 | V-101 (own) | O-501, 0/20 | 14.20 weighed | 42.86 | 28.66 |
| L7 return | R-0012 | 12:15 | V-310 (haulier H2) | O-503, 0/4, returned | 12.96 weighed | 40.38 | 27.42 |
| L6 | none | 13:41 | V-205 (haulier H1) | O-502, 20/40 | none | none | none |
| L9 | T-2049 | 14:20 | V-412 (haulier H1) | O-502, 20/40 | 13.10 stored (PT) | 42.28 | 29.18 |
| L10 | T-2050 | 15:30 | V-205 (haulier H1) | O-502, 20/40 | 13.88 weighed | 41.94 | 28.06 |
| Load | Ticket | Delivery ticket | Draft invoice | To bill | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| L1 | T-2041 | 28.40, signed | A: 28.40 | 28.40 | Matched |
| L2 | T-2042 | 28.10, signed | B: 28.10 | 28.10 | Matched |
| L3 | T-2043 | 28.30, signed | B: 28.30 | 28.30 | Matched |
| L4 | T-2044 and T-2045 | 27.20, signed (one note carried) | C: 27.20 twice | 27.20 | Duplicate voided |
| L5 | T-2046 | 28.86, signed | A: 28.86 | 28.86 | Matched |
| L6 | none | Handwritten, "28 t approx.", signed | B: 28.00 | 0, held | Held: no weight |
| L7 | T-2047, R-0012 | Refused on site, not signed | C: 27.44 | 0 | Return, not billed |
| L8 | T-2048 | 28.66, signed | A: 30.00 | 28.66 | Invoice line corrected |
| L9 | T-2049 | 29.18, signed | B: 29.18 | 28.22 | Tare corrected, approved |
| L10 | T-2050 | 28.06, signed; customer weighed 27.70 | B: 28.06 | 28.06 | Variance explained |
What each anomaly was, and how it was decided
- L4, duplicate. T-2044 and T-2045 have the same truck, order, gross and tare, three minutes apart, with no weighing in between: the printer jammed and the operator issued the ticket again under a new number. T-2045 is voided with the reason "reissue after printer fault", and the draft line for it is removed.
- L6, missing ticket. The ticket sequence has no gap (T-2048 at 11:05 is followed by T-2049 at 14:20). The exit camera read V-205 leaving loaded at 13:41, during the outage, and the driver came back with a handwritten delivery ticket saying "28 t approx.", signed by customer B. No weighed quantity exists, so the 28.00 t draft line is removed and the load is held for the quarry manager and finance, who will agree the basis with customer B under the contract. It is not billed today.
- L7, return. Customer C refused the load on site. V-310 came back loaded at 12:15 and was weighed in at 40.38 t gross; after tipping on the returns stockpile, its tare was 12.96 t, so return ticket R-0012 shows 27.42 t returned against 27.44 t sent. The 0.02 t is one scale interval of this invented weighbridge. The load is not billed, the stock goes back, and the refusal reason is recorded with a photo.
- L8, invoice line mismatch. The draft line for T-2048 says 30.00 t, the order's nominal truckload, keyed from the order instead of the ticket. The ticket says 28.66 t, the signed delivery ticket says 28.66 t. The line is rebuilt from the ticket: 30.00 minus 28.66 is 1.34 t that would have been billed and disputed.
- L9, stored tare. T-2049 used V-412's stored tare of 13.10 t, saved four months earlier and marked PT on the ticket. The same truck was weighed empty at 14.06 t that morning on L3, and again at 14.04 t when it came back at 16:10, at the quarry manager's request: the haulier had changed the trailer. The billed quantity is corrected to 42.28 minus 14.06 = 28.22 t (the manager used the higher of the two weighed tares, so the customer is not billed for the doubt). The ticket is unchanged, the correction record carries both values, customer B receives a corrected delivery statement, and the stored tare is replaced by 14.04 t. On this one load the stored tare overstated the net by 0.96 t, 3.4% of 28.22 t.
