# Docket — full corpus

> The desk work of global trade, done by AI. This file concatenates every solution, glossary,
> blog and HS-code page published on dodocket.com, tldr and full body, for a
> reader that wants the content in one fetch rather than a crawl per page. It
> is generated at build time from the same MDX source the pages render from —
> see llms.txt for the index, numbers and pricing.

# Demurrage and detention software: finish the pack in time

Demurrage and detention software has one measurable goal: have the document pack complete before free time runs out. Free time starts at discharge, not when your paperwork is ready. Packs routinely run about eight days late against it, and a week of demurrage on one container has cost US$12,000. Docket works the checklist backwards from the last free day and chases daily.

Demurrage and detention software is worth buying for one outcome and one only: the document
pack is complete before the last free day, so there is nothing to pay. Everything else in
the category, the dashboards, the dispute workflows, the freight audit that catches the
charge after the invoice lands, arrives too late to change the number.

Free time starts at discharge. It does not start when your exporter couriers the
originals, or when the bank releases documents against payment, or when the fumigation
stamp finally arrives. It counts calendar days and it does not ask.

Document packs routinely run about **eight days** late against
free time. A week of demurrage on one container has cost **US$12,000**. One
missed pack a month annualises to **US$12,000 to US$24,000**.

None of those eight days were a shipping problem.

## Why do two clocks decide whether you pay?

Every shipment runs two clocks at the same time.

The **port clock** starts on discharge and counts down your free days. It is set by the
carrier's tariff or, if you negotiated one, by your service contract.

The **paperwork clock** starts whenever the last party in the chain decides to act. The
exporter, the bank, the insurer, the chamber of commerce, the forwarder, your customs broker.

When the second clock loses, you pay storage on a container that was never physically
delayed. The box was there. The paper was not.

The US Federal Maritime Commission's interpretive rule on demurrage and detention is
useful here because it says out loud what the charge is for. The rule tests these charges
against what it calls the "incentive principle": whether the charge actually serves to
move cargo. Read that from the importer's side and the conclusion is blunt. The charge
exists to make you finish your paperwork. Finish it and there is nothing to argue about.

## What does prevention mean in practice?

It means running the clock backwards.

Most systems work forwards from booking. Booking, then sailing, then ETA, then arrival,
then a scramble. Prevention starts from the other end.

1. Derive the **last free day** from discharge, using the free time on your contract for
   that carrier and that lane.
2. Take the full document checklist for the lane, the destination and the letter of
   credit.
3. Assign each item to the party who owes it, with a deadline set backwards from the last
   free day, not forwards from booking.
4. Chase every one of those parties, daily, until the item arrives.
5. Check each document as it lands, against the purchase contract, so a wrong one is
   caught while there is still time to reissue it.
6. Escalate the moment someone goes quiet.

Step four is where every other product stops.

## Which kind of demurrage and detention software is this?

The category sells three different things under one name, and it pays to know which one
you are looking at.

**Visibility and alerts.** The container's milestones from the carrier, a free-time
countdown, an alert when the last free day is near. Useful. It tells a person to act.

**Audit and dispute.** The carrier's invoice checked against your contract rates, the
gate and pick-up messages kept as evidence, a workflow for contesting the charge. Useful
after you have already been billed.

**Laytime claims.** Charter-party demurrage on a bulk or tanker voyage, calculated from the
statement of facts. A different trade and a different clock.

**The noun changes, the kinds do not.** The same three products come back as a demurrage
management system, as demurrage planning software, or as detention billing automation,
and nothing inside them changes with the name. Work out which of the kinds above you are
being shown before you compare two of them on price.

Docket is a fourth kind. It works the cause, which is the document pack, and it does the
acting: the chase, the check, the escalation. The others show you the clock. This one
finishes the paperwork before it runs out.

## What demurrage software means on a container import

The shortest name for the category is the most ambiguous one. Searched on its own,
demurrage software returns two trades that share a word and nothing else: container
demurrage, which is a carrier's charge on a box that sat at the terminal past its free
days, and charter-party laytime demurrage, which is settled between owner and charterer
from a statement of facts on a bulk or tanker voyage.

This page is the first one. If your demurrage arrives as a line on a carrier invoice
against a container number, you are in the right place. If it arrives as a claim under a
charter party, the calculation is different and so is the software for it.

## What demurrage and detention alert software does, and what Docket does

| | Alert / tracking software | Trade ERP | Docket |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shows the container's milestones | Yes | Sometimes | Yes |
| Shows a free-time countdown | Sometimes | No | Yes |
| Holds the document checklist for the lane | No | Yes | Yes |
| Sets each document deadline from the last free day | No | No | Yes |
| **Reads each document and checks it against the contract** | No | No | Yes |
| **Chases the exporter, bank, insurer and customs broker daily** | No | No | Yes |
| **Escalates when nobody replies** | No | No | WhatsApp at 24h, SMS at 48h, AI voice call at 72h |
| Files the customs declaration | No | No | No. Your broker files it |
| Moves the container | No | No | No |
| Disputes the charge after you paid | Some do | No | Not the point |

VISCO, Shipzy, Gen10 and IGNITE all record the trade and record it well. Nobody in that
list sends the email at 9am, notices no reply by Wednesday, and rings the supplier's
office on Thursday. That is the empty quadrant, and it is the only quadrant that changes
the demurrage number.

## How does the chase actually reach someone?

Four steps, on channels the counterparty already uses.

Email goes first. Twenty-four hours of silence moves the same ask to WhatsApp. Forty-eight
hours moves it to SMS. Seventy-two hours triggers an AI voice call. Each step carries the
shipment reference and one specific ask.

There is no portal and no login. Your supplier's documentation clerk does not create an
account, does not get invited, and does not need to know Docket exists. Products built as
networks need every party onboarded before they help you, which is why enterprise
implementations run into six and seven figures and take quarters. The ladder works on day
one against a counterparty who has never heard of us.

Supplier chasing measures at about **85% automated** on a live demo running a real import
SOP end to end. Doc-pack drafting and checking measures at about **65%**. We publish both
rather than a single flattering figure, because the checking half genuinely needs a human
on the exceptions and nobody should pretend otherwise.

## What does the freed time do to the desk?

A 500-container month costs **1,100 hours** of desk work at 2.2 hours a container. Seven
people at 176 hours each is **1,232 hours**. That desk runs at about **90% capacity on
grunt work** before it buys or sells anything.

Blended across all desk work, the automation rate is **70%**. On that desk it returns
**770 hours a month**, which is **4.25 FTE** of capacity.

Capacity, not headcount. The same seven people handle 1,000 to 1,200 containers instead of
500. Or two or three of them move to buying and selling, the work that produces the margin,
while the machine runs the checklist. Nobody who ever grew a trading desk did it by having
fewer hands.

At a loaded **US$25 an hour**, 770 hours is **US$19,250 a month** removed. Docket at 350
shipments on the Trade Desk rate is **US$2,100**. Net: **US$17,150 a month**,
**US$205,800 a year**. Money freed minus what we cost.

Demurrage savings are deliberately left out of that base case. They sit on top, and they
are the reason this page exists, but the ops number stands without them.

## Free time is not a standard number, so do not treat it as one

This is the most common and most expensive assumption on an import desk.

Free time varies by carrier, and two lines calling the same port allow different periods.
It varies by port and terminal, and again by whether the box moves to an inland container
depot. It varies by direction and by equipment, so dry, reefer and special are not the
same. And it varies by what you negotiated.

That last one is a real lever and it costs nothing to ask for. On a lane where the carrier
wants your volume, extra free days are cheaper for them to give than a rate reduction, and
worth more to you if your pack is habitually late.

Docket holds your carrier's free-time terms per lane, next to the purchase contract:
the free days, the demurrage and detention rates and the point they step up, per
carrier, port pair and equipment. The last free day on every shipment is derived from
that record, not from a default, and the carrier's invoice can be read against the same
terms when it arrives. We publish port free-time tables only where we hold a sourced row
for a named carrier, and where we do not have it the page says so instead of showing a
number that would be wrong for your lane. A confident wrong free-time figure is worse
than a blank one, because you will plan against it.

## A worked example, on the only numbers we publish

No tariff table, because we do not hold a sourced free-time row for your lane. What we can
work through is the shape of the loss, using the figures published on this site and nothing
else.

Take one container on a lane where the pack runs late by the usual margin.

| Step | What happens | The number |
|---|---|---|
| Day 0 | The box is discharged. Free time starts here, not when your paperwork is ready | — |
| Day 0 onward | The desk works the shipment: supplier follow-ups, doc-pack prep and checking, status tracking, payment tracking | about 2.2 hours per container |
| The gap | The document pack lands behind free time by the usual margin | about 8 days late |
| The bill | A week of demurrage on one container | US$12,000 on a reported incident |

Now the quieter version, which is the one that actually shows up in a year of accounts. One
missed document pack a month, not a disaster, just the ordinary one that nobody escalates:
**US$12,000 to US$24,000 a year**. No single event is large enough to trigger a meeting.
The annual total is a salary.

Against that, the chase itself. Of the 2.2 hours a container takes, Docket is built to
automate about **85%** of the follow-up work, leaving roughly **20 minutes** of judgement
per container. The eight days are not a discipline problem. They are what a desk at
[about 90% capacity](/ops-cost-calculator) on grunt work produces, and the fix is to take
the grunt work away rather than to ask the desk to try harder.

Two honest caveats. The US$12,000 is one reported incident, not an average, and it is not
annualised anywhere on this site. And demurrage is deliberately left out of the return case
we publish — the ops-cost saving is the number a trader can check against their own payroll
this afternoon, and it stands on its own.

## What Docket does not do

Docket does not move containers. It has no slots, no trucks and no equipment, and it
cannot make a terminal release a box faster.

Docket does not replace your customs broker and does not file the customs declaration. Your broker files.
What changes is that the pack reaches them complete and checked, days earlier, so the
filing is routine instead of a rescue.

Docket does not remove congestion, customs holds, inspection queues or equipment
shortages. Those cause demurrage too and no software touches them.

Docket does not dispute charges for you after the fact. Prevention and dispute are
different products, and dispute is the one you buy when prevention already failed. If a
bill has already landed, the separate walkthrough on
[disputing a demurrage invoice](/blog/how-to-dispute-a-demurrage-invoice) sets out which
rules apply in which trade and what evidence each argument needs.

Docket does not claim to eliminate demurrage. It addresses the eight days that came from
paperwork, which is most of the gap.

## The second thing that happens on a tight shipment

Urgency is the fraudster's favourite condition. A shipment inside free time with a chase
running is exactly when a revised invoice arrives from a domain one character off the real
one, with changed bank details and a note asking you to keep it quiet.

Docket screens every inbound email on a live shipment for four signals: look-alike sender
domain, bank details changed mid-deal, beneficiary name that does not match the contract
party, and urgency or secrecy language. One such attempt, on a single shipment, was
**US$62,500**.

That works because the system already read the original contract and the original invoice.
The check that prevents demurrage and the check that prevents payment diversion are the
same capability aimed at two different losses.

## Where to start

Pick your worst lane. The one where the pack is always late and everybody already knows
which supplier it is.

Load the purchase contract, connect the mailbox, map the SOP. Setup starts at $1,500. Run
that lane for a month and count one number: how many packs were complete before the last
free day. That number is either better than last month or it is not, and it belongs to you,
not to us.

Every figure on this page is either an operational baseline or comes off a published rule.
Neither one knows your lane, your carrier or your customs broker.

If you have paid demurrage because a document was late, bring the invoice and the
timeline. We will show you which day the chase would have started.

Source: https://dodocket.com/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software

---

# Import document checking software that reads the whole pack

Import document checking software should do one job: open every document in the pack, compare it against the purchase contract and the party masters, and tell you which field is wrong while there is still time to fix it. Checking a pack by hand takes 45 to 90 minutes a container. Docket drafts and checks about 65% of that work and hands you the exceptions.

Import document checking software has one job, and it is not generating a template.
The job is to open the invoice, the packing list, the certificate of origin and the bill
of lading, read what is actually written in them, compare every field against the
purchase contract, and name the one that is wrong. While the box is still on the water.
Not on the day your customs broker calls.

Checking a pack by hand runs **45 to 90 minutes a
container**. That is the single largest line in the 2.2 hours of desk work each container
consumes. It is also the line that costs the most when it slips, because a document
nobody read is a document nobody can fix.

## What does a document check actually involve?

Two separate questions, and most desks only ask the first.

**Completeness.** Is every document the lane needs sitting in the folder? Commercial
invoice, packing list, bill of lading, certificate of origin, insurance certificate,
[pre-shipment inspection certificate](/glossary/pre-shipment-inspection-certificate) where the destination demands one, fumigation or
[phytosanitary certificate](/glossary/phytosanitary-certificate) where the cargo demands one, plus whatever the letter of credit lists.
A checklist answers this. A junior executive with a printout answers this.

Where the shipment is under a [letter of credit](/glossary/letter-of-credit), the credit
is the checklist and the check runs field by field against it: goods description against
the invoice wording, latest shipment date against the bill of lading, consignee and
notify party, insured value, the presentation period. Each field passes, warns or fails,
with the credit clause it was checked against, so a discrepancy is caught on your desk
and not in the bank's refusal notice.

**Correctness.** Do the values inside those documents agree with each other, and with the
contract you signed? This is the harder question and it is where the money is.

The fields that break a pack:

- Consignee and notify party, spelled the way the buyer is registered, not the way the
  exporter's clerk remembers it
- Description of goods, matched to the contract line and to the HS code declared
- Quantity, gross weight, net weight, and whether the three reconcile across invoice,
  packing list and bill of lading
- Incoterm and named place, because CIF and CFR are one letter apart and a different
  insurance obligation
- Port of loading and port of discharge
- Container and seal numbers, matched across the BL and the packing list
- Invoice value, currency, and whether the total is the sum of the lines
- Dates, in the order the credit requires them

Banks are unforgiving about this. Under the ICC's UCP 600, Article 14, a bank examines
documents on their face to decide whether they constitute a complying presentation, and
a discrepancy is refusal. A trading desk finds this out on the day the bank refuses,
which is a week after the exporter could have reissued the invoice for free.

## Why does checking eat 45 to 90 minutes a container?

Because nothing arrives in one place, in one format, at one time.

The invoice comes as a PDF from the supplier. The packing list is a photograph of a
printed page, taken at an angle, forwarded through two inboxes. The bill of lading
arrives as a draft for approval, then again as a final, and the second one is not always
the one that got filed. The COO comes from a chamber of commerce with its own numbering.
The insurance certificate comes from a broker who copies four people, one of whom has
left the company.

