Who it is for — export forwarder

Bookings, cut-offs, and AES before departure.

An export forwarder sells space it does not own, against a schedule set by someone else. The work is the booking, the shipping instruction, the cut-off board, the filing that must be in before the vessel sails, and a house B/L that must print from the same record the invoice will read. Four of the eleven steps in a forwarder’s day belong to this desk.

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Of the eleven steps

Cut-offs, screening, the age of documents, and money leaking quietly — plus the filing.

Bytes per AESTIR line

Fixed width, one line per record. The file is written by the system; the ITN and any rejection are recorded back on the shipment.

This desk’s day

Five items the morning queue puts in front of this desk.

Ordered by the cost of leaving them alone, rather than by when they happen. The right column states what each one costs if it is left unattended.

Carrier cut-offs

3 cut-offs are already past and not met

The ones already past and not met, then the ones inside the next 48 hours. The ERD is counted on its own line and not mixed in, because a past ERD is good news: the window is open.

A cut-off missed rolls the booking, and the filing, the documents and the invoice roll with it.

Party screening

Parties with no screening on record, and the age of the list they were checked against

Two questions, not one: which parties have never been screened, and how old the list was when they were. A check run yesterday against a list six months old passes any audit of the first question and has confirmed nothing.

The result is No match, not “clear”. The OFAC 50 per cent rule means no screen can say safe. One hit and a person looks at it.

The age of documents

Everything with an expiry date, soonest first

Powers of attorney expiring. Bond and IAC renewals. Claim deadlines. Rate tables about to expire — an expired table cannot price at all. Links sent to a customer, expiring.

None of these fail loudly. Nothing breaks on the day; the file is no longer valid, and the office learns of it from someone else.

Money leaking quietly

Six ways money stops moving, on one list

Delivered more than 45 days ago and never invoiced. Shipments with no delivery date, which never age at all. Receivables past credit terms — and the customers with no credit terms set, where this system says it cannot tell whether they are late. Credit applied against an invoice that does not exist. Email that never went out.

None of this is an error. Every line is a screen doing exactly what it was told, which is why nothing else was ever going to raise it.

AES, before departure

Commodity lines off the shipment, the pre-check, then the file

Commodity lines off the shipment, the pre-check, then the AESTIR file at 80 bytes a line. ACE WebLink reads the ITN back onto the shipment, and a rejection back with its reason.

Not one of the eleven, but this desk’s own. AMC prepares the record and records the response. AMC does not transmit to CBP and is not an ABI broker.

What this desk switches on

Three systems, two extensions, and a short list of what stays off.

A system that is off has no menus, rather than greyed-out ones, and is not billed.

SCM

The base · 41 screens

Bookings and shipping instructions, the cut-off board, houses attached to a master. The house B/L, labels and manifest print from the record, so the weight on the B/L is the weight on the invoice. Month-end billing across every shipment, and the job’s profit while the job is open. The pickup leg rides on hired trucking, which is inside SCM and not a separate purchase.

QMS

Buy, sell, margin · 5 screens

Air weight breaks, LCL revenue ton and FCL per container, contract and spot, buy and sell side by side. The table’s validity is enforced and the morning queue warns at 30, 14 and 7 days. Under the minimum margin for that customer grade the line needs an approval, and the approval is recorded.

ABI

Before departure · 7 screens

AES commodity lines and the AESTIR file, ocean and air AMS against the 24-hour rule with who filed recorded, powers of attorney and their expiry. ISF is the import side of the same system, available when required. AMC does not transmit to CBP.

Party screening

Its own switch · priced at zero

25,939 entries in the United States consolidated list. The decision is recorded and the age of the list sits next to the result. The law requires the check and the list is free government data, so AMC does not charge for it.

Connect

Extension

QuickBooks both ways: invoices, credit notes and supplier bills out, payments read back to flip an invoice to paid. Air waybill and container tracking. Reading a rate sheet or a document with the model, where nothing is saved until the table has been reviewed.

What stays off

And why it is not billed

WMS, unless the forwarder runs its own floor. Dispatch, unless it owns the trucks. Parcel, unless it sends parcels. Containers is the one worth a second look even on export: a box pulled before the ERD has detention running on it while it has not sailed, and it shows on no arrival list anywhere.

One real screen

The cut-off board, with the ERD counted apart.

One row per master, the filing state on the same line, and two dates that are never added together because they mean opposite things.

Cut-off board — week of 02 September 4 of 12 masters

Export cut-off board — week of 02 September
Master	Lane	SI cut-off	ERD	AES
AMCM-2609-00714 houses	LAX → SIN	01 Sep 17:00 PastNot met	29 AugWindow open	No ITNFile not sent
AMCM-2609-00742 houses	LGB → HKG	03 Sep 12:00In 41 hours	31 AugWindow open	ITN recorded02 Sep 08:11
AMCM-2609-00797 houses	LAX → ICN	05 Sep 17:00	04 SepNot yet	RejectedCommodity line 3
AMCM-2609-00831 house	OAK → SYD	06 Sep 10:00	03 SepNot yet	Not started

3 cut-offs are already past and not metUrgent

Counted separately, and not shown above

3 ERDs are also past. A past ERD means the window to deliver is open, which is good news — adding it to the count above would make a good day read as a bad one.

Two dates, counted apart

A cut-off is a wall that can be hit. An ERD is a door that opens. They are both dates on the same master, and a screen that treats them the same way is worse than no screen, because it is confidently wrong.

One of the twenty release checks (check_deadline_floor) stops a build that clips the bottom of a warning at today. The moment a passed deadline drops off the board is exactly the moment it stops being a warning and starts being a bill.

See a forwarder’s day, in eleven steps →

Get a demo

Forty-five minutes on a real shipment.

One export is taken from quotation to invoice, on a demonstration company or on a copy of the forwarder’s own spreadsheet. Difficult lanes are welcome. The session ends with a written quotation.

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