Extract data from cargo manifests
Unstract reads ocean, air and road cargo manifests, from carrier PDFs to faxed agency copies, and returns every bill of lading line with its parties, packages and weight, checked against the B/Ls, to your customs filing or ERP system.
| B/L · SHIPPER | PKGS | MARKS | GROSS KG |
|---|---|---|---|
| CARGO BY BILL OF LADING | |||
| BWOL26HPH0711 · Song Hong Ceramics | 420 CTNS | PHI/LGB 1-420 | 9,660.00 |
| Cnee Pinecrest Home Inc · stoneware dinnerware | |||
| BWOL26HPH0712 · Lacquer Bay Furniture | 186 CTNS | A&F 1-186 | 7,254.00 |
| Cnee Alder & Finch Co · rattan dining chairs | |||
| BWOL26HPH0715 · Mekong Thread Garment | 1,150 CTNS | WVA/LB 1-1150 | 13,800.00 |
| Cnee Westvale Apparel · cotton knit shirts | |||
| BWOL26HPH0719 · Red River Motor Parts | 24 PLTS | CAS-LGB 1-24 | 18,240.00 |
| Cnee Corbel Auto Supply · brake rotors | |||
| PAGE TOTALS | |||
| TOTAL 4 B/Ls THIS PAGE | 1,780 PKGS | 48,954.00 | |
0715 cnee = Westvale Retail on B/L? ask agent — Ines
CONTINUED: B/L BWOL26HPH0720 TO BWOL26HPH0748 ON PAGE 4 · RECAP ON PAGE 41
{ "carrier": "Bluewake Ocean Lines", "vessel": "Coral Meridian", "voyage": "214E", "port_of_loading": "Haiphong", "port_of_discharge": "Long Beach", "sailing_date": "18 OCT 2026", "bl_count": 4, "total_packages": 1780, "gross_weight_kg": 48954}
Trusted by logistics and supply chain teams around the globe
A manifest runs to forty pages and every carrier prints its own
Carriers, airlines, truckers and their agents send manifests in whatever shape their system exports. One week of arrivals at a brokerage looks like this.
Agency copies faxed overseas, then scanned at the broker's desk
Ocean, air and road manifests with their columns in a different order
Package counts rewritten in pen at the border crossing
Manifest, house B/Ls and the voyage recap in one scan
Spreadsheet exports that repeat the vessel header on every page
Brokers and forwarders key B/L lines off the manifest to match each consignment to its entry, and a consignee or weight that disagrees with the bill of lading surfaces as a customs hold after the vessel berths.
Unstract reads each manifest page by page, pulls the voyage header and every B/L line, reconciles them with the bills of lading, and delivers the record to your customs filing or ERP system.
Parse, extract and reconcile every manifest
Three products sit behind this page: parsing, extraction and automation. Use one by itself, or chain all three so a manifest moves from the inbox to a reconciled shipment list.
Parse cargo manifests page by page with each B/L on its own row
A carrier manifest wraps one B/L across two printed lines, repeats the vessel header on every page and ends with a recapitulation of the whole voyage. LLMWhisperer keeps those rows together as printed, so a consignee stays with its own B/L number and the marks never shift into the package column, on a clean carrier PDF or a faxed agency copy.
Send the text to your own LLM, or make parsing the opening step of a manifest workflow.
Learn more about LLMWhispererTurn every cargo manifest into one voyage record with a line per B/L
List the fields your team works from, and shipping manifest data extraction returns one JSON schema for ocean, air and road manifests: the voyage or flight header, a line per bill of lading or air waybill, and the totals. Used as a cargo manifest data extractor, Document Studio needs no template per carrier or airline. A consignee or weight that disagrees with the bill of lading arrives flagged, with the B/L figure beside it.
Call it as an API from your brokerage software, run it as an ETL pipeline from the manifest inbox, or make it one step of an orchestrated clearance.
Learn more about Document StudioClear inbound cargo from the manifest to a file-ready entry
Describe in plain English how your team works a cargo manifest against the entry packets, and Flow's agents build the workflow. The manifest, each B/L or air waybill, the commercial invoice, packing list and certificate of origin are gathered per consignment, read, cross-checked, and staged in your customs filing or ERP system, such as CargoWise or Descartes. You approve the workflow once, and each voyage runs through the same steps.