Somebody on your desk opens all of it, retypes the important values into a spreadsheet,
and compares. Then a correction comes in and they do it again.

A 500-container month at 2.2 hours a container is **1,100 hours**. A seven-person desk
has about **1,232 hours** available at 176 hours a person. That desk is running at
roughly **90% capacity on grunt work** before anyone buys or sells a single tonne. The
checking line is the biggest single piece of it.

## What a trade ERP does, and what Docket does

Every system on this market records the trade. That is a real category and those products
are good at it. None of them read the documents and none of them chase the people who owe
you documents.

| | Trade ERP / documentation software | Docket |
|---|---|---|
| Stores the contract | Yes | Yes |
| Generates export documents from your masters | Yes | Yes |
| Records that a document was received | Yes | Yes |
| **Opens the document and reads the fields** | No | Yes |
| **Compares every field to the purchase contract** | No | Yes |
| **Names the discrepancy and who has to fix it** | Notifies you | Names the field, both values, and the party |
| **Emails the exporter until it is fixed** | No | Yes, daily |
| **Escalates when nobody replies** | No | WhatsApp at 24h, SMS at 48h, AI voice call at 72h |
| Files the customs declaration | No | No. Your broker files it |
| Moves the container | No | No |

VISCO, Shipzy and IncoDocs all sit in the left column and they are honest about it.
IncoDocs generates export documents for around $13 a month and does that job well. It has
no view on a certificate of origin that somebody else issued and emailed you. Gen10 and
IGNITE answer questions from your own book. e2open reaches counterparties, once every
counterparty has onboarded to the network.

The empty quadrant is the system that reads the document **and** goes after the person
who has to correct it. That is where Docket sits.

## What does Docket automate, and what does it leave you?

Doc-pack drafting and checking measures at about **65% automated**. We publish that number
rather than a rounder one because it is what the live demo does against a real import SOP.
Nobody should claim 100% on documents. Somebody still has to look at the exception, and
some exceptions need a phone call to a person, not a machine.

Across all desk work the blended automation rate is **70%**. On the 500-container
reference desk that frees about **770 hours a month**, which is **4.25 FTE** of capacity.

Read that as capacity, because that is what it is. Your same seven people now handle
1,000 to 1,200 containers instead of 500. Or two of them stop retyping weights off a
packing list and move to buying and selling, which is the work that actually earns the
margin. Nobody on a growing desk has ever complained about having more hours.

At a loaded **US$25 an hour**, those 770 hours are **US$19,250 a month** of desk time
removed. Docket at that volume is 350 shipments at $6, so **US$2,100**. Net, that is
**US$17,150 a month** and **US$205,800 a year**. Demurrage and fraud savings are left out
of that base case on purpose.

## What happens when a wrong document goes unread?

The pack goes late, and the port does not wait.

Free time starts at discharge. It does not start when your paperwork is ready and it does
not care why the COO had the wrong consignee. Document packs
routinely run about **eight days** late against free time. A week of demurrage on one
container has cost **US$12,000**. One missed doc-pack a month annualises to
**US$12,000 to US$24,000**.

There is a second failure that costs more and is quieter. The fraud one.

Every inbound email on a live shipment is a chance for somebody to send a revised invoice
from a look-alike domain with new bank details. Docket screens every inbound email for
four signals: look-alike sender domain, bank details changed mid-deal, beneficiary name
that does not match the contract party, and urgency or secrecy language. One catch on the
single shipment was **US$62,500**.

That screen only works because the system already read the original invoice. Checking and
fraud detection are the same capability pointed at two problems.

## Be clear about what Docket does not do

Credibility on a trade desk is worth more than a feature list, so here is the boundary.

Docket does not move containers. It has no equipment, no slots and no trucks.

Docket does not replace your customs broker and does not file the customs declaration. The filing is your
broker's licence and their liability, and it stays there. What changes is that your broker
receives a clean, complete, checked pack days earlier, instead of a folder at 6pm with two
documents missing.

Docket does not sign for you. It does not approve a draft BL and it does not accept a
discrepancy on your behalf. It surfaces the exception and waits for a human.

Docket does not claim 100% on anything. Doc-pack drafting and checking is 65%. Supplier
chasing is 85%. Tracking and reporting is 85%. Those are measurements, not targets.

## How does checking connect to the chase?

A check that produces a list is a to-do list, and to-do lists are what your desk already
has too many of.

Docket takes the discrepancy and works it. The exporter gets an email naming the field,
showing the contract value and the document value, and asking for a corrected copy. If
nothing arrives, the ladder runs: WhatsApp after 24 hours, SMS after 48, an AI voice call
after 72. On channels the counterparty already uses. No portal, no login, nothing for the
supplier's clerk in a different country to sign up for.

Your team sees four flags instead of forty documents. Everything that happened is in the
audit trail, with the email it came from, so when someone asks in March why the March
shipment cleared late, the answer takes thirty seconds.

## Where to start

Start with the contract. The purchase contract is the first thing a trader records and it
is the thing every check, every chase and every payment date derives from. Load the
contract, connect the mailbox, map the SOP. Setup starts at $1,500 and covers all three.

Then pick one lane and one supplier and run it for a month. Count how many discrepancies
surface before the vessel sails instead of after. That is the number that decides this,
and it is a number your own desk produces.

And honest about the numbers: every figure on this page is either an operational baseline
or comes off a published rate table, and neither is a substitute for your own desk. If you
have paid demurrage because a document was late, come argue with the numbers using yours.

Book a walkthrough with your own contract and your last three packs. Bring the worst one.
If the person who checks those packs is not you, the
[documentation executive's page](/for/documentation-executive) is written from their seat.

Source: https://dodocket.com/solutions/import-document-checking-software

---

# Landed cost tracking software, every expense traced to email

Landed cost tracking software adds up what a container actually cost: goods, freight, insurance, duty, broker fees, demurrage. Docket builds that number out of your mailbox, estimated from the contract on day one and actual as each invoice lands, so every line traces to its email. Per container first; your ERP allocates per SKU. Payment tracking alone runs 10 to 15 minutes per container by hand.

Landed cost tracking software should answer one question: what did this container cost
me, and where did each number come from? Docket answers it from your mailbox. Every
charge on a shipment carries the email it arrived in, with the sender, the date and the
attachment attached to the line. Open the cost, see the proof.

That second half is the part most tools skip.

## Why does landed cost go wrong on an import desk?

Not because anyone is careless. Because the costs do not arrive together.

The goods invoice comes from the supplier at contract time. Freight comes from the
forwarder, sometimes twice, once as a quote and once as the real thing. Insurance comes
from the broker. Duty comes out of the broker's working sheet. The delivery order fee shows
up on a separate note from the shipping line. Transport arrives last, often weeks after
the box has been emptied.

Six or seven senders, none of whom agrees on how to name your shipment. One says the BL
number. One says the invoice number. One says "your consignment". A person on your desk
reads each mail, decides which container it belongs to, and types it into a sheet.

That typing is not free. Payment tracking
runs 10 to 15 minutes per container. That sits on top of supplier follow-ups at 30 to 45
minutes, doc-pack prep and checking at 45 to 90 minutes, and status tracking and
reporting at 20 to 30 minutes. The whole container takes about 2.2 hours of desk work,
with a range of 2 to 2.5.

Now multiply. A 500-container desk burns roughly 1,100 hours a month. Seven people at
about 176 hours each gives 1,232 hours of capacity. The desk is at about 90 per cent
capacity on grunt work before anyone buys or sells anything.

## What does "traced to the email" mean in practice?

It means the cost line and its evidence are the same object.

Docket reads the mailbox the desk already uses. A charge lands, and Docket matches it to
the shipment using what is in the mail and the attachment: the BL, the contract, the
container numbers, the party names it already knows from your masters. The charge is
posted against that shipment. The message stays with it.

Six months later, when a supplier says the freight was quoted lower, or an auditor asks
why one container carried $600 of extra fees, nobody goes searching. The line opens, the
mail is under it, the attachment is under the mail.

Here is what the difference looks like on the same charge.

| | Spreadsheet plus mailbox | Trade ERP expense module | Docket |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who spots the invoice email | A person, when they get to it | A person, when they get to it | Docket, on arrival |
| Who decides which shipment it belongs to | A person | A person | Docket, from the contract and BL it already holds |
| Who types the number | A person | A person | Nobody |
| Where the evidence lives | A shared mailbox, somewhere | A file someone attached, if they did | On the cost line |
| When the landed cost is complete | After the invoices stop arriving | After the invoices stop arriving | As the invoices arrive |
| What happens on a dispute | Search the mailbox | Search the mailbox | Open the line |

The right-hand column is the whole product argument. Every trade ERP, CTRM and document
tool on the market records what already happened. Docket does the work that produces the
record.

## How does Docket know which shipment an invoice belongs to?

From what it already holds.

The purchase contract and the sales contract come in first on a Docket desk. That gives
Docket the parties, the goods, the quantity, the incoterm, the port pair and the terms.
The doc-pack adds the bill of lading number, the container and seal numbers and the
invoice number. The masters carry your suppliers, your forwarders, your customs brokers and the way
each of them writes your name.

So when a mail arrives from a forwarder with a subject line that says nothing useful and a
PDF attached, Docket has half a dozen ways to place it. Container number in the PDF. BL
number in the body. Sender matched to a forwarder already working that lane for you.
Amount consistent with the quote on that shipment.

Where the match is not clean, Docket says the match is not clean and asks. A charge posted
to the wrong container is worse than a charge sitting in a queue for a day, because the
first one quietly corrupts two shipments and the second one costs somebody thirty seconds.

## What costs are included in the landed cost?

- The goods value from the purchase contract, which Docket already has because the
  contract is where a shipment starts.
- Ocean freight, as invoiced by the forwarder, with the quote alongside it when a quote
  came first.
- Insurance, as invoiced by the broker.
- Customs duty and clearance charges from the broker's working sheet.
- Delivery order and terminal charges from the line.
- Inland transport.
- Demurrage and detention, if the two clocks went the wrong way.

That last line is the one traders care about most, and it is the one that arrives latest.
Two clocks race on every shipment: port free time against your paperwork. About 8 days of
lateness is typical. A week of demurrage on one container
runs about US$12,000. One missed doc-pack a month works out at US$1,000 to $2,000 an
event, so US$12,000 to $24,000 a year.

When that charge is traced to the email chain that produced it, the argument with the
line, the forwarder or the supplier stops being a memory contest.

## Estimated at contract, actual as the invoices land

Every landed cost software page you will read promises the true cost of your goods. The
question is when you get it.

Docket sets the expected lines the day the purchase contract is recorded. The incoterm
says which charges are yours. The lane says which parties will bill them. Your own history
on that lane says roughly what each will come to. Every line is marked as an estimate.

Then the mailbox does the rest. The freight invoice arrives and replaces the freight
estimate. The broker's working sheet arrives and replaces the duty estimate. The delivery
order arrives with the line's charges on it. Each replacement is a reconciliation: the
actual against the estimate, with the variance visible on the container the day it lands.

A number you can price against on day one and defend line by line on day forty. Most
tools give you one or the other.

## Per container first, then per SKU

A landed cost tracking system for an import desk and a landed cost module inside an
inventory ERP answer different questions, and the ERP's question comes second.

The ERP asks what each unit on the container is now worth, so it can value the stock and
report the margin per product. To answer it, the ERP spreads the container's charges
across the SKUs on it: by value, by quantity, by weight, by volume, on a rule you choose.
That is allocation, and the ERP is the right place for it.

Allocation needs a complete, correct container total to start from. That is the part the
ERP cannot produce, because the charges arrive by email from six parties over six weeks
and somebody has to find, match and check each one. Docket does that part and hands
across the traced total. Per container in Docket, per SKU in your ERP, and the evidence
stays attached through both.

## How much desk time does this give back?

Be careful with the arithmetic here, because two different rates are in play and mixing
them overstates the case.

Docket automates supplier chasing at 85 per cent, doc-pack drafting at 65 per cent, and
tracking and reporting at 85 per cent. Blended across all desk work that is about 70 per
cent. On the 500-container reference desk, 70 per cent of 1,100 hours is roughly 770
hours a month freed. At a loaded Singapore desk cost of about US$25 an hour, that is
US$19,250 of desk time removed. Docket at that volume costs 350 shipments times $6, or
US$2,100 a month. Net, about US$17,150 a month and US$205,800 a year.

Money freed minus what Docket costs. That is the only formula on this page.

Read the 770 hours as capacity, not as people. The same seven people handle 1,000 to
1,200 containers instead of 500, or two or three of them move to buying and selling,
which is the work that actually makes money. A trading desk grows into freed hours. It
does not celebrate an empty chair.

> Your desk is leaving ~US$200k/year on the table just to manually type what Docket
> learns in a month.

## What this does not do

Docket reads email. If a charge never arrives by email, and somebody hands over a paper
note at the port, Docket will not know about it until that note reaches the mailbox.

Docket does not convert currencies at a rate we invent. Charges stay in the currency they
were invoiced in. If you want one number in one currency, you give us the rate you book
at.

Docket is not your accounting system. It produces accounting-ready expense records with
their evidence attached, and your accountant still runs the ledger.

And the honest one about the numbers. The figures above are an operational baseline, not
an industry survey, and the automation rates are what Docket is built to hit rather than
a per-customer average. Ask us for a number we do not have and we will say so rather than
estimate it — that rule is why the free-time tables on this site are still blank.

## Where the landed cost fits with everything else

The purchase contract and the sales contract are where a shipment starts on a Docket desk.
Recording them is the first thing a trader does, and every chase, every check, every
payment date and every cost line derives from them. Landed cost is what those two
contracts look like once the shipment is over.

The same mailbox that produces your costs also produces the
[payment calendar](/solutions/payment-calendar-automation), because contract terms name the
dates. And the same inbound screening that reads a broker's invoice reads the mail that claims
your supplier's bank account has changed. That is
[trade fraud screening](/solutions/trade-fraud-screening-software), and it is running on
every message before the cost line is ever written.

## What to do with this page

If you run an import desk and you cannot open last quarter's worst container and see, in
one screen, every charge and the mail it came from, that is the gap. Send us the shipment
you argued about most last quarter. We will show you what it looks like traced.

Cost per container is not an accounting question. It is the question of whether the trade
made money, and you should be able to answer it before the invoices stop arriving.

