Who it is for — import forwarder

Nothing starts until the pre-alert is linked.

The agent sends the pre-alert. Until it is linked to its master, no arrival notice has started, no delivery order has started, and terminal storage is running on cargo no screen in the office is counting. Everything else on this page hangs off that one link. Six of the eleven steps in a forwarder’s day belong to this desk.

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Of the eleven steps

The ISF clock, the pre-alert link, arrival, free time, storage, and money leaking quietly.

Data elements on an ISF

ISF-10 and ISF-5, prepared per house, with a pre-check before anything is sent.

This desk’s day

Six items, in the order of what they cost.

The queue sorts by what is most expensive to leave alone rather than by when it happens, which is why the filing that is already late sits above the box arriving tomorrow. The right column is the cost of leaving each one unattended.

Past the ISF deadline with no filing number

2 import consolidations are past the ISF filing deadline with no filing number — 1 has already arrived

The houses past the deadline that still have no filing number, with the ones that have already arrived put first. ISF is prepared per house, not per master, so a master with four houses is four answers and not one.

Arrived and unfiled is not the same problem as unfiled. That is the side where the penalty is already fixed, so it goes at the top.

A pre-alert not linked to its master

7 pre-alerts passed the arrival date without being linked

The agent’s documents are in the system and the shipment is not. Linking is one field. Until it is set, the arrival notice and the delivery order have nothing to print from.

Terminal storage does not wait for the link. Nothing has started on those shipments, and no other screen in the office says so.

Arriving, or arrived and not released

Consolidations past their ETA with no arrival recorded, first

Consolidations past their ETA with no arrival recorded come before the ones arriving tomorrow. Arrived and not customs-released is its own line.

A consolidation that arrived without being marked arrived is ageing on no clock at all, which is the one state nothing downstream can see.

Container free time

4 containers are past free time — detention is accruing

Past free time. Two days left. Gated out without a VGM. Demurrage and detention are counted as two clocks, because they start at different events and end with different parties.

One counter for both gets the terminal right and the equipment wrong, or the other way round, and the difference appears only on the invoice.

Storage past free time and not charged

Free time over, and no charge raised yet

The ones where free time is over and no charge has been raised, then the ones whose free time ends today, before they become the first list tomorrow.

Storage that is never raised is not a discount anyone chose to give. It is revenue that left without a decision.

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.

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

Houses under a master, the pre-alert linked to the master, and the arrival notice, delivery order, labels and manifest printed from the record. Credit terms sit on the customer card: while an invoice is past terms the delivery order for that customer is locked, and the screen names the invoice that locked it instead of failing quietly.

ABI

Before it lands · 7 screens

ISF-10 and ISF-5 per house, ten data elements, with the pre-check that catches a rejection before it is sent. Ocean and air AMS against the 24-hour rule, with who filed recorded. Powers of attorney and their expiry. AMC prepares the record and records the response; AMC does not transmit to CBP.

Portal

Customers serve themselves · 65 screens

The consignee watches the shipment, pulls the arrival notice and the rest of the documents, and sees the invoice with its balance, without calling the desk that is working the queue. Every request they send lands in one staff inbox that can be assigned, answered, or turned into a quotation or a pickup in one step.

Containers

Extension

Free time as two clocks — demurrage while the box sits at the terminal, detention while the box is held. Boxes pulled before the ERD counted on their own. The carrier’s own D&D invoice audited against the twenty items 46 CFR §541.6 requires, with a dispute letter written under §541.5.

Partner

Extension

The other end of step four: pre-alerts in both directions, agent settlement and netting, co-loader statements. Where inbound volume comes through a handful of agents, this is where the question of who owes whom stops being an email thread.

What stays off

And why it is not billed

WMS, unless the forwarder runs its own CFS — where it does, the storage clock starts at the receiving scan and the charge reaches this invoice. Dispatch, unless it owns the trucks; the delivery leg rides on hired trucking, which is inside SCM. Parcel, unless it sends parcels.

One real screen

Pre-alerts that have not been linked yet.

One field is missing on each of these, and the last column is what that one field is holding up.

Fig. 1 — Nothing starts until the pre-alert is linked.lib/import-hawbs.ts

The agent’s documents are already in the system, which is exactly what makes this expensive: terminal storage runs on cargo no screen in the office is counting yet.

Pre-alerts — not linked to a master 4 of 12 pre-alerts

Pre-alerts not yet linked to a master
Pre-alert	From	Master	Arrival	Not started
AMCP-2608-041211 documents	Shanghai agent	Not linked	Arrived 30 Aug Past	Arrival notice, D/O
AMCP-2608-04276 documents	Ningbo agent	Not linked	Arrived 01 Sep Past	Arrival notice, D/O
AMCP-2609-00039 documents	Busan agent	Not linked	ETA 04 Sep	Arrival notice, D/O
AMCP-2609-00064 documents	Yantian agent	AMCM-2609-0058Linked 01 Sep	ETA 05 Sep	Nothing — it started

7 pre-alerts passed the arrival date without being linkedToday

What the last column is counting

Nothing has started on those shipments. No arrival notice, no delivery order, no ISF per house drawn off the master — and terminal storage running the whole time on a box this office is not counting.

One link, four things downstream

Once the pre-alert is linked, the master has houses. Houses are what the ISF is prepared against, what the arrival notice is addressed to, what the delivery order releases, and what the invoice bills. Four screens stop guessing at once, because they were never guessing — they were waiting.

The queue counts the unlinked ones by whether the arrival date has passed, not by how old the email is. A pre-alert that arrived this morning for a box landing next week is not a problem yet, and a queue that says it is teaches people to ignore the queue.

See a forwarder’s day, in eleven steps →

Get a demo

Forty-five minutes on a real shipment.

One inbound consolidation is taken from the agent’s pre-alert to the delivery order, on a demonstration company or on a copy of the forwarder’s own spreadsheet. Difficult masters are welcome. The session ends with a written quotation.

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