Set where a person steps in: packages or weights that differ between the manifest and the packet, an HTS code that is missing or does not fit the description, a certificate of origin that never arrived. Those consignments wait for a licensed customs broker with the reason attached; the clean ones move on to filing.
Learn more about FlowExtract your cargo manifests today. Automate clearance next.
Start for free to parse and extract your own manifests now. Automating customs clearance around them starts with a consultation.
Ocean, air and road manifests with the paperwork behind each line
Documents
- Cargo manifests
- Ocean cargo manifests
- Air cargo manifests
- Road freight manifests
- Customs road freight manifests
- Inward cargo manifests
- Ocean cargo manifest recapitulations
- Freight manifests
- Bills of lading
- House bills of lading
- Air waybills
- Commercial invoices
- Packing lists
- Arrival notices
- Customs declarations
- Any other carrier's manifest layout
Fields captured
Built for the teams who answer for what the carrier declared
Manifest lines tied to each client's entry before the vessel berths, so a consignee or weight mismatch is fixed before customs raises a hold.
Master and house manifests read side by side, so every house B/L on a consolidation is accounted for against the carrier's line.
The carrier's declared packages and weights compared with the entry on file, so filings match the manifest and the audit file shows it.
Inbound manifests read days before the freight lands, so warehouses plan dock doors and labour from real package counts.
Manifests reconciled before the vessel berths
A manifest is a map of every load on the ship
One cargo manifest lists every shipper and consignee on a voyage in a single file, with what each container holds and how much it weighs. If it leaks, it tells a thief which boxes carry electronics or auto parts, and tells a competitor who buys from whom.
- Manifests and their bills of lading are encrypted in transit and at rest.
- Carrier and client cargo data is never used to train any model.
- Access by role, branch and client, with every edited consignee or weight and every released hold logged against the B/L number.
- Retention you set, matched to the customs record-keeping period your brokerage or forwarder works under.
- Forwarders and 3PLs that keep cargo data on their own network can run Unstract self-hosted.
What brokers and forwarders ask about manifests
Send manifests to an inbox or bucket that Unstract watches. LLMWhisperer reads each page with its B/L rows intact, Document Studio returns the voyage header and every line as JSON in your schema, and Flow's agents match the lines to their bills of lading and stage them in your customs filing or ERP system.
Yes. Air cargo manifest extraction returns the flight number, airport of departure and arrival, each master and house air waybill, pieces, weight and nature of goods, in the same schema shape as an ocean voyage. One deployment handles both.
Extract both into the same keys, then compare. Unstract matches each manifest line to its B/L by number and checks shipper, consignee, packages, marks and gross weight. A line that disagrees comes back flagged with both values shown, and the matching lines pass through.
Yes. The vessel, voyage and port header is read once and carried to every B/L line, a B/L that wraps across a page break stays one line, and the page totals are added up and checked against the recapitulation at the end.
LLMWhisperer works as the shipping manifest parser: it turns PDFs, scans, faxes and spreadsheet exports into text with the columns kept. Document Studio then names the fields, so your developers can call either layer by itself through an API.
Document Studio reads road freight manifests and customs road freight manifests with the truck and trailer plate, border crossing, each consignment note and its packages and weight, including counts corrected in pen by the driver.
Yes. Inward manifests filed for arrival come back in the same record as the carrier's outward copy, and the recapitulation's totals by port and commodity are extracted so they can be footed against the lines.
The consignment waits for a licensed customs broker, who sees the manifest line beside the B/L figure, then accepts it, corrects it or asks the carrier's agent for an amendment. Every decision is logged against the B/L number.
No. The carrier files its manifest, and your licensed broker files the entry. Unstract prepares checked data from the manifest and the packet, and filing stays with the people licensed to do it.
Unstract is SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR and HIPAA compliant. Manifests are encrypted, never used for training and deleted on your schedule. Brokers and forwarders that need cargo data in-house can self-host, and the Trust Center lists each control.
Most teams reconcile live voyages within days of a consultation, where we set up the workflow around your carriers' manifests, your B/L checks and your filing system. To test extraction first, start for free and upload one manifest.
Bring a full voyage manifest to the consultation
Ocean, air and road manifests, inward copies and recap pages, faxed agency copies included. Watch every page read on screen and each B/L line reconciled with its bill of lading.