- L10, customer weight. Customer B weighed V-205 at 27.70 t on arrival against 28.06 t on T-2050: 0.36 t less, 1.28% of the ticket. That is above the contract's 1% investigation threshold, so finance sends both weights to the customer and asks for the receiving scale's last verification date. Under the contract the quarry's ticket governs, and 28.06 t is billed; the investigation is recorded with the line.
| Customer and order | Draft invoices | Reconciled, to bill | Difference and cause |
|---|---|---|---|
| A (O-501, 0/20) | 87.26 | 85.92 | minus 1.34: L8 billed at the order's nominal 30 t |
| B (O-502, 20/40) | 141.64 | 112.68 | minus 28.96: L6 held (28.00), L9 tare corrected (0.96) |
| C (O-503, 0/4) | 81.84 | 27.20 | minus 54.64: duplicate T-2045 (27.20), returned load L7 (27.44) |
| Total | 310.74 | 225.80 | minus 84.94, and one load held for a decision |
Check the totals: the ten outbound tickets, T-2041 to T-2050, sum to 281.40 t of net weight (the duplicate included, the return ticket excluded). Removing the duplicate (27.20), the returned load (27.44) and the stored-tare overstatement (0.96) leaves 225.80 t, which is what the reconciled column bills. The draft invoices said 310.74 t because they also carried L8 at its nominal 30.00 t and the handwritten 28.00 t for L6.
Evidence to keep for each load
Keep what lets someone who was not there understand the load six months later. Keep it as long as your accounting, tax and contractual obligations require, which your accountant can state for your jurisdiction.
- The weighbridge ticket as issued, with gross, tare, net, the tare's source (weighed or stored, marked PT where the instrument prints it) and both timestamps
- The delivery ticket, signed, with the name of the signatory and the time; a photo of it when the driver brings back paper
- The camera frames or plate reads at the deck and at the exit, if the site has cameras
- The vehicle's stored tare history: each value, when it was weighed, who saved it
- Voids, reprints and return tickets, each with its reason and the original it refers to
- The corrections log: old value, new value, basis, who approved, when, and the customer notice it produced
- The instrument's verification status on the day: the sticker or certificate and the logbook entry, where your jurisdiction requires them
- For each invoice line, the ticket numbers it bills
Handling and approving anomalies
An anomaly is only handled when a named person has decided it, with the evidence in front of them, and the decision is recorded. Route each type to one owner and give the owner a deadline tied to the invoice run, so nothing waits past the date it would have been billed.
| Anomaly | Owner | Evidence shown | Decisions | Deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Duplicate ticket | Weighbridge operator | Both tickets, times, weights, the camera frame if any | Void one, with a reason | Same shift |
| Missing ticket | Quarry manager, then finance | Delivery ticket, exit camera or GPS, weighbridge event log, the customer's own weighing if it exists | Invoice on the basis the contract allows, or not at all; log the outage | Before the period's invoices go out |
| Return | Weighbridge operator, then sales | Original ticket, return ticket, reason, photo of the material | Not billed, or credited; stock moved back; reason recorded | Same day |
| Stored tare suspect | Quarry manager | Stored tare and its date, the truck's weighed tares, today's gross | Correct the billed quantity, inform the customer, update or delete the stored tare | Before invoicing |
| Invoice line differs from tickets | Finance | Ticket numbers behind the line, the line's source | Rebuild the line from tickets | Before sending |
| Customer weight differs | Finance or sales | Both weights, both instruments' verification status, the contract clause | Apply the contract; credit or hold the line; record the decision | Within the dispute period the contract sets |
Review the decisions monthly by type. Many voids by the same operator, stored tares corrected for the same haulier, invoice lines keyed from orders: each pattern is a rule to change or a training gap, not a reason to add a reviewer.
The daily close
A short routine at the end of each working day catches most anomalies while the drivers can still be asked:
- Count loads that left (exit camera, gate log or loader count) against valid tickets. The difference is a missing ticket or a duplicate.
- List gaps in the ticket sequence and voids; each has a reason.
- List tickets issued on a stored tare, and compare each with the truck's latest weighed tare.
- List tickets with no signed delivery ticket yet.
- Compare the draft invoice lines with the tickets they cite; any line without ticket numbers is rebuilt.
- Carry every held load to the next day's list with its owner, until it is decided.
What can be automated, and where Mirage fits
Every check in this guide is a comparison between records the quarry already has, which is what makes it automatable: matching tickets to orders, delivery tickets and invoice lines, the sequence and duplicate checks, the stored-tare comparison, building invoice lines from tickets, and routing each anomaly to its owner with the evidence attached. The decisions in the anomaly table stay with people.
