A delivery note that survives a dispute

Every figure below is hypothetical. The pattern is not.

You dispatched 10,000 litres on Tuesday. The invoice went out on Friday. Six weeks later, chasing payment, you are told the customer only received 9,600 and they have deducted ₦494,400 from the settlement.

Your driver remembers loading a full truck. The customer's gateman remembers signing something. Nobody wrote down anything that can settle it.

This is not really an argument about 400 litres. It is an argument about whose paperwork is better, and that argument is decided months before it starts.

What a delivery note is actually for

Most delivery notes in this trade are a formality — a scrap that proves a truck turned up. That is not what the document is for. It exists to answer, without anybody's memory being involved:

What product left, in what quantity, measured how
Which vehicle carried it and who drove
That the load was intact on arrival
That a named human at the customer accepted it

Miss any one of those and the note cannot do its job.

The fields that decide disputes

Most notes carry the first three. It is the rest that win arguments.

Date and time of loading, and of discharge. Both. A gap of nine hours between them is itself information — see the temperature point in when your dip doesn't match your books.

Vehicle registration and driver's name. Printed, not just signed. A plate number turns a vague dispute into a specific one.

Quantity, and how it was measured. "10,000 litres" is a claim. "10,000 litres by meter, meter opening 114,220 closing 124,220" is evidence. Record opening and closing figures for whatever device you use — meter, weighbridge or dip — because a single total can be asserted and a pair of readings has to be explained.

Density, if you converted. If the truck was weighed and you billed in litres, the density you used belongs on the note. Otherwise the customer can recompute with a different figure and arrive at a different volume, and both of you will be arithmetically correct.

Seal numbers, recorded at both ends. This is the single most under-used control in Nigerian fuel distribution and the cheapest one to adopt. Seal the compartments at loading, write the numbers on the note, and have the receiver confirm the same numbers before discharge. Matching seals at both ends make a short-delivery claim nearly impossible to sustain. Broken or mismatched seals turn a vague suspicion into a documented event with a time and a place.

A signature, a printed name, and a phone number. A signature alone is worth very little — six weeks later nobody can say whose it is. A printed name makes the person identifiable. A phone number makes them reachable. "Received by: ___ / Name in capitals: ___ / Phone: ___" costs nothing to add and changes what the document can do.

A note number, from a gapless sequence. If your notes run 0412, 0413, 0415, somebody has to explain 0414. That is the point. More on why in invoice numbering that survives an audit.

Three copies, and where each one goes

One stays with the customer. They are more likely to pay an invoice they can match to a document they already hold.
One comes back with the driver, signed. This is your evidence. If it does not come back signed, the delivery is not closed — and your driver should know that is the standard before he leaves.
One stays in the book. Sequentially, in order, so a missing number is visible.

An unsigned copy that never returned is not proof of anything. It is a story about a truck.

When the claim comes anyway

It will. What changes is what you can do about it.

Pull the note before you reply. Do not negotiate from memory, and do not concede to protect the relationship before you have looked.
Compare the seal numbers. If they match at both ends, the load was intact when it arrived, and the conversation moves to what happened after discharge — which is their side of the fence.
Check the measurement basis on both sides. A great many "short deliveries" are one party measuring by meter and the other by dip, at different temperatures, with nobody wrong.
Answer in writing, with the note attached. Deductions taken quietly against an invoice have a way of becoming policy if they are never formally contested.

The part nobody wants to hear

If you do not currently record seals or measurement readings, you cannot win the disputes you are already having. Not because you are wrong — because you have no way to demonstrate it, and a customer who has learned that your paperwork is soft has every commercial incentive to keep testing it.

The fix costs the price of printing a better book and a fortnight of insisting drivers fill it in properly. Set against the ₦494,400 above, on one delivery, that is not really a decision.