What Is a Proof of Delivery System?

There’s the old thought experiment: “if a tree falls in a forest, and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?” Well, the world of logistics has its own version: “if an order is delivered, and there’s no photograph or signature, did the delivery really take place?”

As with so many thought experiments, the most satisfying answer is to never put yourself in that position. The last thing you want to deal with as a delivery organization is a situation where your driver insists that an order was completed as scheduled and the customer claims that they didn’t receive their order (or didn’t receive it in full). Best case scenario: you (and your driver) get paid much more slowly than you otherwise would have. Worst case: you’re stuck sending another driver out to the same delivery site to deliver the order again. 

Luckily, there’s a simple way to make sure that situations like that virtually never arise. How? By adopting a proof of delivery system. 

In this post, we’ll go over exactly what a proof of delivery system looks like in practice—as well as who can benefit from leveraging one, what features the software should have, and how to integrate proof of delivery into your logistics management more broadly. 

What Is a Proof of Delivery System, and Who Needs One?

At the simplest level, a proof of delivery system can be as simple as printing out proof of delivery slips for your drivers to take out on delivery with and get signed by customers. But modern technology has been empowering delivery organizations to capture proof of delivery in a much more robust manner for quite a while now. 

Today, a proof of delivery system will typically involve a driver mobile app that enables drivers, technicians, and other field personnel to capture proof of delivery on the go—usually via pictures, signatures, and notes. Once the proof of delivery is captured out in the field, it should be transmitted to a central system back at the office to be stored and managed. 

Ideally, your teams will be able to leverage digital proof of delivery as a matter of course to document logistics processes and follow up with customers. From a centralized system, that should be as simple as searching for an order in the system and accessing the associated photos, signatures, statuses, timestamps, geostamps, and any notes that may have been appended. 

Who needs a system like this? Fundamentally, it’s anyone who deals with last mile delivery. 

In parcel delivery, a proof of delivery system helps you prove that you left a package on the porch or in the package at the appointed place and time. For big and bulky deliveries—whether that’s a new fridge or a pallet of lumber—it can be even more critical. Not only can a picture (or five) prove that a set of items was delivered, it can also prove that you didn’t damage the delivery site or the items in the process of delivery—likewise, it can show that you hauled away the old item if applicable. 

If any of these categories apply to you and you’re either using physical delivery slips or a digital proof of delivery solution that isn’t making life easy, it’s time to adopt a new proof of delivery system. 

5 Features Your Proof of Delivery System Should Have

If you’re in the market for proof of delivery for advanced transportation tracking, the crucial question is how to find the right solution. There are a lot of options on the market, and it’s not trivial to wade through them. 

To help narrow down the offerings, here’s five things your electronic proof of delivery should offer:

1. Mandatory photos: When you leave photos optional, there’s a chance that you wind up with inconsistent documentation for your deliveries—this can make it hard to standardize and potentially leave you open to false liability claims. By ensuring that drivers can’t complete a job without taking a photo, you ensure visibility and standardization, which are the pillars of successful logistics. 
2. Timestamping and geostamping: There should be no ambiguity about where and when a picture was taken or a signature captured. That’s why a precise timestamp and geostamp for all proof of delivery captured is crucial. Taken together, all of these timestamps and geostamps can give you a breadcrumb trail that tells the story of an entire delivery run. 
3. Support for multiple roles in the mobile app: Most of the time, the functionality in the mobile app will just be there for drivers to take advantage of. But in some cases you might have sales or merchandising teams in the field who need to be able to either access earlier proof of delivery or capture their own photos. Likewise warehouse personnel who may be.
4. Configurable service compliance forms: Sometimes, a single picture isn’t enough to prove that a job was done correctly. Sometimes, the job is complex enough that to ensure compliance, you want your drivers to walk through a step-by-step form that ensures that they’ve ticked every box. This can include pictures as well, e.g. in cases where you want to prove that you did a particular installation correctly.   
5. AI-powered driver enablement: This isn’t strictly a part of the proof of delivery capture process, but when it comes to your driver mobile app more broadly, we’ve reached the point where drivers can leverage AI to make their jobs easier and more streamlined. For instance, you can utilize AI to provide location-based voice briefings before each stop to let drivers know about any potential access or parking issues/special customer needs and requests. 

Integrating Proof of Delivery Within Logistics

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but not if you keep it hidden away in the attic where it can be forgotten about. Digital proof of delivery is an extremely valuable way to improve documentation, reduce false liability claims, and speed up time to revenue, but it only works that way if your proof of delivery system is fully integrated within the rest of your logistics stack. 

That’s why we don’t recommend getting a standalone system to manage proof of delivery—instead, we recommend adopting a larger delivery management system that has proof of delivery capabilities built in. This helps ensure that you’re never at risk of winding up with a silo around your delivery documentation. 

It’s always a tough balancing act to rightsize your technology deployments in the world of logistics, but combining proof of delivery and routing, customer experience, and delivery visibility within a single solution is an easy win. It gives you the ability to plan, track, execute, and analyze within a single solution, all in a fully-integrated way. 

The result is that you’re able to gain all of the benefits of effective digital proof of delivery at the same time that you optimize your deliveries from end to end. 

If this sounds like something with the potential to have an impact on your delivery business, reach out to our team today and we’ll walk you through the ways a digital proof of delivery system can save you time and money.