A proof of delivery is the document that closes the loop on a shipment — the signed confirmation that goods reached the right person at the right place. Docyield's parser reads it into structured fields: the POD number, the carrier, the related order reference, the recipient and delivery address, the date and time, who signed for it, whether a signature is present, the items delivered, and any noted condition. Upload a scanned POD or a driver's photo and get JSON, CSV, or Excel back in seconds.
PODs are proof in the literal sense — they settle disputes, release invoices for payment, and demonstrate that a carrier did its job. Because they are often signed in the field on a clipboard or a handheld and then scanned, they are messy inputs. Docyield reads past the handwriting and stamps to pull the structured facts, keeping who-received-it distinct from who-it-was-for and the delivery date apart from the order date.
What a proof of delivery confirms
A proof of delivery (POD) records that a consignment was handed over and accepted. At minimum it captures the recipient, the delivery address, the date and time, and a signature or name of the person who took receipt. Many also list the items delivered and a space for the receiver to note damage or shortages — the 'condition' that turns a clean delivery into a disputed one if something arrived broken.
The POD is the last document in a shipment's life, generated at the moment of handover. Downstream it does real work: a 3PL bills against it, an importer files it as evidence of receipt, and a finance team uses it to release a carrier or supplier invoice for payment. A POD that cannot be found or read is a payment that gets held up, which is why capturing its data promptly has direct cash-flow value.
Why structured extraction beats manual filing
Most PODs end up as a pile of scans or a folder of driver photos, searchable only by whoever remembers the delivery. When a customer disputes receipt or a finance team needs to match a POD to an invoice, someone hunts through images by hand. Extracting the fields turns that pile into a queryable record — you can find a delivery by date, recipient, or order reference in seconds.
OCR alone leaves you with text but no answers. You would still have to read each scan to find the signatory and the delivery date. Docyield returns those as named fields, including a simple flag for whether a signature is present, so a system can automatically confirm a delivery is documented and route the exceptions — unsigned or damaged — to a person.
Who uses a proof of delivery parser
- 3PLs and carriers capturing PODs to bill clients and prove completed deliveries.
- Finance and accounts teams matching PODs to invoices before releasing payment.
- Ops and dispatch teams building a searchable archive of signed deliveries.
- Customer-service teams resolving 'I never received it' disputes with documented evidence.
- Importers and receivers logging accepted goods against orders and shipments.
- Logistics platforms adding automated POD capture through the API.
Accuracy, signatures, and review
We never claim a perfect read, and PODs are an honest test of that because they so often carry handwriting. Docyield aims for accuracy on legible documents and transparency on the rest. A signature itself is not transcribed into a name when it is an illegible scrawl — the 'received by' field reflects what is actually readable, and the signature-present flag records that a mark exists even where the name cannot be made out. Absent fields are left empty rather than guessed.
Field-captured PODs are the hardest input: a photo of a creased sheet on a tailgate in poor light. A clearer image always helps. Because the document sits beside the extracted data, the small share of PODs that need it can be checked quickly — confirming a delivery date or a signatory before the record is used to release a payment.
Items, condition, and exceptions
Where a POD lists what was delivered, Docyield returns those items as structured rows with description and quantity, so you can confirm that the delivered count matches what was shipped. That makes short-deliveries visible: if the items on the POD do not reconcile with the dispatch, the gap is in the data rather than buried in an image.
The condition or remarks field is where exceptions live. A note of 'two cartons damaged' or 'pallet refused' is exactly the information that matters for claims, and pulling it into its own field means damaged or disputed deliveries can be flagged and routed automatically instead of being discovered weeks later when a claim arrives.
Output formats, API, and batch
Every parse exports as JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML from the same result. JSON suits feeding PODs into a delivery or billing platform; CSV and Excel suit ops and finance teams reconciling deliveries in a spreadsheet; XML fits older systems. The free tool handles one POD at a time, ideal for resolving a single dispute or check.
For carriers and 3PLs processing PODs in volume, the same extraction runs through the Docyield API and batch dashboard, with webhook delivery and your own validation rules — for instance, flagging any POD with no signature present. The schema here matches what the API returns, so the fields you build against do not change when you scale up.
How a POD differs from a delivery note
A delivery note travels with the goods and lists what is being delivered; it is prepared by the sender. A proof of delivery is signed by the receiver and confirms that the handover happened — it is evidence, not a manifest. The two are easily confused because the same items may appear on both, but their roles are opposite ends of the same event. Keeping a dedicated POD parser means the fields centre on the receipt — signatory, signature presence, delivery date and time, condition — rather than the dispatch detail a delivery note carries.
What the proof of delivery parser extracts
Each POD is returned against a fixed schema. Fields not present on a document come back empty rather than guessed.
- Document number
- The POD or delivery document number.
- Carrier
- The carrier or courier that made the delivery.
- Order reference
- The related order or shipment reference.
- Recipient
- The recipient name or company.
- Delivery address
- The address where the goods were delivered.
- Delivery date
- The date of delivery.
- Delivery time
- The time of delivery where recorded.
- Received by
- The name of the person who signed for the delivery, where legible.
- Signature present
- Whether a signature or mark is present on the document.
- Items
- Each delivered item, with description and quantity.
- Condition
- Any noted condition or remarks recorded on delivery.
How to convert a proof of delivery to JSON, CSV, or Excel
- 1Upload your POD — drop a PDF, PNG, JPG, or WEBP onto the box above, or click to choose a file.
- 2Wait a few seconds while Docyield reads the document and extracts the delivery fields.
- 3Review the result and confirm the signatory, date, and any condition note against the original.
- 4Choose your output tab — JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML.
- 5Copy the result or download the file, ready to archive or match against an invoice.
Frequently asked questions
Processing documents at scale?
Batch upload, an extraction API, and webhooks for 100+ documents a month.