AI waybill recognition in Telegram for a distributor

The problem

A distributor takes in goods from 40 suppliers. Every incoming waybill was keyed into the system by hand — supplier, line items, quantities, VAT-inclusive prices. Dozens of waybills a day, 5–10 minutes each. Item-numbering errors surfaced only at bank reconciliation — two to three weeks after the fact. Warehouse staff put goods on the shelves and then waited for the accountant to enter the document.

Before

• Each waybill — 5–10 minutes of manual entry: look up the supplier, transcribe line items, double-check VAT-inclusive prices.
• Discrepancies between «waybill in the system» and reality only surfaced at bank reconciliation — 2–3 weeks later.
• Warehouse staff waited for the goods to be entered. Items sat on the floor while the system said «not in stock».

What we built

• An internal Telegram bot for receiving waybills: an employee photographs the document → 30 seconds later gets a link to a ready-to-review draft in the warehouse system.
• The bot identifies the supplier from the 40 it already knows — even if the waybill says «LLC Acme Corporation» and the system has just «Acme Corp», it still matches correctly.
• The bot matches line items from the waybill against the catalog — 92% of rows land automatically. The remaining 8% are flagged: «these need a human».
• The bot understands Belarusian waybill structure: it picks the VAT-inclusive price, not the «ex-VAT» one — no more manual recalculation.
• If something other than a waybill arrives (a meme, a screenshot, a selfie) — the bot doesn't stay quiet. It talks back to the sender in its own distinctive style and asks for a proper document. Staff send waybills more eagerly — partly, it seems, for the bot's reply.

Results

• 100% of waybills (hundreds per month) go through the bot. Manual data entry, as a process, is gone.
• 30 seconds to recognize a waybill, versus 5–10 minutes of manual entry.
• «Waybill vs reality» discrepancies surface instantly on upload — not three weeks later.
• Warehouse staff register goods immediately — no more «waiting for the document» delay.
• The accountant handles the edge cases (the 8% of items that didn't auto-match), not the hundreds of routine lines.