Source: https://dodocket.com/solutions/landed-cost-tracking-software

---

# Payment calendar automation built from your contract terms

Payment calendar automation turns contract terms into dated payables and receivables without anyone rebuilding a sheet. Docket reads the purchase contract and the sales contract, derives the advance, the balance against documents, the credit period and the receivable, and keeps each currency separate instead of collapsing it at an invented rate.

Payment calendar automation means one thing on a trading desk: the dates come out of the
contract, not out of somebody's memory. Docket reads the purchase contract and the sales
contract, derives every payable and receivable those terms create, and keeps each
currency in its own column. Nobody rebuilds a sheet. Nobody types a date twice.

The contract already said when the money moves. The problem is that the contract is a PDF
and the calendar is a spreadsheet, and a person sits between them.

## Why do payment dates go missing on a trading desk?

They do not go missing. They get re-derived, by hand, over and over.

A purchase contract states an advance against proforma and a balance against documents. A
sales contract states a credit period counted from the bill of lading date. The bill of
lading arrives eleven days later than planned, so the credit period moves. Somebody has
to notice that, open the sheet, and shift a row. Then the forwarder revises the sailing.
The row moves again.

Payment tracking runs 10 to 15 minutes per container. That looks small next to supplier follow-ups at 30 to 45 minutes and doc-pack
prep at 45 to 90 minutes. It is not small at volume. The whole container consumes about
2.2 hours of desk work, and a 500-container desk burns roughly 1,100 hours a month
against 1,232 hours of capacity across seven people. That desk is at about 90 per cent
capacity on grunt work alone, and the payment rows are competing with everything else for
the same attention.

What gets dropped is never the payable. Your supplier calls. What gets dropped is the
receivable, because nobody on the other side is calling to remind you they owe you money.

## What does the calendar derive?

Docket takes the terms at contract entry and holds them as live obligations that follow
the shipment.

- The advance, against the proforma, on the buy side.
- The balance against documents, tied to the doc-pack Docket is already assembling.
- Letter of credit dates where an LC governs the trade, held against the shipment they
  belong to.
- The credit period on the sell side, counted from the document date the contract names,
  which means it re-dates itself when the document re-dates.
- The receivable, with its own chase schedule.
- Commission, where a contract carries one.

Each obligation carries the contract clause it came from. When a counterparty argues
about a due date, the clause is on the row.

## What does one contract turn into?

Take a plain import: advance against proforma, balance against documents, goods shipped
against a purchase contract, sold on a credit period counted from the bill of lading date.

On a spreadsheet desk that contract produces four manual events. Somebody types the
advance date. Somebody watches for the documents and types the balance date. Somebody
reads the BL when it finally arrives and counts the credit period forward. Somebody
remembers, or does not remember, to chase the buyer on the day it falls due.

On a Docket desk the same contract produces four dated obligations at entry, before the
goods have moved. The advance sits against the proforma. The balance sits against the
doc-pack Docket is already assembling and checking. The credit period is defined as a
count from the document date, so the day the bill of lading lands at a different date than
planned, the receivable date moves with it and the desk is told what changed and why. The
chase on that receivable starts on its own.

Nobody typed a date. Nobody had to notice the BL was late in order for the calendar to
stay correct.

Now do that 500 times a month, which is the reference desk, and the difference stops being
a convenience.

## Why keep currencies separate?

Because a converted number is an opinion, and your accounts do not run on opinions.

An import desk can hold a USD payable to a supplier, an SGD cost base for the people
doing the work, and a receivable in a third currency, all against one shipment. Collapse
those into a single figure at a rate somebody pulled off the internet and you have
manufactured an exposure report nobody can defend at audit.

Docket shows each currency as contracted. If you want one number, you give us the rate
you book at. Our own published figures follow the same rule: SGD payroll inputs stay in
SGD and USD quotes stay in USD, and we say so on the data file rather than quietly
converting.

## How does this compare to what desks use now?

| | Spreadsheet plus reminders | CTRM position module | Docket |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where the dates come from | Typed in from the contract | Typed in from the contract | Derived from the contract on entry |
| What happens when the BL slips | Someone remembers to move the row | Someone re-enters the date | Dates re-derive with the shipment |
| Currencies | Often collapsed at a guessed rate | Converted at a rate you configure | Held separate, as contracted |
| Who chases the receivable | Whoever has time | Nobody. It reports | Docket, on email, WhatsApp, SMS, voice |
| Evidence for the due date | The contract, somewhere | A field | The clause, on the row |
| Who owns the coordination | Nobody | Nobody | Docket |

Every CTRM, ERP and trade tool on this list records the trade. None of them reaches your
counterparty. That reach is the part of Docket that is hard to copy, and it is why the
receivable actually gets chased.

## What does the chase look like?

The escalation ladder runs on channels the counterparty already uses, so there is no
portal for anyone to sign up for.

- Email, immediately.
- WhatsApp, at 24 hours.
- SMS, at 48 hours.
- An AI voice call, at 72 hours.

Supplier chasing is automated at 85 per cent, doc-pack drafting at 65 per cent, tracking
and reporting at 85 per cent. Blended across all desk work that is about 70 per cent. On
the 500-container reference desk, 70 per cent of 1,100 hours frees about 770 hours a
month. At a loaded desk cost of about US$25 an hour, that is US$19,250 of desk time
removed. Docket at that volume runs 350 shipments at $6, or US$2,100 a month. Net, about
US$17,150 a month and US$205,800 a year.

Money freed minus what Docket costs. Never money freed on its own.

Those 770 hours are capacity, not chairs. The same seven people cover 1,000 to 1,200
containers instead of 500, or two or three of them move onto buying and selling, which is
where the margin lives. A desk that has been at 90 per cent on grunt work for three years
does not want a smaller desk. It wants its people back.

## What this does not do

Docket does not touch your money. No banking credentials, no payment initiation, no
access to your rails. Payment instructions go through your own approval path to your own
bank, the way they do today.

Docket does not tell you what the rate should be, and it does not advise on hedging. It
holds what you contracted, in the currency you contracted it in.

Docket reads email. A term agreed on a phone call and never written down is a term Docket
cannot derive. Put it in the contract and the calendar follows it.

And the numbers. The per-container timings above are an operational baseline, not an
industry survey. Desks differ by commodity, lane and how much the customs broker absorbs — put your
own numbers into the [ops cost calculator](/ops-cost-calculator) rather than taking ours.

## Where the calendar sits in the rest of the desk

The two contracts are the entry point for everything Docket does. The purchase contract
drives the chase. The sales contract drives the documents. Both drive the dates on this
page.

Once a shipment lands, the same mailbox that produced the payment terms produces the
charges, which is
[landed cost tracking](/solutions/landed-cost-tracking-software), and every inbound message
carrying a payment instruction gets screened before anyone acts on it, which is
[trade fraud screening](/solutions/trade-fraud-screening-software). A payment calendar and
a payment-diversion screen belong on the same desk for the obvious reason: the calendar
tells a fraudster exactly when to send the email.

## What to do with this page

Take the last contract you signed. Count how many dated obligations it creates and how
many of them exist anywhere outside that PDF. Send it to us and we will show you the
calendar it produces.

Two things to look for when you do it. How many of those dates depend on a document date
that has not happened yet, and who on your desk would notice if that document date moved
by nine days. Those two answers tell you how much of your calendar is real and how much of
it is a photograph of an intention.

A contract is a schedule of payments with words wrapped around it. Your calendar should
read straight off it. The rest of what that means for
[finance and accounts on an import desk](/for/finance-and-accounts) is on its own page.

Source: https://dodocket.com/solutions/payment-calendar-automation

---

# Supplier follow-up automation with an escalation ladder

Supplier follow-up automation only works if it reaches a person who is ignoring you. Docket sends the daily chase by email, moves to WhatsApp after 24 hours, SMS after 48 and an AI voice call after 72. Chasing measures at about 85% automated, which takes the follow-up work on a container from 30 to 45 minutes down to a review. Your team reads exceptions.

Supplier follow-up automation fails for one reason. It sends the email and then stops.
The supplier who was going to reply to an email was never the problem. The problem is the
mill in another timezone that has read nothing for four days, and the forwarder who
answers WhatsApp but not Outlook, and the bank officer who needs a phone call.

So the useful measure of any chasing tool is simple. What does it do on day three?

Supplier follow-ups run **30 to 45 minutes per
container**, every container, forever. On top of that sits a fixed **1 to 2 hours a day**
of price collection, asking supplier after supplier what they are quoting this morning.
That second one is not per container. It is a tax on the day itself.

## What does the escalation ladder actually do?

Four steps, on channels the counterparty already uses.

| Step | Channel | Fires after |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Email | Immediately |
| 2 | WhatsApp | 24 hours of silence |
| 3 | SMS | 48 hours of silence |
| 4 | AI voice call | 72 hours of silence |

Every step carries the same ask, with the shipment reference, the contract line and the
one thing you need. Not a reminder that a reminder was sent.

The ladder is the defensible part of Docket and it is the part competitors cannot copy by
adding a feature. It works because there is nothing for the supplier to join. No portal.
No invitation. No account for a clerk in Jebel Ali to create before your chase reaches
them. e2open reaches counterparties too, after 400,000 partners onboarded and after an
implementation that runs from $200,000 to over a million. Docket reaches a supplier who
has never heard of Docket, this afternoon.

## Why is chasing the biggest job on a trade desk?

Because six parties touch one shipment and none of them owns the coordination.

The supplier owes you a loading schedule, then a shipping advice, then documents. The
forwarder owes you a booking, a container number, a sailing date. The customs broker owes you a
filing confirmation. The bank owes you a document release. The insurer owes you a
certificate. You owe your customer a delivery date built out of all of it.

Nobody in that chain reports to you. Every one of them has fifty other shipments. So the
work of a trade desk is not recording the shipment. It is asking, and asking again, and
knowing who has not answered.

Add it up. A 500-container month at **2.2 hours a container** is **1,100 hours**. Seven
people at 176 hours each is **1,232 hours** of capacity. That desk spends about **90% of
everything it has** on grunt work before a single tonne is bought or sold. Chasing is the
largest recurring slice of it, and it is the slice with the least judgement in it.

## What changes when the chase runs itself?

Supplier chasing measures at about **85% automated** in the live demo running a real
import SOP end to end. Applied to the chase, that takes a container from **2.2 hours down
to about 20 minutes** of human attention.

One honest note on that number, because a trader will do the arithmetic and should land
where we do. The 20-minute figure is the 85% follow-up cut applied to the chase. It is not
the rate for the whole desk. Across all desk work, blended, the rate is **70%**, and 70%
is what the money below is built on. Computing freed hours from 20 minutes would overstate
the return by roughly a fifth. We would rather publish the smaller number and have it hold.

At 70% blended on the 500-container desk, **770 hours a month** come back. That is
**4.25 FTE** of capacity.

Say what that means, plainly. It is not a headcount cut and it is not sold as one. Your
same seven people now handle 1,000 to 1,200 containers instead of 500. Or two or three of
them move off the follow-up list and onto buying and selling, which is where the margin
actually comes from. Trading desks grow into freed capacity. That is what they are for.

At a loaded **US$25 an hour**, 770 hours is **US$19,250 a month** of desk time removed.
Docket at 350 shipments on the Trade Desk rate is **US$2,100**. Net, **US$17,150 a month**,
**US$205,800 a year**. Money freed minus what we cost, with nothing hidden and no
demurrage or fraud savings folded in.

Your desk is leaving about US$200k a year on the table to manually type what Docket learns
in a month.

## What a CRM sequence gets wrong about suppliers

Plenty of desks have tried to point a sales tool at this. It does not fit, for three
reasons.

**A sequence is time-based. A chase is state-based.** A sales cadence sends email two on
day three whatever happened. A supplier chase has to know that the loading schedule
arrived on Tuesday, so the Wednesday ask is now about the shipping advice, not the
schedule. Docket derives the ask from where the shipment actually is.

**A sequence stops at email.** The whole value is in step four.

**A sequence does not read the reply.** When the supplier answers with a photograph of a
handwritten weight slip, somebody has to open it, read it, and update the shipment. Docket
reads the inbound, extracts what it needs, updates the record, and closes the chase item.
If it cannot read something, it says so and asks rather than guessing.

There is a fourth thing a CRM will never do. It will not notice that the revised invoice
came from a domain one character off the real one, with new bank details, marked urgent
and confidential. Docket screens every inbound email on a live shipment for exactly that.
One such attempt, on a single shipment, was **US$62,500**.

## Does the chase have anything to do with demurrage?

Directly. Free time starts at discharge, not when your documents are ready. Packs
routinely run about **eight days** late against free time. A week of
demurrage on one container has cost **US$12,000**.

Nothing about those eight days was a shipping problem. It was somebody not replying, and
nobody noticing for three days that they had not replied. A chase that escalates on day
one closes most of that gap before it becomes a charge.

## Daily offers, the job nobody counts

The 1 to 2 hours a day of price collection deserves its own paragraph because it never
shows up in a container cost.

Every morning, someone messages every supplier and asks what they are quoting. Then they
put the answers somewhere. Then somebody senior reads them and forms a view. By the time
the view is formed, half the morning is gone and the prices have moved.

The daily offers track does the asking. Every supplier, every morning, on their channel,
and the answers arrive laid out with movement against yesterday. It runs standalone at
**$15 per supplier per month**, with or without the rest of Docket. The purchase-contract
chase track, daily loading-schedule follow-ups followed by shipment verification and the
payment calendar, is **$2 per contract**.

## What Docket will not do

Docket does not move containers. No slots, no trucks, no equipment.

Docket does not replace your customs broker and does not file the customs declaration. That filing is your
agent's licence and their liability. Docket makes sure they have what they need, early,
and chases them on the same ladder as everyone else.

Docket does not negotiate. When a supplier comes back on price, on quality, or with a
reason the mill is down, that goes to a human on your desk. Nothing about the ladder is
designed to keep you away from your supplier. It is designed to keep you away from the
part of the conversation that was never a conversation.

Docket does not sell unlimited voice calls, at any price, in any plan. Voice is the
sharpest tool in the ladder and it is metered on purpose.

Docket does not claim 100% on anything. Chasing is 85%. Tracking and reporting is 85%.
Doc-pack drafting is 65%. Those are projected rates from Docket's own engineering
model, published weakest line included, so there is a number to hold us to.

## Where to start

Load the purchase contract. Every chase, every check and every payment date derives from
it, so it is the first thing in and the reason onboarding is days rather than quarters.
Connect the mailbox. Map the SOP. Setup starts at $1,500 and covers all three, and the
per-shipment rate runs $10, $8 or $6 depending on volume, with a shipment billing at most
two containers.

