How to Reconcile a Timber Consignment: Loading vs Discharge

The invoice is paid. The container left the yard three weeks ago. Then the buyer’s surveyor sends a discharge tally, and the numbers don’t match what left India. Now someone has to work out whether it’s a real loss, a measuring difference, or a typo — and whether it’s worth raising a claim.

What reconciliation actually compares

Two tallies of the same consignment, taken at two different points:

• Source (loading): what was tallied and loaded at the yard or mill — pieces and CBM.
• Destination (discharge): what the buyer, their surveyor, or the receiving yard confirms on arrival — pieces and CBM.

The difference between the two is the variance — in pieces, in CBM, and as a percentage. A negative variance means less arrived than left; a positive one (rarer, but it happens on re-measurement) means more.

Why this needs a system, not a spreadsheet comparison

Three things make this harder than “subtract one number from another”:

1. The destination tally can arrive two different ways — a full re-tally by the buyer’s own team, or a manual figure they simply state in an email or a survey report. Both are valid, but they carry different confidence, and mixing them without labelling which is which makes the variance impossible to trust six months later.
2. A mill re-saw’s conversion loss looks like shrinkage if it isn’t separated out. A round log entering the mill and a square timber leaving it are never the same volume — 15-30% loss is completely normal for a genuine cutting yield, not a shipping problem. If a consignment includes mill-processed material, that loss has to be pulled out separately, or every re-sawn shipment will show a “shrinkage” number that has nothing to do with the shipment itself.
3. It has to be per transport unit, not per shipment. A five-container shipment where one container is short by 3% and the other four are exact averages out to under 1% — which hides the one container a claim should actually be filed against.

Doing it well, step by step

1. Lock the source tally the day it’s loaded, not the day the invoice is prepared. A source figure that gets “corrected” after the fact defeats the whole comparison.
2. Record the destination figure as soon as it’s available, and note which of the two ways it came in — a full re-tally, or a manual figure. Keep both possible, but never blend them into one column without a label.
3. Calculate variance per transport unit: pieces and CBM, then as a percentage of the source figure.
4. Pull out any mill conversion loss before judging shrinkage. If a transport unit’s material passed through a mill run, its expected input-to-output loss is a separate number from anything that happened in transit.
5. Track the percentage over time, not the shipment alone. A single shipment’s 1.5% variance means little on its own. The same species, same route, showing 1.5% every time versus 4% once is the actual signal.
6. File the claim (or close the file) against the number, on time. Most buyer contracts and insurance policies have a claim window — reconciling on paper three months later, after the window has passed, is reconciliation with no consequence either way.

Where this typically goes wrong

• Re-typing the source figure from the invoice instead of the tally sheet — the two are not always identical, especially if a size was adjusted after the tally but before the invoice.
• No record of which method produced the destination number — a manual figure the buyer emailed gets treated with the same confidence as a full independent re-tally, and a real dispute later has nothing to point to.
• Mixing re-sawn and non-re-sawn material in one shrinkage number, which makes every mill-processed shipment look like it lost more than it did.
• Reconciling by shipment total, not by container, so one bad container’s variance is diluted into a shipment-wide number nobody acts on.

Keeping loading and discharge tied to the same record

The whole exercise depends on the source tally still being exactly what was recorded at loading, and the destination figure being clearly marked for how it arrived.

In LumberLinq, every transport unit’s Reconciliation tab holds both sides on one record: the source tally as it was locked at loading, and the destination figures entered either as a Full Tallysheet re-tally or a Manual Entry, kept separately labelled. The Pieces and Net CBM variance, and the percentage, are calculated the same way every time — and when a transport unit’s material passed through a mill re-saw, that conversion loss is tracked on its own, so it never gets counted as shipment shrinkage.

Start free or see it in 15 minutes.

Frequently asked questions

What is reconciliation in a timber export? Comparing the loading tally against the discharge tally the buyer confirms — pieces and CBM — to see what changed in transit.

What counts as normal shrinkage vs a real loss? Moisture-related shrinkage in transit is usually small and expected. A mill re-saw’s conversion loss is a separate, planned number and should never be read as shipment shrinkage.

How much variance is acceptable? There’s no single answer — it depends on species and route. What matters is measuring the same way every time, so a real change stands out against your own history.

Per shipment or per transport unit? Per transport unit. Averaging across a shipment can hide the one container that actually needs a claim.

This is general guidance, not a substitute for your contract’s specific claims and inspection terms.

Related: Documents needed for a timber export shipment · Timber tally sheet format and free template