The manifest sorts itself. Deb still signs it.

Finding staff is not a forecast problem in the Riverina. It is a Tuesday problem. The office that runs a depot is usually two people, and one of them also does the BAS. So the question is never what the technology can do. It is what this office can safely hand over, and what it must keep.

Start with what it keeps. Anything a customer sees. Anything that moves money. Anything unusual. Those stay with a person, and that person has a name.

What it hands over is the retyping. The manifest arrives by email, gets keyed into the transport system, then keyed again for invoicing. The same facts three times, three chances to mistype a rego. The helper reads the manifest, drafts the entries, and stops. Then Deb, who has always owned the morning manifest, checks the screen, fixes the one line the scanner misread, and approves the lot.

Nothing ships, bills or leaves the building without a person saying yes. That is the whole design, and it is why the office trusts it. The helper's limits are written down. What it may draft, what it may never touch, where it must stop. When it hits something new, it does not guess. It holds the job for a person, the way a good junior would.

The hours come back quietly. Not from one big change, but from a hundred small retypings that no longer happen. The afternoon reappears. The BAS gets done in daylight.

The person stays in charge because judgement is what the office actually sells. The manifest sorts itself. Deb still signs it. Both halves of that sentence matter.