Then take one supplier who is habitually late and put them on the ladder for a month.
Count the replies and count how many came in before day three. That single number tells
you more than this page does.

The figures here are an operational baseline, not an industry survey, and your desk will
sit somewhere either side of them. Bring us your slowest supplier and let us both watch
what happens on day three. For the whole desk rather than one supplier, start from the
[operations manager's page](/for/trade-operations-manager).

Source: https://dodocket.com/solutions/supplier-follow-up-automation

---

# Trade fraud screening for payment-diversion attempts

Trade fraud screening software watches where the money gets stolen: your mailbox. Docket screens every inbound email against four payment-diversion signals, checks the instruction against the contract party and the account on file and holds the payment with the reason written out. One such attempt on a single shipment was worth US$62,500. It is not a bank control, and does not replace a callback.

US$62,500 on one email. That is the size of a single payment-diversion attempt on one
shipment — a message arriving from what looks like the exporter, asking for the balance
to go to a different bank. Docket screens every inbound email against the signals that
give that away, checks the instruction against the contract party
and the account already on file, and holds the payment with the reason written out.

One incident is what we have. We are not going to multiply it by twelve and call it an
annual saving.

## Why is the mailbox where import money gets stolen?

Because the mailbox is where import trade runs.

Six to ten parties touch a single shipment: exporter, customs broker, bank, shipping line, forwarder,
insurer, transporter. Payment instructions legitimately arrive by email from several of
them. There is no portal. There is no single system of record. There is no one person
whose job is to notice that this particular message is different from the last forty.

An attacker does not break in. They wait until a contract is agreed and an invoice is
genuinely due, then send a plausible mail about a compliance audit or a temporary hold on
the regular account. Everything in the message is true except the account number.

We wrote the mechanics up separately, because the definition and the product are two
different jobs. If you want the anatomy of the scam,
[read the glossary entry on payment diversion fraud](/glossary/payment-diversion-fraud).
This page is about what a screen on your desk does about it.

## What does Docket screen for?

Four signals, checked on every inbound message.

- A look-alike sender domain. In the US$62,500 attempt the mail came from a domain
  registered six days earlier, one character different from the exporter's real domain of
  many years.
- Bank details changed mid-deal. A new Hong Kong account for an exporter based in Oman,
  when the originals were already lodged with the bank against the Oman account.
- A beneficiary name that does not match the contract party. The money was requested for a
  company that was not the exporter named on the shipment.
- Urgency and secrecy language. Urgent, confidential, confirm today. Genuine banking
  changes are boring, documented, and never in a hurry.

The fifth check is the one a generic email filter cannot make. Docket already holds your
purchase contract, your sales contract, your counterparty masters and the account you have
paid before. So it compares the instruction in the mail against the instruction in the
contract. A spam filter scores a message. Docket scores a message against your deal.

## How does this compare to what a desk has now?

| | Email security add-on | Policy and approval thresholds | A senior person reading every mail | Docket |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Knows your contract party | No | Yes, in a human head | Yes, in a human head | Yes, from the contract |
| Knows the account you paid last time | No | Sometimes | Sometimes | Yes |
| Runs on every inbound mail | Yes | No | Not by Friday evening | Yes |
| Explains why it flagged | Generic warning | Not applicable | Yes | Yes, with the signal named |
| Holds the payment inside your process | No | Yes, if followed | Yes, if they are at the desk | Yes |
| Survives a busy week | Yes | Rarely | No | Yes |

The row that matters is the second one. Most tools that claim to stop invoice fraud have
never read your contract, so the only thing they can measure is whether the mail looks
like spam. This mail does not look like spam. It looks like your supplier.

## What Docket does not do, stated plainly

This is the page where overclaiming would cost the most, so here is the boundary.

Docket screens email. It is not a bank control. It does not sit on your payment rails,
does not hold banking credentials, and cannot recall a wire your bank has already
accepted. Dual authorisation, approval thresholds and callback policies at the bank stay
where they are.

Docket does not replace calling back on a number you already have. The control that
actually works is a callback to a number from the contract or from your own records, never
the number in the email announcing the change, and never the number in that email's
signature block. The FBI's IC3 guidance on business email compromise makes the same point.
The scam depends on your verification path running through a channel the attacker
controls. Docket holds the payment and names the reason. A person still picks up the
phone. On the US$62,500 attempt that is exactly the sequence that mattered: hold the wire,
confirm with the exporter on a verified number, and the money goes to the correct account.

Docket does not see what does not arrive by email. A diversion arranged over a phone call,
over a WhatsApp number nobody has flagged, or by someone inside your own desk sits outside
what Docket reads.

A first payment to a genuinely new counterparty has no history to contradict. Docket can
flag that there is no history. It cannot tell you the counterparty is real.

## What happens when a message gets flagged?

A flag is useless if it reads like a spam warning. Everyone clicks through those.

Docket holds the payment instruction and writes out what it found: the sender domain and
when it was registered, the account on file against the account being requested, the
beneficiary name against the contract party, and the line in the mail that pushed for
speed or silence. The shipment, the contract and the amount are on the same screen.

Then the desk does the one thing software should not do on its own. Someone calls the
counterparty on a number from the contract, confirms, and either releases the payment to
the original account or kills the instruction. The verified number goes on the record with
the outcome.

Everything lands in the audit trail. Six months later the question is not whether somebody
remembers. The mail, the signal, the call and the release are one chain.

The reason the explanation matters more than the block: a screen that cries wolf gets
switched off inside a month, and a desk with a switched-off screen is worse off than a desk
that never had one, because it thinks it is covered.

## Where the fraud shield sits in the rest of the desk

The screen is not a bolt-on. It works because Docket is already doing the desk work around
the shipment.

The contracts come in first. The chase runs off the purchase contract. The
[payment calendar](/solutions/payment-calendar-automation) is derived from the contract
terms, so Docket knows what is due, to whom, and roughly when. The
[landed cost](/solutions/landed-cost-tracking-software) is built from the same mailbox, so
Docket knows which charges are normal for this counterparty and which are not.

A payment calendar is also, from the attacker's side, a timetable. They aim at the day the
balance falls due, because that is the day a payment instruction looks routine. The screen
and the calendar belong to the same system for that reason.

Every action lands in the audit trail. When a payment is held, the record shows the mail,
the signal, the contract line it contradicted, who was told and what happened next.

## The honest state of the evidence

One payment-diversion attempt, at US$62,500, is a single incident — not a hit rate, not an
annual figure, and not a promise about your mailbox. The four signals below generalise
because they are structural to how this fraud works; the amount does not. A live demo runs
a real import SOP end to end, and the fraud shield is on every plan at $10, $8 or $6 a
shipment.

That is a small sample and we are not going to dress it up as a security track record. The
signals generalise because they are the signals every serious write-up of business email
compromise lists. The catch rate across many desks is something we will be able to report
when there are many desks.

What we can say is narrow and true: on the one attempt we have seen, the screen worked,
the wire was held, and the money went where the contract said it should.

## What to do with this page

Pull the last three payment instructions that arrived in your shared mailbox. Check the
sender domain character by character. Check the beneficiary name against the contract
party. Then ask who on your desk would have done that at 6pm on a Friday.

If the answer is nobody, the screen is worth a conversation. Reply with one shipment and we
will run it.

Bring the ugliest one you have. A forwarded chain with four inboxes in it, a scanned
invoice, and a bank line typed into the body of the mail instead of printed on the
document. That is the shape the real ones arrive in, and it is the shape worth testing a
screen against.

The fraud does not need you to be careless. It needs you to be busy.

Source: https://dodocket.com/solutions/trade-fraud-screening-software

---

# Shipping documentation software for whoever checks the pack

You are the last person to read the pack before the customs broker files it, and the first to be blamed when it is late. Docket reads every document against the contract and against the others in the pack, names the field that disagrees while the box is on the water, and chases whoever owes the missing item so the fourth reminder is not yours.

The pack is never in one place, in one format, at one time. The commercial invoice is a
PDF from the supplier. The packing list is a photograph of a printed page, forwarded
through two inboxes. The bill of lading arrives as a draft, then as a final, and the
second one is not always the one that got filed. The certificate of origin comes from a
chamber with its own numbering. The insurance certificate comes from a broker who copies
four people.

You open all of it, type the values that matter into a spreadsheet, and compare. Then a
correction comes in and you do it again. That is **45 to 90 minutes a container**, the
largest single line in the 2.2 hours of desk work each container consumes, and it is the
line that costs the most when it slips, because a document nobody read is a document
nobody can fix.

## Two questions, and most desks only ask the first

**Is everything there?** Commercial invoice, packing list, bill of lading, certificate of
origin, insurance certificate, a pre-shipment inspection certificate where the destination
demands one, fumigation or phytosanitary where the cargo demands one (the
[agricultural import documents](/industries/agri-commodities) page lists that set in
full), plus whatever the letter of credit lists. A checklist answers this and so does a printout.

**Does everything agree?** With each other, and with the contract that was signed. This
is the harder question and the one that produces demurrage. A consignee spelled the way
the exporter's clerk remembers it. A gross weight on the packing list that is the net
weight on the invoice. CIF where the contract says CFR, which is one letter and a
different insurance obligation. A container number that matches the bill of lading and
not the seal list.

Docket reads the documents that arrived and asks the second question on every one of
them. The field that disagrees is named, with the two values side by side and the
document each came from. While the box is on the water, not on the day the broker calls.

## What happens after the field is named

You do not send the reminder. The [chase](/solutions/supplier-follow-up-automation) goes
to whoever owes the correction, with the shipment, the document and the field in the
message. If email is ignored, WhatsApp at 24 hours, SMS at 48, an AI voice call at 72.
The reissued document lands on the shipment when it comes back, is read again, and the
item closes. You see every step. You are copied on nothing you did not ask for.

This is the part of the job that made it a full day. About **65%** of the drafting and
checking is built to run without a person, and about **85%** of the chasing. What is
left for you is the judgement: whether a description of goods is close enough to the
contract line to file, whether to accept a certificate dated a day after the bill of
lading, whether the credit's tolerance covers a short shipment.

## The clock this is all against

Free time starts at discharge, in calendar days, and does not pause because a document is
pending. Packs routinely run about **eight days late** against it, and a week of
demurrage on one container has cost about **US$12,000**. Docket derives the last free
day from discharge and builds the checklist backwards from it, so every item has a date
and the date is the one that matters. The
[import document checking page](/solutions/import-document-checking-software) walks
through the check in detail, and the [bill of lading](/glossary/bill-of-lading) and
[packing list](/glossary/packing-list) entries cover the two documents that break packs
most often.

## What the desk looks like afterwards

The container that took you 45 to 90 minutes of reading takes the minutes it needs to
decide the exceptions. The fourth reminder is not yours to send. And when the broker asks
where the certificate is, the answer is on the shipment's timeline with the email it
came in on, which is the [audit trail](/features) nobody has to build by hand.

Source: https://dodocket.com/for/documentation-executive

---

# Import payment tracking software for finance and accounts

Finance on an import desk pays from three things it did not write: the contract's terms, the invoices that arrive by email, and the bank details in the supplier's last message. Docket builds the payment calendar from the contract, matches each invoice to a consignment with its source email kept, and screens every inbound message for the signals of a payment-diversion attempt.

Finance on an import desk works from three documents it did not write. The purchase
contract, which says when money is due. The invoices, which arrive by email from a dozen
parties in a dozen formats and say how much. And the last message from the supplier,
which says where to send it. Two of those are typed into a spreadsheet by hand, and the
third is trusted.

## The calendar you build by hand

Every contract carries terms, and every term is a date: a percentage against shipping
documents, thirty days from bill of lading date, the balance at sight under the credit.
Somebody reads the contract, works out the dates, and puts them somewhere. Then the bill
of lading date moves, and the dates move with it, and the somewhere is a spreadsheet
that was right last Tuesday.

Docket reads the contract when it is recorded and derives the
[payment calendar](/solutions/payment-calendar-automation) from the terms. When the
bill of lading date is confirmed, the dates that depend on it update. What you see is
what is due, on which shipment, against which document, before the bank's reminder.
Payment tracking is 10 to 15 minutes of the 2.2 hours a container consumes; small per
container, and the piece most likely to be wrong when volume rises.

## The landed cost that is always a month behind

Duty, port charges, broker fees, detention, demurrage, freight, insurance, inland haulage.
Each arrives as an invoice, by email, from a different party, and each has to be matched
to a container before the landed cost on that container means anything. Most desks do
this at month end, from memory, and the number is a reconstruction.

Docket matches each invoice email to a consignment and a cost line as it arrives, and
keeps the email attached to the line. The
[landed cost](/solutions/landed-cost-tracking-software) on a container is live, and every
figure on it traces to a document rather than to somebody's recollection. The demurrage
line is attacked at the cause, the document deadline, which is the operations desk's
job and the reason the [demurrage](/glossary/demurrage) entry exists.

## The email that changes the bank account

Trade runs on email, and the email that costs the most is the one that says the
supplier's bank details have changed. It arrives mid-deal, from an address one character
off the real one, with a reason that is plausible and a tone that is urgent. A single
payment-diversion attempt on one shipment has been reported at **US$62,500**. That is
one event and the site treats it as one event; it is not a rate.

Docket screens every inbound message for four signals: a look-alike domain, bank details
changed part-way through a deal, a beneficiary name that does not match the contract, and
urgency or secrecy language. A hit holds the payment and names the reason, so the call to
the supplier's known number happens before the transfer, not after. The
[trade fraud screening page](/solutions/trade-fraud-screening-software) covers what it
checks and what it cannot.

## What stays with you

The payment itself, always. Docket does not release funds, does not compute duty, does
not classify goods, and does not reconcile the bank. It puts the date, the amount, the
document and the source email on one line, and holds the line when something on it does
not match. The [audit trail](/features) that produces is the one the auditor asks for:
every invoice to its email, every payment to its term, every hold to its reason.

Source: https://dodocket.com/for/finance-and-accounts

---

# Software for importers who own the desk, not just the trade

You already know what the desk costs; it is on the payroll. What it produces is about 2.2 hours of chasing, checking and typing per container. Docket does roughly 70% of that work, so the same people handle two to three times the containers, or two or three of them move to buying and selling. On a 500-container desk that is about US$17,150 a month net.