Mirage describes this on two capability pages: its weighbridge software reads the plate and the indicator, matches each weighing to its order and holds what does not reconcile before the ticket is issued, leaving the certified instrument and its ticket as they are; its quarry dispatch and TMS software follows each load from order to delivery and produces invoice and haulier lines from the reconciled record. Both pages say that Mirage has not published a weighbridge or quarry deployment on its own. The deployment at Mass Céréales Al Maghreb, a grain port operator, is in progress and connects its control layer to the terminals' weighing systems and weighbridges, among other systems; it publishes no result figure.
If you want to test the method on your own records, the document automation pilot guide sets out how to run one in parallel with your team before anything writes to billing. The fuel side of the same sites is covered in mine fuel reconciliation, and the wider picture on the mining and quarry operations page.
Questions readers ask
Do not edit it. The ticket records what the instrument weighed and stays as issued. A correction is a new record that refers to the ticket: the old value, the new value, the basis (a weighed tare, a return ticket, a void), who approved it and when. Billing uses the corrected quantity; the customer receives both, so the delivery ticket they signed and the invoice can be read together.
Weighing instruments can have a preset tare function, and OIML R 76-1 describes how it must be shown: a net calculated from a preset tare is printed with the preset tare, marked PT. Whether and how you may use it for trade depends on your instrument's approval and your national rules. In practice, give each stored tare a date and an expiry you set, re-weigh trucks regularly, and flag any stored tare that differs from the same truck's weighed tare by more than your threshold.
There is no universal figure. It is set by the contract or, where the contract is silent, by your own policy, and it should account for both instruments' accuracy class and verification status. Write down which weight governs, the threshold above which a variance is investigated, who decides, and how long the customer has to raise it.
Either works if every line lists the ticket numbers it bills. Per-load lines make a dispute about one load easy to isolate; period lines keep invoices short for customers who receive dozens of loads a day. What fails is a line whose quantity cannot be traced back to tickets.
No. The ticket, the delivery ticket and the invoice are enough to reconcile. Cameras add evidence: a plate read at the deck ties the ticket to the truck, and an exit camera finds the load that left without a ticket, which the ticket sequence alone cannot show.
Sources and scope
Checked on . Scope: reconciliation of quarry loads sold by weight. The method, tables and example are Mirage's own, with invented figures. Legal statements are limited to what each cited text says, labelled by jurisdiction; they are not legal advice.
- OIML R 76-1, Non-automatic weighing instruments, edition 2006: preset tare definition (T.5.3.1), printing of PT with a calculated net (4.7.3), maximum permissible errors not applying to calculated nets (2.2)
- DREETS Pays de la Loire, legal metrology leaflet (September 2023): France: regulated uses under decree 2001-387, holder obligations, periodic verification intervals, green and red stickers, repairs
- Senate written question and ministry answer, JO Sénat, 23 September 2021: France: periodic verification of non-automatic weighing instruments every two years (30 kg or less, direct sale) or every year (other instruments)
- Weights and Measures Act 1985, section 11 (legislation.gov.uk): Great Britain: equipment used for trade must be passed as fit for use and stamped
- NIST Handbook 44, 2026 edition (publication record): United States: scope of the handbook and its adoption by state, local and some federal authorities
- NIST Handbook 44 (2026), section 2.20 Scales: United States: single-draft vehicle weighing (UR.3.3)
Related on this site
- Weighbridge software: plate recognition, indicator capture and order matching at the deck
- Quarry dispatch and TMS software: each load tracked from order through weighbridge to delivery
- Mining and quarry operations: the systems Mirage builds for extraction sites
- Mine fuel reconciliation: the same discipline applied to litres instead of tonnes
- Running a document automation pilot: testing a reconciliation on your own records first
- How to audit carrier invoices: the three-way check from the buyer's side
- Mass Céréales case study: a port operation whose control layer connects to its weighbridges
Send us a week of tickets
Send a week of weighbridge tickets, the delivery tickets and the invoice lines for the same loads. We return each load matched or held, with the reason and the evidence, so you can compare it with what your team found.
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