If you have ever booked freight and been asked for a "con note number", you have met a consignment note without being told what one is. Most arguments that happen after a delivery goes wrong are really arguments about what it says.
What a Consignment Note Is
A consignment note records the agreement between you and the carrier for one shipment. It names who is sending, who is receiving, what is being moved and on what terms, and it travels with the freight from pickup to delivery.
Two things make it more than paperwork. It identifies the shipment. The consignment note number is what you, the carrier and your customer all quote when anyone asks where the goods are. And it becomes the evidence. Once signed at the far end, it records that the freight arrived, when, and in what condition the receiver said it was in.
A quote is what the job was expected to cost. A consignment note is what the job actually was.
What Is on a Consignment Note
The layout differs by carrier, but the same information appears on almost all of them.
- The consignment note number, usually printed as a barcode as well as digits.
- Sender name and pickup address, including any site or dock instructions.
- Receiver name and delivery address, plus a contact who can be called on the day.
- A description of the goods: number of items, packaging type, weight and dimensions.
- The service level booked, such as road express or a standard interstate service.
- Special handling requirements, such as tail lift, hand unload, or a booked delivery window.
- Dangerous goods information where it applies.
- A space for the receiver to sign or otherwise acknowledge delivery.
Weight and dimensions matter more than people expect. Carriers price on the greater of actual and cubic weight, so a note that understates either is the usual first cause of an invoice higher than the quote.
Who Issues It, and When
The carrier defines the format, and the sender fills it in at booking. You rarely handwrite one any more. You enter the shipment details into a portal or a shipping system, and the note is generated with its labels at the same moment, ready to go on the freight before the driver arrives.
A consignment note created after the truck is at the dock is a consignment note created in a hurry, and that is where address errors and missing delivery instructions come from.
Why the Consignment Note Matters When Something Goes Wrong
Almost every freight dispute is settled by reading the consignment note.
Late delivery? The service level on the note says what was promised. Two cartons arrived out of three? The item count says how many were consigned. Damaged goods? Whether the receiver noted the damage when signing is usually the difference between a claim that proceeds and one that does not.
So it is worth telling your receivers something simple. Check the count, and write what you actually see on the note before you sign. A signature with nothing written against it is read as clean delivery. Once you are reading consignment notes for evidence, the next question is usually how well each carrier is performing, and DIFOT is the one figure that answers it across all of them.
Where a Multi-Carrier Setup Changes the Picture
Send with one carrier and you learn one consignment note format and one portal. Most growing Australian businesses do not stay there. They add a second carrier for interstate, a third for regional, a courier for small and urgent, and now every shipment starts by choosing a portal.
Senditt exists for that situation. It prices each order across 35+ carriers on Senditt's negotiated rates, books the one that wins, and produces the consignment note and labels in that carrier's own format. Your team and your customers get one place to look up a consignment note number without knowing which carrier ended up with it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a consignment note the same as a bill of lading?
They do a similar job and people use the terms loosely. In Australian domestic road freight you will almost always hear consignment note. Bill of lading is the term you meet in sea freight and international movements.
Do I need a consignment note for every shipment?
For anything moving with a commercial carrier, yes, because it is how the shipment is identified and tracked. The question is only whether the details on it are right.
What happens if the details on the consignment note are wrong?
Wrong addresses cause failed delivery attempts and redelivery charges. Wrong weights and dimensions cause the invoice to be corrected upward afterwards. Both are cheap to fix before pickup, which is the argument for generating the note from your order data rather than retyping it.
Who keeps the signed copy?
The carrier retains the proof of delivery and makes it available against the consignment note number, usually as a scanned signature or electronic acknowledgement. Keep your own record of what you consigned, because a claim needs both halves.
Senditt is a managed freight platform (4PL) for high-volume Australian business shippers: book on Senditt's negotiated rates across 35+ carriers, and track and reconcile every consignment from one dashboard. Book a freight review and we will show you what one place for every consignment note looks like.
Senditt is a managed freight platform (4PL). Senditt is not Sendle and is not affiliated with it.