You do not need a report to tell you what the operations desk costs. It is the second
biggest line after the goods, it is on the payroll every month, and it does not move with
volume the way freight does. What is harder to see from the owner's chair is what that
money buys, hour by hour, and how much of it is typing.

## What the desk is doing with the day

Per container, the work runs to about **2.2 hours**, in a range of 2 to 2.5. It splits
into four pieces: supplier follow-ups at 30 to 45 minutes, preparing and checking the
export document pack at 45 to 90 minutes, status tracking and reporting at 20 to 30, and
payment tracking at 10 to 15. On top of that sits a fixed 1 to 2 hours a day collecting
prices from suppliers before anyone can quote.

Multiply it out. A desk moving **500 containers a month** consumes about **1,100 hours**.
Seven people at 176 hours each have 1,232 hours to give. That desk is at roughly **90% of
capacity on grunt work** before a single tonne is bought or sold, which is why every
growth conversation ends with a hiring conversation.

None of this is skilled work. It is asking a supplier for a loading date for the fourth
time, opening a packing list to see whether the weights match the invoice, and retyping
a demurrage charge into a spreadsheet so the landed cost is right. Skilled people do it
because somebody has to and nobody else is there.

## What a machine can take, and what it cannot

Docket is built to do about **85%** of the supplier chasing, about **65%** of the
document-pack drafting and checking, and about **85%** of the tracking and reporting.
Blended across the desk that is roughly **70%** of the hours. The judgement calls stay
with your people: the classification your broker agreed, the decision to accept a
short-shipped lot, the call to the bank when a release is late.

Those rates are what the product is built to do, stated plainly. They are not a
customer's average, because there is no customer average yet, and the site does not
pretend otherwise.

## What that buys you

Seventy percent of 1,100 hours is about **770 hours a month**, or a little over four
people's time. There are two ways to spend it, and both are growth.

The first is volume. Your same seven people now handle **1,000 to 1,200 containers**
instead of 500, because the part of each container that ate their day is being done by a
machine that does not mind asking for a loading date a fifth time.

The second is margin. Two or three of those people move to buying and selling, the work
that makes money, while the desk runs the rest. Most owners already know which two.

In money, at a loaded **US$25 an hour**, the freed time is worth about **US$19,250 a
month**. Docket on that desk, 350 shipments at the Trade Desk rate of US$6, costs
**US$2,100**. The net is **US$17,150 a month**, about **US$205,800 a year**. The whole
ledger is one line of arithmetic, `500 × 2.2 × 70% × US$25 − 350 × US$6`, and you can
re-run it on the [ops cost calculator](/ops-cost-calculator) with your own numbers.

## The two costs deliberately left out

Demurrage and fraud are real and they are not in the base case, because a number you
cannot verify against your own payroll is a number you will argue with.

Demurrage is episodic. Document packs routinely run about **eight days late** against
free time, and a week of demurrage on one container has cost about **US$12,000**. One
missed pack a month at US$1,000 to 2,000 an event is US$12,000 to 24,000 a year. Docket
attacks the cause, the pack deadline, which is why the
[demurrage prevention page](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) exists.

Fraud is rarer and worse. A single payment-diversion attempt on one shipment has been
reported at **US$62,500**. Docket screens every inbound email for the signals: a
look-alike domain, bank details changed mid-deal, a beneficiary that does not match the
contract, urgency and secrecy language. That is the
[trade fraud screening page](/solutions/trade-fraud-screening-software).

## Where to start

Two documents. Docket reads the purchase contract and the sales contract, and from them
derives which documents each shipment needs, who owes each one, when the payments fall,
and when the last free day is. Everything else follows from those two files. A trial
starts with your next contract, not with a migration.

Source: https://dodocket.com/for/importer-owner

---

# Import operations software for the manager who runs the desk

You run a desk at about 90% of capacity on grunt work: follow-ups, pack checks, status updates, payment tracking. Docket does the chasing on email, WhatsApp, SMS and voice, checks each pack against the contract, and keeps the status board current, so a container drops from about 2.2 hours of desk work to roughly 20 minutes.

Your desk has two clocks and one inbox. The first clock is the port's free time, which
starts at discharge and ignores your paperwork. The second is the supplier's, which runs
on whenever they feel like replying. The inbox is where the two meet, and it is where
your people spend the day.

## Where the hours go

Per container, about **2.2 hours** of desk work. Supplier follow-ups, 30 to 45 minutes:
loading schedules until they are confirmed, then the documents. Export doc-pack
preparation and checking, 45 to 90 minutes, the biggest single line. Status tracking and
reporting, 20 to 30 minutes, most of it answering the question "where are we on that
one". Payment tracking, 10 to 15. Then a fixed 1 to 2 hours a day collecting prices
before the traders can quote.

At **500 containers a month** that is about **1,100 hours**, on a seven-person desk with
about **1,232** to give. Ninety percent of capacity on work that produces nothing a
customer pays for. You know this. It is why every peak month ends in overtime and why the
best executive on the desk is the one who remembers which supplier needs a phone call.

## What Docket does on this desk

**It chases.** Every open item on every shipment, daily, to the party who owes it. The
loading schedule to the supplier until confirmed. The certificate of origin to whoever
issues it. The filing status to the customs broker. Email first, and when the email is ignored the
[escalation ladder](/solutions/supplier-follow-up-automation) climbs: WhatsApp at 24
hours, SMS at 48, an AI voice call at 72. On channels those parties already use, with no
portal for anyone to sign up to. About **85%** of the chasing is built to run without a
person.

**It checks.** Each document that arrives is read against the contract and against the
others in the pack. Consignee spelled the way the buyer is registered. Weights that
reconcile across invoice, packing list and bill of lading. The Incoterm and named place.
Container and seal numbers. The field that disagrees is named, while the box is on the
water. About **65%** of the drafting and checking is built to run without a person; the
rest is the judgement you would not want a machine to make.

**It keeps the board current.** The command centre shows which containers need attention
today, what is outstanding on each, and which escalation is running. That is the status
meeting, without the meeting. Tracking and reporting are built to run at about **85%**.

**It counts back from the last free day.** Free time is whatever your carrier's tariff or
service contract says for that lane, per port, per direction, per equipment type. Docket
takes it from your contract, derives the last free day from discharge, and builds the
document checklist backwards from that date instead of forwards from the booking. Packs
routinely run about **eight days late** against free time; this is the clock that
[demurrage prevention](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) is built around.

## What the freed time does

Roughly **70%** of the desk's hours, blended. On the 500-container desk that is about
**770 hours a month**. The container that took 2.2 hours of desk work now takes about
**20 minutes** of it, the part that needs a person. Your seven people handle 1,000 to
1,200 containers instead of 500, or two or three of them move to buying and selling.
Either way, the peak month stops ending in overtime.

## What stays with you

Every decision. Docket does not accept a short-shipped lot, does not agree a revised
loading date, does not file an entry and does not dispute a carrier invoice. It brings
each of those to the right person with the file complete and the history attached, and
records what was decided. The [audit trail](/features) is the by-product: every chase,
reply, document and decision on the shipment's timeline, with the email it came from.

Source: https://dodocket.com/for/trade-operations-manager

---

# Agri commodity imports: two agencies between the ship and the gate

Agricultural cargo clears through two agencies after customs. Plant quarantine wants an import permit applied for ten days before shipment and an original phytosanitary certificate from the exporting country; FSSAI wants the importer licensed and a sample tested, report due in five days. Both run inside free time. The permit is the one document only the importer can produce.

Most cargo clears through one authority. Agricultural cargo clears through three: customs
for the duty, plant quarantine for the pests, and the food authority for what people will
eat. Each has its own document, its own inspection, and its own place in the queue, and
all three sit between the vessel's discharge and the gate. Free time does not know that.

## The permit that only you can produce

The Plant Quarantine Order 2003 makes commodities in its Schedules V and VI importable
only under an import permit. The application goes to the issuing authority in PQ Form 06
**at least ten days before** the consignment ships. The permit is then checked at the port
of entry against what arrived.

Every other document in the pack is produced by somebody else: the supplier, the carrier,
the chamber, the exporting country's plant protection authority. The permit is the
importer's own application, on the importer's own calendar, and it has to exist before the
goods are loaded. A desk that works its checklist forwards from the booking meets the
permit at the arrival notice. A desk that works backwards from the shipment date meets it
where the Order does.

## The certificate from the other end

Clause 3(20) requires an original
[phytosanitary certificate](/glossary/phytosanitary-certificate), issued by an authorised
officer in the exporting country in PQ Form 21, or in Form 22 where the goods are being
re-exported from a country that is not their origin. It says the consignment was inspected
and found free of the quarantine pests India names, and where the schedule demands a
treatment, that the treatment was done.

It is the agricultural pack's equivalent of the scrap trade's inspection certificate: issued
abroad, at loading, by a body the importer does not control, and read first by the officer
at the port. Its description and quantity have to agree with the
[packing list](/glossary/packing-list) and the invoice. A certificate for the wrong
botanical name, or for a quantity that does not match the bill of lading, is a certificate
that fails at the desk that matters.

## Treatment, at your cost, inside free time

Where fumigation, disinfection or disinfestation is required, clause 3(17) puts it on the
importer: arranged at the importer's own cost, through an agency the Plant Protection
Adviser approves, under an authorised officer's supervision, with the fees in Schedule IX.
A treatment ordered at the port is a day or two of the free time you were counting on for
something else.

## The second agency

Food goes through FSSAI as well. The Food Import Clearance System sits inside the customs
single window, so the Bill of Entry is referred to the food authority automatically. Its
steps are fixed: the importer's own FSSAI licence checked, documents scrutinised, the
goods visually inspected, and sampling according to the authority's risk profile. Where a
sample goes to a laboratory, the Import Regulations require the report within five days
of the laboratory receiving it, a rule the 2025 amendment restated with effect from
1 May 2026. A conforming report produces the no-objection certificate. A non-conforming
one produces a report that stops the clearance.

Five days is the laboratory's clock, not the whole of it. Add the referral, the sampling
visit and the drawing of the sample, and a sampled consignment can spend most of a
short free-time allowance waiting for a result nobody on the desk can hurry.

## Where the demurrage comes from

Document packs routinely run about **eight days late** against free time on ordinary
cargo. On agricultural cargo the late document is more often the one only the importer
could have produced, the permit, or the one that has to be right to the botanical name,
the certificate. And the clearance itself has two inspections and a laboratory in it. A
week of [demurrage](/glossary/demurrage) on one container has cost about **US$12,000**;
on a perishable lot the demurrage is the smaller loss.

## Who owes what, and when

| Document | Who produces it | When it can exist |
|---|---|---|
| Import permit (Schedule V and VI commodities) | The importer, from the issuing authority | Applied for at least ten days before shipment |
| Phytosanitary certificate (PQ Form 21 or 22) | Exporting country's plant protection authority | At inspection before loading |
| Fumigation or treatment certificate | Approved fumigator at origin, or at the port | At loading, or on arrival at your cost |
| Commercial invoice, packing list | Supplier | At stuffing |
| Bill of lading | Carrier | After loading |
| FSSAI licence, labels, sample result | The importer, then FSSAI | Licence before import; result after arrival |

## Where Docket sits

Docket does not apply for the permit, does not inspect cargo, does not sample food and
does not talk to the authorities. Those are the importer's applications and the
authorities' decisions.

What Docket does is read the purchase contract, take the commodity and the lane, and
derive the document set, permit and certificate included, with the party who owes each
one and the date it has to exist. The permit lands on the
[payment and deadline calendar](/solutions/payment-calendar-automation) at contract date
minus the Order's ten days, not at the arrival notice. The exporter is chased for the
phytosanitary and treatment certificates before loading, daily, on email and then
WhatsApp, SMS and an AI voice call. Each certificate that arrives is read against the
invoice and the packing list, and the botanical name or quantity that disagrees is named
while the vessel is at sea. Every date is counted back from the last free day, with the
laboratory's five days already taken out of it.

That is the [import document checking](/solutions/import-document-checking-software)
and [supplier follow-up](/solutions/supplier-follow-up-automation) jobs on the cargo
with the most parties between the ship and the gate. About **85%** of the chasing and
about **65%** of the checking is built to run without a person. The decision to ship
before the permit is in hand stays with you, and it is the decision this page exists to
make visible.

Source: https://dodocket.com/industries/agri-commodities

---

# Chemical import documents, Singapore: licence then permit

In Singapore a chemical import turns on one document the supplier cannot produce: the importer's own hazardous substances licence from NEA, whose number goes in the TradeNet permit. The second problem is the clock. Dangerous cargo is not given the ordinary free time: at Jebel Ali an IMDG class 5 container gets none at all, and a class 8 container three days instead of ten.

Most cargo pages are about documents. This one is about a document and a clock, and the
clock is the half that surprises people.

A chemical import carries the ordinary pack: invoice, [packing
list](/glossary/packing-list), bill of lading, certificate of origin. Then it carries a set
the regulation adds. What makes it a different job from importing steel or rice is that the
extra documents are gating rather than supporting. Without them the permit does not go in,
and while the permit is not in, the box is standing somewhere that charges by the day at a
rate set for cargo nobody wants parked.

## The licence is the importer's own, and it comes first

In Singapore the sequence is licence, then permit, then arrival, in that order. The first
step is the one a supplier cannot help with.

Before a declarant submits an import permit to TradeNet, they have to check whether the
goods contain an ingredient listed in **Part I of the Second Schedule to the Environmental
Protection and Management Act**. If they do, the importer must hold a valid **Hazardous
Substances Licence** issued by the Chemical Control and Management Department of the
National Environment Agency, and that licence number goes into the Licence Number field of
the permit application. The general exemptions sit in Part II of the same Schedule.

Singapore Customs states that permit applications are processed **within five working days
upon receipt of all required documents**, and that an application is complete only when the
trader holds the valid licence and any transport approval and has supplied the supporting
documents. Read that carefully: the five days is the permit, once everything is in hand.
The licence is a separate instrument the importer applies for and holds, and a consignment
that sails against a licence somebody assumed was current is a consignment that waits.

This is the same shape as the plant quarantine import permit on [agri
commodities](/industries/agri-commodities): the one document in the pack that is the
importer's own application, on the importer's calendar, and therefore the one that gets
forgotten because there is no counterparty to chase for it.

## The free time is shorter, and sometimes it is zero

Here is the part that turns a paperwork delay into a large number.

