Feature Spotlight: Automated Weight Distribution

For customs brokers and logistics coordinators, "breaking down the weight" is a daily headache. You receive a commercial invoice with 150 line items and weights by HS codes or product codes on the packing list. You need to allocate the weight to every single item for the customs declaration.

Historically, this meant exporting data to Excel, building complex formulas, fighting with rounding errors, and re-importing. Today, we're introducing a native solution in Sail that makes this process instant using the verified totals from your uploaded documents.

The challenge

The core challenge in customs declarations is a mismatch in data granularity.

• Customs Declarations require precision at the lowest level: You need to declare the Net and Gross weight for every single line item (per Product Code or HS Code).
• Packing Lists are inconsistent: Sometimes they provide weight per product. Often, they only provide a Total Gross Weight for the entire shipment, or perhaps a weight per container. They rarely break it down by HS code or individual product unit in the way customs requires.

This forces you to manually calculate the weight for each of your 300+ line items based on their value, quantity, or net weight ratio. It's a massive time sink and a breeding ground for calculation errors.

And every packing list to commercial invoice combination is different, requiring you to analyse the documents first.

Native Distribution via "Add From Documents"

Sail bridges this gap automatically. The new Weight Distribution action is built directly into the Add From Documents workflow.

Instead of manually typing in totals or building Excel formulas, Sail pulls the validated total weights directly from your uploaded Packing Lists, HS Code Summary Forms, or Bills of Lading. It then intelligently distributes these totals across your invoice line items to generate the precise, per-item data that customs authorities demand.

How It Works

1. Open "Add From Documents": In your shipment workspace, click the Add From Documents button.
2. Select Your Source: Locate your uploaded Packing List. Sail has already classified it and extracted the verified totals.
3. Click "Distribute": Select the Distribute action next to the document.
4. Auto-Matching: Sail analyzes your data to find the best matching strategy (see below).
5. Execute: Sail calculates the share for every linked line item, handles all rounding logic, and updates your workspace instantly.

Automated Intelligence: How Sail Matches Your Data

Real simplification comes from intelligence. Sail doesn't just blindly apply a total; it determines the best way to map the document data to your workspace rows automatically.

The system tries the following strategies in priority order, ensuring the highest possible accuracy without manual intervention:

1. Exact Match (Highest Precision): If your Packing List items and workspace rows match 1:1, Sail links them directly. It checks for matches in this order:

   • HS Code + Country of Origin (Most specific)
   • Product Code
   • Description
   • HS Code

2. HS Code + COO Distribution: If exact matches aren't found, the system groups items by HS Code combined with their Country of Origin and distributes the relevant sub-totals to those specific groups.

3. HS Code Distribution: The system groups items by HS Code alone and distributes weight proportionally within each HS Code group.

4. Product Code Distribution: Items are grouped by Product Code, with weight distributed within matching groups.

5. Total Distribution (Fallback): When no specific matching field is found, the total weight from the document is distributed across all workspace items using your chosen calculation method (below).

Proportional Distribution

1. Proportional (Weighted) Distribution

You can manually distribute as well, as Sail gives you the option to distribute the total value based on the ratio of another numerical column.

• How it works: You select a reference column—typically Quantity or Value.
• Example: If you have a total Gross Weight of 1,000 kg and you distribute it based on Quantity:
  • Item A (Qty 10) gets 10% of the weight (100 kg).
  • Item B (Qty 90) gets 90% of the weight (900 kg).

2. Equal Distribution

This strategy splits the total value evenly across all selected line items.

• How it works: Sail divides the total amount by the number of line items.
• Example: A 1,000 kg pallet containing 4 identical boxes results in 250 kg allocated to each line item.

Unit Conversion

Working with mixed units such as tonnes? Sail now includes a dedicated Convert to KG action.

• The Problem: Documents often list weights in Metric Tons (MT), but customs declarations require Kilograms (KG).
• The Fix: Select any weight column and click Convert to KG. Sail instantly converts 1.5 MT to 1,500 KG in a single click before you distribute.

The "Smart Rounding" Algorithm

Regardless of the strategy you choose, Sail applies a Smart Rounding algorithm to every calculation.

In any distribution, mathematical remainders (e.g., 33.3333...) often cause the final sum to be off by a few decimal points. Sail tracks these "floating pennies" in the background. It automatically adjusts the values on the final line items to ensure that the sum of your distributed rows exactly matches the document total.

• Result: If your Packing List says 15,400.00 kg, your declaration line items will sum to exactly 15,400.00 kg. No exceptions.

Why It Matters

This feature set is part of our ongoing mission to keep you out of spreadsheets and inside a unified, intelligent workflow. By automating weight distribution, we are:

• Reducing Prep Time: Turning a 20-minute Excel task into a 10-second in-app action.
• Solving the Granularity Gap: Automatically converting shipment-level totals into the line-item level data required for compliance.
• Improving Accuracy: Eliminating mathematical errors that lead to customs queries.

The Weight Distribution feature is available now for all Sail users. Open any shipment workspace and click "Add From Documents" to try it out today.