Chile dispatch guides and transport data from 1 November 2026

What the rule changed and what it did not

The Servicio de Impuestos Internos issued Resolución Exenta 144 on 23 October 2026. It sets the requirements for invoices and guías de despacho that support the movement of movable goods, and it applies to both the dispatch guide (DTE 52) and the invoice (DTE 33) when either one covers the trip. It replaces Resolución 154 of 2025, which the SII had postponed from 1 May 2026 to 1 November 2026.

Three dates matter for most businesses. The general data rules apply from 1 November 2026. Every taxpayer must tell the SII which transport model it uses by 31 January 2027, and a taxpayer that does not declare one is treated as self-managed. The implementation window for the third-party dispatch guide and the interoperability route runs to 1 May 2027, but only for businesses that choose those routes. Some commentators have described the May 2027 date as a general postponement. The regulator's text does not present it that way, so read it as a deadline for the new outsourced tools, not for the core data.

One gap is still open. At the time of writing, the commentary we could read says the SII had not yet published the annex, the new document format and the revised XML schemas that software vendors need. Until those are published, check the SII's site before you change your billing software's settings or your XML mapping.

The fields you need on every movement

Write the list below into your order form or your billing template. Each item is either required at issue or can be completed later, depending on your model.

1. Origin: the effective departure address and comuna.
2. Destination: the effective delivery address and comuna. A head office address is not enough when goods go to a site.
3. Driver: full name and cédula de identidad.
4. Carrier: the RUT of the transport company, courier or logistics operator.
5. Vehicle: the licence plate (patente), and the plate of any trailer or semi-trailer.
6. Load: description, quantity, weight or volume, and unit price where the rule asks for it.
7. Dates: the departure date and time, and the arrival date.
8. Type of movement: one of the categories the SII lists, such as sale, consignment, internal transfer, return or export.

Two points are easy to miss. First, the rule expects one guide for each movement and each vehicle, so a single guide cannot cover two trucks or two days. Second, the outsourced route allows the SII to waive some item-level detail, such as unit price, when a third-party guide points back to the original document. That relief applies only to the third-party guide, not to your original.

Checklist by transport model

The SII asks each business to pick one of three transport models: self-managed, outsourced, or the special regime. Your choice decides who fills which field, and when.

Self-managed transport

Self-managed transport covers your own fleet and any external carrier that gives you the driver and plate before the vehicle leaves. Here you must fill every field on the guide when you issue it. Your checklist is simple: the driver's name and cédula, the carrier RUT, the plate, both addresses with comunas, the load detail and the departure time. If the driver or plate is only known at the loading bay, you are no longer self-managed in practice. Either get those details earlier, or move that movement to the outsourced model.

Outsourced transport

Outsourced transport is the case where you hand the load to a courier, a last-mile company or a logistics operator who chooses the driver and vehicle. You still issue the original guide, and it must carry what you know: origin, destination, load detail and the reference to the order. If the driver, plate or carrier RUT is not known when you issue, the regulator allows you to mark the field "Diferido" or "Sin Dato". The carrier then completes the missing data through a Guía de Despacho Tercerizada (GDT), which must point back to your original document and can only be used electronically. For this model, your checklist is shorter, but you need a way to know later whether the carrier completed each guide.

Special regime

The commentary we could read describes a special regime as one of the three declared models, but it does not give a field list that is separate from the general rule. Do not set up your system on a guess. Read the regime's section in the official text of Resolución Exenta 144, and ask the accountant who files your returns which regime, if any, fits your activity before 31 January 2027.

Why missing transport data costs money

The direct cost is labour. Someone has to find the driver's cédula, the plate and the carrier's RUT for each guide, usually by calling the dispatch desk or opening a message thread. Barchard and Pace (2011) reported manual data-entry error rates of about 1 to 4 per cent per field, a figure that industry cost guides still quote in 2026. Those rates are not measured on Chilean dispatch desks, so treat them as a reason to check, not as a forecast for your business.

To estimate your own cost, use this method. Count the guides you issue in a normal month. Time how long it takes to find and type the transport fields for ten of them, including the phone calls. Multiply the total hours by the fully loaded hourly cost of the person doing the work. Then apply your own error count: take the number of guides and the error rate you see in a spot check. For example, 300 guides at four minutes each is 20 hours a month. At a 1 to 4 per cent field error rate, between 3 and 12 of those guides would carry at least one wrong field. These are arithmetic examples, not measurements from your business. The audit described below measures your own figures.