Terminals do not give dangerous cargo the ordinary allowance. The published DP World tariff
for Jebel Ali is the clearest illustration of the principle because it is a document rather
than a negotiation:

| Cargo | Terminal free days from discharge | Then |
|---|---|---|
| Ordinary import full container | 10 | AED 82 a day up to 20ft, AED 164 over 20ft, rising after five days |
| IMDG class 8, corrosives | 3 | The same bands |
| IMDG class 5, oxidising substances | **0** | AED 500 per container per day for the first 10 days, AED 1,000 a day thereafter |

A class 5 container is accruing a charge from the day it is discharged. There is no grace
period in which to find a missing safety data sheet.

Two things follow. The first is that the [last free day](/glossary/last-free-day) on a
dangerous cargo has to be computed from that cargo's own allowance, not from the desk's
habitual assumption about the port. The second is that the carrier's
[free time](/glossary/free-time) is a separate clock from the terminal's, set in your
service contract, and an importer clearing a chemical late pays both, at rates neither of
which is the one they budgeted.

Check the tariff for the terminal you actually clear at. Jebel Ali is quoted here because
its schedule is published; the allowance at your terminal is a different number and it is
also a published one.

## Three documents that have to say the same thing

Beyond the licence, the chemical pack adds a small set with an unusual property: they are
read by different parties, each of whom will stop the box for a different reason, and they
must agree.

A **dangerous goods declaration** from the shipper and a **container packing certificate**
from whoever packed the unit, both required for dangerous goods carried in packaged form
under the IMDG Code. That Code is the IMO's rulebook for the maritime transport of
dangerous goods in packaged form, covering packing, container traffic and stowage with
particular reference to the segregation of incompatible substances, and it is mandatory as
an extension of SOLAS chapter VII.

A **safety data sheet** for each substance.

And the **product code matched to the HS code** in the permit, with container and seal
numbers, plus the maximum quantity per trip in kilograms where the substance falls under the
Hazardous Substances Regulations.

The failure mode is boring and it is the common one. The declaration says one UN number, the
safety data sheet was issued for a slightly different grade, and the
[HS code](/glossary/hs-code) on the invoice belongs to a third classification the supplier's
back office has always used. Each is defensible on its own. Together they are a query, and a
query on a class 5 container is a query with a meter running.

## What this costs an import desk

The arithmetic is the same as any other cargo, with less room in it.

Desk work runs about **2.2 hours** a container, of which 30 to 45 minutes is supplier
follow-ups and 45 to 90 minutes is document-pack preparation and checking. Document packs
routinely run about **eight days** late against free time. On an ordinary container with ten
free days, eight days of lateness is uncomfortable. On a class 8 container with three, it is
already over. On a class 5 container with none, there was never a margin to spend.

That is why the chemical desk is the one where people build private spreadsheets and check
them at night. The deadline is earlier than the habit, and the habit was formed on cargo
that forgave it.

## Where Docket sits

Docket does not classify your chemicals and does not apply for your licence. Classification
is your own responsibility and the licence is your application to the authority.

What it does is treat the licence as a dated obligation from the moment the purchase
contract is recorded, rather than as something remembered when the arrival notice lands. It
chases the supplier for the dangerous goods declaration, the packing certificate and the
safety data sheet on the channels the supplier already uses: email, then WhatsApp at 24
hours, SMS at 48, an AI voice call at 72. It reads the classification on each document
against the others and against the contract, so a UN number that disagrees with a safety
data sheet surfaces before the booking rather than at the gate.

Then it counts backwards. Every deadline in the pack derives from the last free day, and on
dangerous cargo it derives from a shorter one. That is the job
[demurrage and detention software](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) is for, and on
this cargo it is doing it against a clock that starts earlier and charges more.

Source: https://dodocket.com/industries/chemicals

---

# Metal scrap import: the documents, the ports and the clock

Scrap is the cargo where paperwork, not value, decides whether the box clears. Indian law attaches a pre-shipment inspection certificate to metal scrap unless it comes from six named regions through eleven named ports; without one the consignment is examined in full. The certificate is issued abroad, before loading, by an agency the importer does not control, so chase it first.

Scrap is cheap per tonne and expensive per day. A container of HMS or shredded steel is
worth less than most finished-goods boxes on the same vessel, and it travels with more
paper than any of them, because every importing country treats scrap as a waste stream
first and a commodity second. The document that decides whether the box clears is issued
abroad, before loading, by an inspection agency the importer has never met.

## What a scrap shipment has to carry

The standard pack applies: commercial invoice, packing list, bill of lading, certificate
of origin, insurance. Scrap adds three things.

**The pre-shipment inspection certificate.** Paragraph 2.51 of the Handbook of Procedures
2023 makes metallic waste and scrap, shredded or unshredded, subject to a
[pre-shipment inspection certificate](/glossary/pre-shipment-inspection-certificate) from
an agency the DGFT recognises. The certificate says the consignment carries no arms,
ammunition or explosive material, and that its radiation does not exceed natural
background. It names the container numbers and the weights.

**Or, for six origins at eleven ports, a supplier's certificate instead.** Public Notice
43/2023 waived the PSIC for scrap from the USA, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and
the EU, when it clears through Chennai, Tuticorin, Kandla, JNPT, Mumbai, Krishnapatnam,
Mundra, Kattupalli, Hazira, Kamarajar or Adani Gangavaram. Those ports have radiation
portal monitors and container scanners, which is why they are on the list. A waived
consignment still travels with a certificate from the supplier or the scrap yard
confirming the absence of radioactive material and explosives.

**The hazardous-waste filing.** Metal scrap sits in Schedule III Part D of the Hazardous
and Other Wastes Rules 2016. Importing it does not need the environment ministry's
permission, which is the good news. It does need the Rules' own import information filed
with the customs entry, and it does need the importer to be a party the Rules allow to
receive it.

## Nineteen ports, and why the choice matters

Scrap can be imported through nineteen designated ports. Only eleven of them carry the
PSIC waiver, and only for the six regions. Book a European lot to Cochin or Paradip and
the waiver is gone; the consignment needs the PSIC it would not have needed at Mundra.

The trap is in the timing. The port is chosen at booking. The PSIC is issued at loading.
If nobody on the desk connects the two, the box sails without the certificate the
destination port will demand, and the first anyone hears of it is the customs query.

## What customs does when the certificate is missing

CBIC Circular 48/2016 lays out the procedure. Unshredded, compressed or loose scrap that
arrives without the prescribed certificate is examined in full: every container opened,
alongside action under the Foreign Trade Policy for the missing document. Shredded scrap
with its paperwork in order is examined at 10%, a minimum of one container.

Full examination of a scrap consignment is not an afternoon. It is days, sometimes a
week, and the free-time clock started at discharge. Document packs routinely run about
**eight days late** against free time on ordinary cargo; on scrap the missing document is
the one that also triggers the examination, so the two delays stack. A week of
[demurrage](/glossary/demurrage) on one container has cost about **US$12,000**. On a
multi-container scrap lot the arithmetic is worse than on anything else in the yard.

Which is why scrap is the cargo where
[demurrage management software](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) has to work the
document pack rather than the clock. Counting the free days down tells you the examination
is going to hurt; getting the inspection certificate in hand before the vessel sails is what
stops it.

The charge itself arrives later still, as a carrier invoice weeks after the lot has moved,
which is why scrap is also the cargo where the
[landed cost per container](/solutions/landed-cost-tracking-software) is most often closed
too early. Metal is bought on a thin margin against an exchange price; an examination-driven
demurrage line that lands after the stock is sold does not adjust the sale, it only reveals
what the tonne actually cost.

## Who owes each document, and when

This is the part that makes scrap a chasing problem rather than a filing problem.

| Document | Who issues it | When it can exist |
|---|---|---|
| Commercial invoice, packing and weight list | Supplier | At stuffing |
| Bill of lading | Carrier | After loading |
| Certificate of origin | Chamber or authority at origin | After invoice |
| Pre-shipment inspection certificate | Recognised inspection agency at origin | At or before loading, on inspection |
| Supplier's radioactivity and explosives certificate (waiver lanes) | Supplier or scrap yard | At loading |

The PSIC is the odd one out. It is issued by a third party, at the loading end, against
an inspection that has to be booked, and it has to carry the same container numbers and
weights as documents produced by two other parties. It is late more often than any other
document in the pack, and when it is wrong it is wrong in a field, a container number
that does not match the bill of lading, a gross weight that is the packing list's net.

## The classification question

Ferrous scrap sits under heading 7204, with [HS 7204.49](/hs-code/7204-49) as the residual
subheading for material that is not turnings, shavings, chips or stampings. Non-ferrous
scrap sits in chapters 74 to 81 by metal. The six-digit code is harmonised; the eight-digit
Indian tariff line and the policy condition attached to it are national, and the policy
condition is where the PSIC requirement lives. Confirm the line with your customs broker
before the contract is signed, because the document set follows the code.

A scrap desk that also buys plastic regrind should read the two document sets side by side,
because they fail differently. Metal scrap is gated by a certificate an authorised agency
issues against a rule. Plastic waste is gated by a measurement: the
[plastic waste import documents](/industries/plastics) Singapore asks for turn on
contamination thresholds somebody has to verify in the supplier's yard, and no certificate
substitutes for the surveyor's report on the state of the bales.

A third variant is worth knowing if the same desk handles waste textiles, because it moves
the gate again: the [used clothing import documents](/industries/textiles-and-used-clothing)
India requires turn on a cutting standard published by the customs house at the port, so the
acceptance test is neither a certificate nor a laboratory figure but the physical state of
the bales as one formation defines it.

## Where Docket sits

Docket does not issue certificates, does not inspect scrap, does not file the entry, and
does not choose your port. Those are the inspection agency's, the customs broker's and the
trader's.

What Docket does is read the purchase contract, take the cargo and the lane, and derive
the document set that shipment needs, PSIC included, with the party who owes each item.
Then it chases: the supplier for the packing and weight list, the agency for the
certificate, the forwarder for the bill of lading, daily, on email first and then
WhatsApp, SMS and an AI voice call when email is ignored. When the PSIC arrives it is
read against the packing list and the bill of lading, and the container number that does
not match is named while the vessel is still at sea. The whole checklist is worked
backwards from the last free day at the destination port, so a lot booked to a port
without the waiver shows the PSIC as due before loading, not after arrival.

On the desk that is the
[import document checking](/solutions/import-document-checking-software) and
[supplier follow-up](/solutions/supplier-follow-up-automation) jobs applied to the
cargo where they matter most. About **85%** of the chasing and about **65%** of the
checking is built to run without a person. The judgement, whether a lot with a
one-container mismatch should sail, stays with you.

Source: https://dodocket.com/industries/metals-and-scrap

---

# Plastic waste import documents: Singapore thresholds

Plastic waste is the one cargo whose paperwork is decided by a measurement, not a description. NEA publishes Singapore's thresholds: 0.5% other plastic types per bale, 2.5% total non-plastic contaminants, zero household or hazardous waste. Under them the consignment is Basel Annex IX and needs no permit. Over them it is hazardous waste and needs a Basel permit before the shipment moves.

Every other cargo page on this site is about documents that describe a shipment. This one is
about documents that measure it.

Plastic waste is bought and sold as a description (PP regrind, washed PET flake, mixed
bales) and regulated as a measurement. The description is in your purchase contract. The
measurement decides whether the consignment needs a permit, and it is taken in a yard on the
other side of the world before anything is loaded.

## The threshold is the regulation

Singapore's National Environment Agency publishes the numbers, per bale or bag, by weight.
They are short enough to put on one screen and they are the whole gate.

| What is in the bale | Allowed |
|---|---|
| Other plastic waste types (single-stream waste, and PP/PE/PET mixtures alike) | 0.5% |
| Household waste, including food waste and beverages | **0%** |
| Hazardous, biohazardous, e-waste, radioactive waste | **0%** |
| Other recyclables: waste paper, wood-chips, scrap metal, glass, rubber and tyres | 0.5% |
| Water | 2% |
| Others, for example stones and dirt | 0.5% |
| **Total non-plastic contaminants, all of the above together** | **2.5%** |

Two more conditions sit alongside them. The waste has to be sorted and packed one stream per
bale, with the single exception of mixtures of only polyethylene, polypropylene and
polyethylene terephthalate, which may travel together. And it has to have come from
post-industrial or post-consumer use, not from a landfill or a waste disposal site.

Get under those numbers and the consignment is Basel Annex IX material. Go over them and it
is something else entirely.

## What crosses at 2.5%

The Basel Convention's plastic waste amendments, adopted at COP-14 in 2019 and effective
from **1 January 2021**, put plastic waste into three boxes:

- **Annex IX, entry B3011.** Presumed *not* hazardous, and so not subject to the Prior
  Informed Consent procedure. It replaced the old B3010. It covers waste almost exclusively
  of one non-halogenated polymer, or one cured resin or condensation product, or one
  fluorinated polymer, destined for recycling in an environmentally sound manner and almost
  free from contamination; and mixtures of only PE, PP and PET destined for separate
  recycling of each material.
- **Annex VIII, entry A3210.** Plastic waste presumed hazardous, and therefore subject to
  PIC.
- **Annex II, entry Y48.** Plastic waste, including mixtures, that is neither of the above.

NEA's guidelines state the consequence plainly for the exempt case: wastes listed in Annex
IX are exempt from transboundary movement control, and are not regulated under the
Hazardous Waste (Control of Export, Import and Transit) Act or its Regulations. Singapore
acceded to the Convention on 2 January 1996 and this is how it applies it.

For everything else, Singapore Customs is equally plain: under that Act, anyone importing
hazardous waste must obtain a **Basel permit** from NEA's Chemical Control and Management
Department, and CCMD applies the Prior Informed Consent procedure in granting one. The
permit has to be obtained *before* the shipment and *before* the TradeNet permit
application, and its number goes into the CA Licence Number field. Approval of the TradeNet
application itself has to be obtained before the goods are imported.

So the same commercial cargo, from the same supplier, on the same lane, sits on either side
of a regulatory line depending on how well somebody sorted it. That is not a paperwork
question you can settle from a desk in Singapore.

## The evidence is physical, and it lives at origin

This is the part that makes plastics a different job from
[metals and scrap](/industries/metals-and-scrap) or
[agri commodities](/industries/agri-commodities), where a certificate is issued by an
authority against a rule.

NEA requires companies to provide, or obtain from their overseas counterparts, evidence
that inspection, testing or certification has been carried out to show the waste meets the
specification. In practice that means two things:

**A surveyor at the loading end.** Physical checks on the waste by a surveyor able to
inspect the intended shipment: verifying cargo quality against the required specification,
checking the general appearance of the cargo and the packaging, photographic evidence of the
state and quality of the waste. NEA is explicit that it appoints no official third-party
surveyors and recommends none, so the credibility of the inspection is the importer's own
judgement to make and to defend.

