The manifest closure checklist

Use this before every manifest closure. It's the same checklist Robnu's SLA watchdog walks against automatically — but if you're not on Robnu yet, it works as a manual checklist too.

Before the batch closes — confirmation phase (stages 1–5)

1. All open orders pulled. Confirm the marketplace order count matches Robnu's queue (or your spreadsheet count). Off-by-one usually means you missed a sync.
2. Confirmed quantity validated against inventory. No line confirmed for more than you have in stock. The all-or-nothing rule means a single bad line will reject the whole upload.
3. GSTIN format checked. All 15 characters, valid checksum. Bad GSTIN means bad customer invoice means buyer dispute.
4. Buyer addresses validated. Pincode-state match (a 110001 pincode in Maharashtra is wrong). Most marketplaces validate this server-side, but pre-validation saves a round-trip.
5. All-or-nothing upload succeeded. Confirmation response is clean. If any line was rejected, you've already pulled it from this batch.

During the batch — slip + invoice phase (stages 6–9)

6. Slips printed for every confirmed shipment. No slip = no shipment. Match slip count to confirmation count.
7. Slip barcode placement passes courier-scanner test. Most slip rejections at the courier hub are barcode placement, not slip content.
8. Vendor invoice quantities match slip + customer invoice. This is the silent-loss vector #2 — undercounted vendor invoices are the most painful preventable loss.
9. Customer invoice GSTIN matches your registered GSTIN. Fat-finger errors here are common.
10. Document pipeline reconciliation green. Slip ↔ vendor invoice ↔ customer invoice ↔ manifest line. Any drift = stop and fix.

Right before closure — manifest phase (stages 10–11)

11. Manifest line count matches confirmed shipment count. Off-by-one means an orphaned shipment somewhere.
12. Courier partner assigned to every line. No "TBD" or "unknown."
13. AWB present for every line. No blanks.
14. SLA-headroom > 10%. If you're under 10%, you're in the watchdog's "act now" zone — close immediately.

After closure — verification phase

15. Marketplace acknowledgement received. Closure confirmation back from the marketplace. If the API call timed out, retry rather than assume success.
16. Document pipeline archived. Slips, invoices, manifest archived against the canonical order record. Evidence ready when a deduction lands later.

When to skip steps

You can skip step 7 (barcode placement) if you've used the same slip template for 100+ shipments without rejection. You can skip step 9 (GSTIN check) if you've never had a fat-finger error. Don't skip the document pipeline reconciliation (step 10) — that's the highest-leverage step.

When to stop and call

If steps 8 or 10 fail in a way you can't fix in the window, do not close the manifest. Pull the affected shipments, close the rest, and address the failures before the next batch.

Robnu automates 14 of these 16 steps. Free during early access.