Here's a shipment that passes every check you have. The bill of lading number is formatted correctly. The ports are real UN/LOCODEs. The ETA is after the ETD. The consignee matches the booking. Your SOP is satisfied.
And the ETA is four days off, because the carrier rolled the container last Tuesday and nobody updated the file.
Until now, Checks could only judge the data you sent it. That catches a lot: missing references, the wrong incoterm, the customer's preferred carrier buried on page 30 of their SOP. But some of the most expensive mistakes in freight aren't inconsistencies inside the file. They're disagreements between the file and the real world.
Starting today, Checks can look things up.
When a team owner connects a system Checks can use, such as a carrier tracking service, a rate system, a hold list, or your own ERP, the owner can let checks consult it while they review each shipment. So a rule like this:
The ETA must be within one day of the carrier's published ETA.
is now checked against the carrier, not just against your file. Rules you couldn't evaluate before become ordinary checks:
- Invoice vs. rate: every freight charge matches the contracted rate, with no missing or extra charges.
- Hold lists: the consignee isn't on our internal hold list.
- Master data: the delivery address matches the customer's account in our ERP.
You write them the same way you write every other check: in plain English, the way you'd explain it to a new coordinator.
You stay in control.
Nothing happens until an owner turns it on. In Settings → AI Tools, you choose which connected systems checks may use and which of their tools. In this release every lookup is read-only: Checks looks facts up, but it doesn't change anything in another system.
It never guesses.
Outside systems go down, time out, and return nonsense. When Checks can't get an answer, the check says so and asks for a person, rather than quietly passing a shipment it couldn't verify. Every system a check consulted is listed in the shipment's history, so when someone asks "why did this get flagged?" the answer is on the record.
Every plan can look things up.
This is the trust ladder working the way we said it would. Every plan gets lookups; higher plans reach further:
- Advise: 1 connected system, up to 5 lookups per shipment
- Assist: up to 5 systems and 10 lookups
- Act: up to 10 systems and 20 lookups, available today at $5 per shipment
Start on Advise with the one system that matters most. If your checks need more, you'll see exactly where they ran out of reach, and you can move a single shipment or your whole team up a rung.
Why this matters
I've spent 25 years watching good operators catch problems because they knew to open a second tab: the carrier's site, the rate sheet, the customer portal. That second tab is where a lot of institutional knowledge lives, and it's the first thing that gets skipped when the team is slammed. Checks now opens it on every shipment.
We don't sell vision. We sell results, one shipment at a time. This is one more shipment we can help with.
Try it: if you're on Checks today, ask your team owner to open Settings → AI Tools. If you're not, start a no-cost 4-week test drive and bring the rule you check by hand in another tab. For ideas, see four rules teams are running today.