**An analytical report, where the constituents demand one.** Where Basel Annex I
constituents (heavy metals, waste oils, asbestos, organohalogen compounds) are known to be
present, independent analytical reports and certifications are needed to establish that
presence and to assess whether it renders the waste hazardous. Waste that contains Annex I
constituents to an extent that it exhibits an Annex III characteristic is classified as
hazardous, and its movement needs the Basel permits.

Neither document can be produced after the fact. A photograph of a bale in a yard in
Malaysia is not available to anyone in Singapore three weeks later. This is the deadline
that catches desks out: on most cargoes a missing document can be chased to the destination,
and on this one the chase has to finish before the container is sealed.

## The labels have to match the packing list, bale by bale

NEA sets out what goes on each bale or bag, and says why: for ease of traceability,
accountability and **comparison with the details declared in the shipping documents**.

Each bale carries the consignment or batch number, the weight and dimensions, the plastic
waste types present with their HS and Product codes, and the point of origin and intended
destination. A single container may hold multiple well-segregated bales of different
single-stream waste, so long as they are separable, and subject to the importing country
accepting it.

Line that up against what the TradeNet application declares: the purpose of import, the
item description and quantity, the CA Product Code against the HS Code, and the container
number and shipper seal number. Then line both up against the
[packing list](/glossary/packing-list) and the
[bill of lading](/glossary/bill-of-lading).

Four documents, produced by four parties, describing the same bales. On a mixed container of
segregated bales that is not one comparison, it is one per bale. A person does that badly at
eleven at night. A machine does it the same way every time.

## What the delay costs on this cargo

The arithmetic is the site's usual arithmetic, with the remedy in the wrong country.

Desk work runs about **2.2 hours** a container, of which 30 to 45 minutes is supplier
follow-ups and 45 to 90 minutes is document-pack preparation and checking. Document packs
routinely run about **eight days** late against free time, and a week of demurrage on one
container has cost about **US$12,000**.

On plastic waste, those eight days are harder to claw back. A missing certificate of origin
can be emailed. A missing surveyor's report on the condition of bales that are now inside a
sealed container at a terminal cannot be produced at all. The
[last free day](/glossary/last-free-day) is fixed at discharge either way, and the
[free time](/glossary/free-time) does not extend because the problem is 3,000 kilometres
away.

## Where Docket sits

Docket does not classify waste, does not inspect bales and does not decide whether a
consignment is hazardous. Classification is yours and your customs broker's; an Annex III
characteristic is a laboratory's finding.

What it does is treat the origin-side evidence as a set of dated obligations from the day
the purchase contract is recorded. It knows which documents this lane needs, chases the
supplier and the surveyor for each of them before loading, on email first and then WhatsApp
at 24 hours, SMS at 48 and an AI voice call at 72. Then it reads what arrives against
everything else: the bale labels against the packing list, the declared
plastic type against the HS and Product code, the analytical report against the
specification in the contract. A weight that disagrees or a bale label that names a polymer
the invoice does not surfaces while the goods are still in the yard, which is the only place
it can be fixed.

Then it counts the rest backwards from the last free day, which is what
[demurrage and detention software](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) is for. On this
cargo the deadline that matters is not the one at the port. It is the one before the
container is sealed.

Source: https://dodocket.com/industries/plastics

---

# Importing used clothing and rags into India, line by line

In India, worn clothing and textile rags are the cargo where the eight-digit tariff line, not the commodity, decides whether a box clears. DGFT's ITC(HS) Schedule 1 marks worn clothing (6309 00 00) Restricted, and every rag line in 6310 too, but three of those rag lines may be imported without a licence if the material arrives completely mutilated. Same bales, different line, different answer.

Most cargoes are classified and then the documents follow. Used textiles work the
other way round. The bales are the same bales whichever line they are entered
under, and the eight-digit line decides whether the container needs a licence
the importer does not have.

## Two headings, and the gap between them

India's import policy for this cargo lives in two headings of chapter 63.

**6309 00 00, worn clothing and other worn articles.** Marked **Restricted**.
The only condition printed against the line is about what happens afterwards:
"Units in the Special Economic zone will be allowed to sell worn clothing in the
Domestic Tariff Area to the extent of 15% of the cif value of imports made in
the previous year." That is a sales cap on a processor, not a route for an
ordinary importer, and it is the clearest signal in the policy that this
material is meant to arrive at a unit that will work on it.

**6310, used or new rags.** Every line marked **Restricted** as well. But three
of them carry a condition that changes the answer completely:

> Permitted for import in completely mutilated form without a licence subject to
> the condition that mutilation must conform to the requirement specified by
> Customs Public Notice or Trade Notice.

Read those two headings next to each other and the policy is coherent. Wearable
garments are controlled. Material cut past the point of being wearable is, on
the right line, ordinary trade. The border between them is physical, and it is
inspected.

## The line, not the commodity

Here is the part that catches desks, and it is visible in the published list
itself. Under 6310 the condition is printed against **6310 10 20** (cotton
rags), **6310 90 10** (woolen rags) and **6310 90 40** (synthetic rags). It is
not printed against **6310 10 10**, which is also woolen rags, nor against
**6310 90 20**, which is also cotton rags.

Woolen rags and cotton rags each appear twice, on different lines, with
different conditions. A supplier's invoice that says "cotton rags" has not told
you which of the two lines the consignment is entered under, and the difference
between them is a licence.

DGFT prints its own warning on the front of that list: it "may be cross checked
with the actual Schedule 1 of ITC(HS) Classifications of Export & Import Items
and Notifications thereof". Treat the compiled list as the map and Schedule 1 as
the ground. Settle the line with your
[customs broker](/glossary/cha) before the contract is signed, not when the
vessel is three days out, because everything else on this page follows from it.

## The standard that is set at the port

The mutilation condition does not say what completely mutilated means. It
defers to "the requirement specified by Customs Public Notice or Trade Notice".
Those are documents issued by the customs formation at the port of clearance.

For a desk that means the acceptance standard is local. Two ports taking the
same grade of rags can publish different requirements, and the supplier eight
thousand kilometres away is cutting to whatever the last buyer accepted. The
word "mutilated" in a purchase contract is not a specification. The notice in
force at your port of clearance is.

This is the same shape as the other cargoes where a physical state decides the
document set. Metal scrap is gated by a certificate an agency issues against a
rule, which is why the [metal scrap import documents](/industries/metals-and-scrap)
page is about chasing an inspection abroad. Plastic waste is gated by a
measurement in the supplier's yard, which is why the
[plastic waste import documents](/industries/plastics) page is about
contamination thresholds. Used textiles are gated by a cutting standard
published by a customs house. In all three the paperwork is downstream of
something a person has to do to the goods, and in all three the desk finds out
at the port whether it was done well enough.

## What it costs to find out late

If the mutilation is judged insufficient, the consignment does not fail
gracefully. It reverts to what it was before the condition applied: a restricted
import without an authorisation. The remedy, mutilating or re-mutilating at the
port, is work on every bale in the box, and it happens while the clock that
started at discharge keeps running.

That clock is the reason this cargo belongs on the same desk as the others.
Document packs routinely run about eight days late against free time. A week of
[demurrage](/glossary/demurrage) on one container has cost about **US$12,000**,
and on a consolidated lot of low-value bales the charge can pass what the goods
are worth. Working the paperwork backwards from the
[last free day](/glossary/last-free-day) is not an optimisation here, it is the
difference between a margin and a write-off, which is what
[demurrage and detention software](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) is
for on this lane.

## Where Docket sits

Docket does not classify goods, does not cut bales, does not issue or obtain an
authorisation, and does not decide whether mutilation is complete. Those belong
to the importer, the customs broker, the supplier and the customs officer.

What Docket does is hold the tariff line and its policy condition on the
purchase contract from the day the contract is recorded, so the requirement
travels with the shipment instead of living in somebody's memory. It chases the
supplier for the bale-level packing list, the weight list and the mutilation
evidence before loading, daily, on email first, then WhatsApp, SMS and an AI
voice call when email is ignored. It reads what arrives against the bill of
lading and names the bale count or the weight that disagrees while the vessel is
still at sea. And it works every date backwards from the last free day, so a lot
booked to a port whose notice the supplier has not seen shows up as a problem
before loading rather than after discharge.

Source: https://dodocket.com/industries/textiles-and-used-clothing

---

# Arrival notice: what it tells you, and what it does not

An arrival notice is the message a carrier or its agent sends the party named on the bill of lading to say a shipment is arriving or has arrived. It is a commercial notification, not a legal trigger. Import demurrage free time normally runs from discharge, so the clock is usually already running by the time the notice is read.

The arrival notice is the first piece of paper most import desks touch on a shipment, and
it is the one most likely to be mistaken for a starting gun.

It is a notification. The carrier or its agent tells the consignee and the notify party
named on the [bill of lading](/glossary/bill-of-lading) that a shipment is arriving or has
arrived, usually with the vessel and voyage, the container numbers, the discharge date and
a list of charges to settle before anything is released. Useful, and worth reading the day
it lands. But it confers nothing, and it does not define a deadline.

## The notice is not the clock

Import demurrage free time runs from an event at the terminal, normally discharge from the
vessel. The notice is sent around that event, sometimes before it and sometimes after, and
the gap between the two is the part that costs money. By the time somebody opens the
notice, the [free time](/glossary/free-time) allowance may already be one or two days
spent.

The clearest evidence that these are two different facts is that the US billing rule
insists on both. Under 46 CFR § 541.6(b), a demurrage or detention invoice must carry the
allowed free time in days, the start date of free time, the end date of free time and,
listed separately for imports, the container availability date. A rule that needed only
one date to settle when the clock started would not require two.

So the date that governs an import desk's work is the [last free day](/glossary/last-free-day),
derived from discharge and the free days in the applicable tariff or service contract. The
arrival notice is evidence about that date. It is not the date.

## What the notice does affect

In US trade the notice has a role, and it is a narrower one than importers hope. The
Federal Maritime Commission's interpretive rule at 46 CFR § 545.5(c)(2)(iii) says the
Commission may consider whether and how carriers and terminals give cargo interests notice
that cargo is available for retrieval: the type of notice, who received it, the format,
how it was distributed, its timing and its impact. The same rule, at § 545.5(c)(2)(i),
looks at whether free time is tied to the point at which the goods actually become
accessible.

That matters when a charge is already on the table and you are arguing it was
unreasonable. It is a factor in a dispute, not a mechanism that stops a charge accruing.
The practical reading: a notice that arrived late is worth keeping, and it is worth nothing
if the pack was not ready anyway.

## Notice, then order

The step that releases the cargo is the [delivery order](/glossary/delivery-order),
issued once the charges on the notice are settled and the bill of lading is surrendered or
released. The sequence on an import is ordinary and easy to state:

1. The vessel discharges. Free time starts.
2. The arrival notice reaches the consignee and notify party, with the charges to settle.
3. Those charges are settled and the bill of lading is released.
4. The delivery order is issued, and the customs declaration has to be filed and cleared.
5. The container is picked up, inside free time or not.

Every step between 1 and 5 depends on a document arriving from somebody else, and none of
them wait for each other politely. That is the whole problem: the clock in step 1 runs
against a queue of people who are not watching it.

## The notify party field is doing more work than it looks

Because the notice goes where the bill of lading says it goes. Name a forwarder who does
not pass it on, or a mailbox nobody has opened since the person who owned it left, and the
carrier has discharged its obligation while your desk knows nothing. There is no pause
while it sits in the wrong inbox, and no carrier will reconstruct the free days you lost.

Two habits fix most of it. Check the notify party on every bill of lading draft, before it
is issued, as part of the pack check. And stop treating the notice as the trigger for work
that could have started at booking: the container numbers, the vessel, the documents the
declaration needs and the party who owes each one are all knowable well before arrival.

## Where software should sit on this

Not on the notice. The useful place is upstream of it. A desk that begins when the arrival
notice lands has already lost the days that mattered, which is why
[document pack deadline tracking](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) works backwards
from the last free day instead of forwards from the notice: derive the date from discharge
and the contract terms, put a deadline on every document in the pack, and chase the party
who owes each one daily until it arrives.

The arrival notice then becomes what it should always have been: a checkpoint that
confirms what the desk already knew, rather than the moment it finds out.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/arrival-notice

---

# Bill of Entry: the filing that starts customs clearance

A Bill of Entry is the customs declaration an importer files to clear imported goods in India, normally through the CHA on ICEGATE. Section 46 of the Customs Act 1962 requires it by the end of the day before the carrying vessel arrives, and it may be filed up to thirty days ahead. Late filing attracts a charge that escalates, and it stacks on top of demurrage and detention.

The Bill of Entry is where an import stops being a logistics problem and becomes a customs
one. Until it is filed and assessed, the goods cannot be cleared, and the
[free time](/glossary/free-time) clock keeps running regardless. It is due by the end of
the day **before** the vessel arrives, which means it has to be ready while the ship is
still at sea.

## What is a Bill of Entry?

A Bill of Entry is the formal declaration to Indian customs that goods have arrived and
what they are. It carries the importer and IEC, the supplier, the invoice reference, the
description, the HS classification, quantity, unit and total value, country of origin,
freight and insurance, the [Incoterm](/glossary/incoterms), and the duty payable line by
line: basic customs duty, social welfare surcharge, IGST, compensation cess where it
applies, and any anti-dumping or safeguard duty on the classification.

It is filed electronically on ICEGATE, the customs EDI gateway, in practice by the
[CHA](/glossary/cha) rather than by the importer directly. Section 46 of the Customs Act
1962 is the provision that requires it, and the Bill of Entry (Electronic Integrated
Declaration and Paperless Processing) Regulations govern how it is filed.

Under section 46(4) the importer subscribes to a declaration as to the truth of the
contents and produces the supporting documents: the invoice, the contract, the
[packing list](/glossary/packing-list), the
[certificate of origin](/glossary/certificate-of-origin), and any licence or registration
the goods need. The declaration is the importer's, not the agent's. That distinction
becomes real the day something on it is wrong.

