Why COD is still everywhere
In many markets, cash on delivery isn’t a legacy habit — it’s the way most first-time online shoppers pay. For a courier, that means every delivery is also a small financial transaction. Multiply it by a few thousand parcels a day and you’re running a cash business on the side of your delivery business.
The problem is rarely collecting the cash. It’s knowing, at any moment, who is holding it, which parcels it belongs to and which merchant it’s owed to.
Where COD goes wrong
- Amounts typed by hand. When merchants email order lists, COD values get re-keyed — and mistyped.
- Cash counted in a notebook. Drivers hand over a bundle at the end of the day, and shortages are discovered weeks later.
- Payouts from guesswork. Merchants are paid what someone thinks was collected, then chase the difference.
A process that holds up
1. Capture the COD amount at the source
Take the amount straight from the merchant’s store order or upload, and print it on the label. The driver sees exactly what to collect, and nobody re-types it.
2. Record collection on the delivery itself
When the driver marks a parcel delivered, the cash collected is saved on that job, together with the receiver’s name, a photo and the location. The driver’s app shows the running total of cash in hand.
3. Reconcile every driver, every day
At hand-over, the cashier ticks the delivered jobs, counts the cash and records the result. Any short or over amount is logged against the driver immediately — not discovered at month end.
4. Pay merchants only what you’ve received
Payouts should be built from cash that drivers have actually handed in. If your delivery fee is deducted from COD, the payout statement should show both numbers so the merchant can check them.
What merchants want to see
Merchants ask three questions: how much is still out for collection, how much has been collected, and how much has been paid. Give them a portal with those three numbers and a statement for every payout, and most of the phone calls disappear.
How Logxa handles it
Logxa’s courier software detects COD from Shopify and WooCommerce orders, prints it on 4×6 labels, records it on the driver app, reconciles driver cash at hand-over and builds merchant payouts — with an option to pay out only cash already handed in. See the COD feature.