The larger cost sits downstream. A guide with a wrong plate can be rejected at a checkpoint, a truck can wait at a gate, a customer can dispute the delivery, and the invoice may need to be cancelled and reissued. Those costs depend on your routes and customers, so count them from your last quarter's disputes rather than from a published average.

Manual way and automated way

The table compares a typical manual process with a process where an AI worker captures the fields from the order and keeps a person in control of the exceptions.

How to automate it, step by step

1. List every channel where orders arrive. Most businesses in this market take orders on WhatsApp, by email, and through a sales screen in the ERP or billing software. Write each one down, with the person who handles it.
2. Build the field list into each channel. Create a short form or message template with the transport fields. Keep the carrier and driver list in a spreadsheet you control, with cédula, RUT and plate for each entry.
3. Connect WhatsApp to a worker. Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform sends incoming messages to your server as JSON payloads through webhooks. A worker receives each message, extracts the fields with a language model, and asks the sender for anything missing. You can use Meta's Cloud API directly or a provider that hosts it, but your server must receive and log every message.
4. Read the emails and PDFs. Carrier confirmations, purchase orders and delivery notes often come as PDFs. Optical character recognition (OCR) turns the scanned or image text into text, and a language model maps it to your fields. Treat OCR output as a draft, not a final value.
5. Validate before issue. Check the RUT with its check digit, the plate format, the comuna against your list, the presence of a load quantity, and that the carrier is in the approved list. Any failure goes to the exception queue, not to the SII.
6. Apply the transport model. For self-managed movements, the guide is issued only when all fields are complete. For outsourced movements, the guide is issued with what is known, and the worker marks the unknown fields as "Diferido" or "Sin Dato" with a reason. The carrier's GDT is then tracked against the original document number.
7. Push the data into your billing or ERP system. Your DTE software or ERP receives the fields by import or API. Keep your spreadsheet log as a copy, so you can prove what was known and when.

What breaks, and how to prevent it

The most common failure is a driver change on the road. A carrier can swap drivers or vehicles after the guide is issued, and the record then shows the first driver. Prevent this by asking the carrier to confirm any change by message, and by logging that confirmation against the guide number.

Next is the plate typed with a single wrong character. Format checks catch some errors, but a valid-looking plate can still belong to the wrong truck. A simple control is a list of plates per carrier, so a plate that does not belong to the named carrier is flagged. This does not confirm that the plate is correct, only that it is consistent with the list.

Optical reading of PDFs also fails on faded scans, handwritten notes and tables that break across pages. Route those documents to a person when the confidence is low, and keep the original file attached to the record.

Webhook delivery can fail as well. Meta's documentation describes webhooks as HTTP requests with JSON payloads, and a third-party provider's documentation says failed webhooks may be redelivered for up to seven days. That protects against a short outage, but it is not a backup. Keep your own log, and check each morning that the day's messages have all been received.

Finally, the flags pile up. A "Sin Dato" that nobody clears is worse than no flag, because the outsourced guide then goes out with a gap that nobody owns. Set one person to clear the exception queue before each dispatch run, and report the count of open flags every week.

When not to automate

If you issue only a handful of guides a month, with the same driver and vehicle every time, a checklist on paper or in a shared spreadsheet may cost less to run than a connected worker. The same applies if your billing software already captures every transport field at the point of sale. In that case, you may need configuration, not automation.

Do not automate if nobody will own the exception queue. The worker can mark a gap, but it cannot decide what the carrier actually did on the road. If your carriers will not give you driver, plate and RUT before departure, the outsourced model with a GDT may be the honest answer, and the automation should only track the flags.

Automation also cannot make the legal decision for you. The worker applies the fields you configure, and a person must confirm which transport model you declared, whether a movement needs a guide or an invoice, and whether a special regime applies. The worker reduces typing and forgotten fields. It does not replace the accountant or the rule.

What it takes, in time rather than price

The first work is on your data, not on software. Expect to spend time listing your carriers, drivers, plates and customer sites, then deciding who approves an exception. That list is often the largest task, because it exposes gaps that were covered by memory.

Next comes testing. Run the captured fields against real orders for several weeks, and compare the worker's drafts with what staff would have typed. Count the exceptions, and fix the rules that produce false flags. Only then should the guide be issued from the connected flow. Keep the old process in place until the test shows the exceptions are manageable.

Finally, plan for the regulator's calendar. Declare your transport model before 31 January 2027, and if you use the outsourced route, decide before 1 May 2027 whether you will use a GDT or the interoperability route. Changes to the SII's annex may require updates to your templates, so keep someone responsible for watching the SII's site.

This explains the rule in general terms; it is not legal or tax advice for your case.