## The three types of Bill of Entry

Which one you file decides when duty is paid and where the goods sit.

| Type | Form | Filed for | Duty payable | Typical user |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Home consumption | Form I, historically white | Goods cleared straight into the domestic market | Now, before release | Most importers, most shipments |
| Warehousing, into-bond | Form II, historically yellow | Goods moved into a bonded warehouse | Deferred until the goods leave the bond | Traders holding stock, duty-heavy cargo |
| Ex-bond | Form III, historically green | Goods being taken out of a bonded warehouse | On the quantity released, at the rate in force then | The same trader, later, in part lots |

The colours are pre-electronic history and the forms are now data sets on ICEGATE, but the
three-way split still decides the cash. A trading desk with slow onward sales and heavy
duty should be asking whether into-bond and ex-bond is the cheaper structure. Most never
model it, because nobody on the desk owns landed cost as a number.

## When is a Bill of Entry due?

Section 46(3) sets the deadline: the entry must be presented before the end of the day,
including holidays, preceding the day on which the carrying vessel or aircraft arrives.
Not on arrival. Not within a few days of arrival.

The same section allows early filing. An advance Bill of Entry may be presented ahead of
arrival, within the window the section permits, once the carrier's arrival manifest is
lodged. That is the lever almost nobody pulls, and it is the cheapest one available: file
early, get the query early, fix it while the ship is still at sea instead of while the box
is accruing [demurrage](/glossary/demurrage).

The timing is the whole problem. The pack has to be complete *before* the ship berths,
while the exporter may still be couriering originals and the bank may not have released
documents against payment. An importer who starts assembling paperwork when the arrival
notice lands has already missed the window.

## How does clearance actually run, step by step?

Eight steps, and the importer touches only three of them.

1/ **The carrier files the arrival manifest.** Under the Sea Cargo Manifest and
Transhipment Regulations the shipping line lodges the manifest ahead of arrival. Nothing
you file can be matched until this exists.

2/ **The CHA files the Bill of Entry on ICEGATE**, against the manifest line, using the
invoice, packing list, bill of lading and origin certificate you supplied.

3/ **Self-assessment.** Section 17 puts the classification and valuation on the importer.
You declare the HS code and the value. Customs verifies rather than calculates. What a
single heading carries in duty and paperwork is easiest to see on a worked example:
[HS 7204.49, ferrous waste and scrap](/hs-code/7204-49).

4/ **The Risk Management System routes it.** Some entries are facilitated straight through.
Others go for assessment, for examination, or for both.

5/ **Faceless assessment.** Under the Turant Customs programme an entry raised at one port
may be assessed by a National Assessment Centre officer sitting somewhere else entirely.
The practical effect on your desk is that queries arrive by system message, not by walking
up to a counter, and answering them fast is a documents job.

6/ **Duty payment.** Assessed duty is paid electronically. Section 47(2) charges interest
where duty is not paid within the period allowed, which is a separate meter from
demurrage and runs at the same time.

7/ **Examination, where the entry is marked for it.** Goods are physically checked against
the declaration. A packing list that does not match what is in the box turns a routine
examination into a query, and a query into days.

8/ **Out of charge.** The proper officer makes the order permitting clearance for home
consumption under section 47. Only now can the delivery order be used and the box gated
out. Demurrage stops. [Detention](/glossary/detention) starts.

Where a value or classification cannot be settled immediately, section 18 allows
provisional assessment against a bond and security, and the entry is finalised later. It
gets the cargo out. It also leaves an open liability on your books that somebody has to
track until it closes — and until it does, the duty line in your
[import landed cost calculation](/solutions/landed-cost-tracking-software) is an estimate,
not a number you can bill against.

## What do late-filing charges cost?

Late filing attracts a charge that accrues per day and steps up the longer it runs. The
rates are set by regulation and are revised from time to time.

We are deliberately not quoting a rupee or dollar figure on this page. The current per-diem
is the sort of number that changes by notification, and a stale figure here would be worse
than none. Check the current CBIC notification, or ask your CHA what they are actually
being charged this month.

What is worth internalising is the shape of it. **The charge escalates**, and it runs
alongside the other meters rather than instead of them. A container stuck for a week on a
missing certificate of origin can be accruing terminal demurrage, carrier detention, a
late-filing charge and section 47(2) interest at the same time, billed by four different
parties, arriving on your desk in four different months.

That is why the post-mortem never finds the cause. The charges are separated from the
event by weeks, and from each other by the account codes they land in.

## Bill of Entry, Shipping Bill, Bill of Lading: what is the difference?

Three documents that sound alike and do unrelated jobs.

| | Bill of Entry | Shipping Bill | [Bill of Lading](/glossary/bill-of-lading) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direction | Import | Export | Either |
| Who files or issues it | Importer, through the CHA | Exporter, through the CHA | The carrier |
| Filed with | Indian customs, on ICEGATE | Indian customs, on ICEGATE | Nobody. It is a commercial document |
| Legal effect | Declaration of imported goods for assessment | Declaration of goods for export and drawback | Receipt, contract of carriage, document of title |
| Governing provision | Customs Act 1962, section 46 | Customs Act 1962, section 50 | Contract and carriage law, not customs |
| Deadline | End of the day before arrival | Before the goods are loaded | Issued after loading |

The one that trips importers is the third column. A bill of lading is not a customs
document and filing it with anybody clears nothing. It is the thing your bank holds and
your carrier releases against, which is a different chain of custody with a different set
of delays.

## Where it goes wrong

Almost always the same way. The Bill of Entry cannot be filed because one input is
missing.

A certificate of origin that never arrived, because the chamber of commerce in the
exporter's country works to its own calendar. An invoice that does not match the packing
list on quantity or on description. A fumigation certificate for a wooden-pallet
consignment. An EPR registration for plastics. A test report for a commodity under quality
control orders. A classification the CHA is unwilling to file without written confirmation
from the importer, which is sitting unread in a trader's inbox.

The pattern underneath is the same every time: the CHA is waiting on the importer, the
importer is waiting on the exporter, and nobody owns the follow-up. Six parties, no
coordinator, and a deadline set by a vessel that does not slow down.

The arithmetic on the desk explains why. Docket's operational baseline puts about **2.2 hours**
of work on a single container, of which 30 to 45 minutes is supplier follow-ups and 45 to
90 minutes is document-pack preparation and checking. A 500-container desk consumes about
**1,100 hours a month**. Seven people at roughly 176 hours each provide 1,232 hours. The
desk is at about **90% capacity** on grunt work before anyone buys or sells anything. Packs
routinely run about **eight days** late against free time.

## What can an importer actually control?

Five things, none of which require a regulator's permission.

**File in advance.** The section allows it. Use it, and turn a query on the day of arrival
into a query a week earlier.

**Fix the masters once.** Most classification and description queries come from a supplier
description that was never reconciled to your HS code. Settle it once per product, store
it, and stop re-litigating it per shipment.

**Write document deadlines into the purchase contract.** Not "documents to be sent
promptly." A named document, a named party, a number of days after the bill of lading
date, and a consequence. Most purchase contracts on a trading desk run to pages on quality
and one line on documents.

**Get the AEO status if your volume justifies it.** The Authorised Economic Operator
programme carries facilitation benefits, including deferred duty payment and faster
handling, for importers with a clean compliance record.

**Know who your CHA is waiting on, today.** Not at the weekly review. Today, per shipment,
by name.

## Common misconceptions

**"The CHA handles it."** The CHA files. The declaration under section 46(4) is the
importer's, the classification under section 17 is the importer's, and the penalty for a
wrong one lands on the importer.

**"We can file after the ship arrives."** You can, and you pay for it, daily, escalating.

**"Late filing is the same as demurrage."** Four separate meters can run at once: terminal
demurrage, carrier detention, the late-filing charge, and interest under section 47(2).

**"Provisional assessment closes the matter."** Section 18 gets the cargo out against a
bond. The file stays open, and somebody on your side has to close it.

**"Faceless assessment slowed everything down."** It changed where the officer sits. What
decides your clearance time is still whether the answer to the query is in your files or
in your supplier's inbox.

## Where Docket sits

Docket does not file Bills of Entry, is not a customs broker, and does not replace your
CHA. Classification, valuation and the filing itself stay where they are.

What Docket does is make sure the CHA has a complete, internally consistent pack before
the deadline rather than the morning after it; that is the job its
[document checking software for imports](/solutions/import-document-checking-software) does. It works the checklist backwards from the
vessel's arrival instead of forwards from the booking. It reads the purchase contract,
derives what the shipment owes, checks each document as it lands against the contract and
against the other documents, identifies which single party owes the missing item, and
chases that party daily: email first, WhatsApp at 24 hours, SMS at 48, an AI voice call at
72. On channels the exporter and the CHA already use. Nobody signs up for a portal.

On the baseline desk, that takes a container from about 2.2 hours of desk work to
roughly **20 minutes**, an **85%** cut in the cost of the chase, with document-pack
drafting automated at about **65%**.

The honest limit: Docket cannot make a chamber of commerce issue a certificate faster, and
it will not tell you your HS code is wrong. It makes sure that on the day before the vessel
arrives, nobody is still looking for the file.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/bill-of-entry

---

# Bill of lading: the document that is the cargo

A bill of lading is the carrier's receipt for your cargo, the evidence of the carriage contract, and, when it is made out to order, the document of title. Whoever holds the endorsed original set can claim the box at destination. That is why an original stuck in a courier bag or a bank's document room costs demurrage while the container sits in the port doing nothing.

A bill of lading is three documents sharing one name. It is the carrier's receipt for the
goods. It is evidence of the contract of carriage. And when it is made out to order, it is
the document of title: whoever holds the endorsed original set can claim the cargo at
destination. Your purchase contract cannot do that. Your commercial invoice cannot do that.

## What is a bill of lading?

The carrier, or an agent signing for the master, issues the bill of lading once the goods
are received or loaded. The paper records what was received, in what condition, from whom,
for whom, and where it is going. The Hague-Visby Rules set out what the carrier has to
state on it: the leading marks, the number of packages or the quantity or weight as
furnished by the shipper, and the apparent order and condition of the goods.

That last phrase is the one importers skim past and lawyers read first. "Apparent order and
condition" is what makes a bill of lading clean. A clean bill says the carrier saw nothing
wrong on the outside of the packages when it took them. A claused bill says the carrier saw
something: torn bags, rust, wet cartons, short count. A claused bill is often unacceptable
under a letter of credit, so a single line typed by a tallyman in a port you have never
visited can stop your payment.

Three parties appear on the face of it. The **shipper** is who handed the goods over. The
**consignee** is who receives them. The **notify party** is who the carrier tells when the
vessel arrives, which is frequently your customs house agent and not you.

## Why does the original matter so much?

Because the original is the goods.

A negotiable bill of lading is issued in a set, usually three originals and several
non-negotiable copies. Any one of the originals is enough to take delivery, which is why
the carrier will only release cargo against one of them and will take the whole set out of
circulation once it does. Surrender one original and the other two are dead paper.

Trace what this means in practice. The exporter loads the container in Jebel Ali. The
carrier issues three originals to the exporter. The exporter hands the set to their bank.
The bank sends it to your bank. Your bank releases it to you against payment or against
acceptance. You endorse it and hand it to your customs house agent, who surrenders it to
the shipping line's local office in exchange for the delivery order. Only then does the
terminal let the box out.

Count the hops. Five parties, two banks, one courier, and a physical object that has to
travel the same route your container just travelled, on a slower vehicle. On a short
regional lane the vessel routinely beats the paper. The ship berths, the box discharges,
and free time starts counting while your original bill of lading is in a pouch somewhere
over the Arabian Sea.

Document packs routinely run about **eight days** late against free
time, and a week of demurrage on one container runs about **US$12,000**. Nothing
was wrong with the cargo. The cargo was in the port the whole time.

## Original, seaway bill or telex release: which one do you want?

There are three ways to move a container's release rights, and traders treat them as one
thing until the day the choice costs them money.

| | Original B/L (to order) | Sea waybill | Telex release / express B/L |
|---|---|---|---|
| Document of title | Yes | No | No, the originals are surrendered at origin |
| Cargo released against | Surrender of one original | Consignee proving identity | Carrier's release message to the destination office |
| Can be sold or pledged in transit | Yes, by endorsement | No | No |
| Works under a documentary credit | Yes, this is the normal instrument | Rarely, banks want title | Rarely |
| Physical courier needed | Yes | No | No |
| Typical use | Open trade, LC business, goods traded afloat | Same-group shipments, trusted repeat counterparties | Prepaid cargo where payment is already settled |

The trade-off is exactly the trade-off between security and speed. An original bill of
lading protects the seller: the buyer does not get the goods until the bank has the money
or the acceptance. A sea waybill protects the schedule: nothing has to be couriered, so
nothing can be late. Traders who ship monthly to the same buyer on advance payment and
still insist on original bills are paying demurrage to protect against a risk they already
closed with the payment terms.

Decide this at contract time, in writing, per counterparty. It is a line in the purchase
contract, not a decision for the day the vessel berths.

## What is the difference between a master B/L and a house B/L?

A **master bill of lading** is issued by the ocean carrier to whoever booked the space,
which is usually the freight forwarder or NVOCC. A **house bill of lading** is issued by
that forwarder to you. On a consolidated LCL load, one master bill covers the container and
several house bills cover the individual shipments inside it.

The practical consequence: your house bill is only as good as the forwarder who signed it.
If the forwarder does not settle with the ocean carrier, the carrier holds the container
and your house bill is a claim against a company, not a claim on a box. Ask which document
you are actually holding before you assume you control the cargo.

## What does the bank check on a bill of lading?

Under a documentary credit, the bank pays against documents and never against goods. UCP
600 Article 20 sets out what a bill of lading has to show for a bank to accept it, and the
list is unforgiving: the name of the carrier, a signature identified as carrier or master or
a named agent signing for one of them, an on-board notation with the loading date, the port
of loading and the port of discharge named in the credit, and the full set of originals
where the credit calls for them.

A discrepancy is any gap between the document and the credit. The buyer's name spelled two
ways. A port named "Nhava Sheva" in the credit and "JNPT" on the bill. A shipped-on-board
date one day after the latest shipment date. Each one gives the issuing bank grounds to
refuse, and then payment turns into a negotiation you did not plan for.

The fix is boring and it works: check the draft bill of lading against the letter of credit,
field by field, before the carrier issues the original. After issue, a correction means a
switch bill, an amendment fee, and days.

## What goes wrong, and what it costs

Four failures show up again and again on an import desk.

The **original arrives after the vessel.** Free time runs, demurrage starts, and the desk
pays for a container nobody moved.

The **consignee field is wrong.** Made out to a group entity instead of the importing
entity, or to the bank when the credit said to order and blank endorsed. The line will not
release against it, and amending a bill after issue is slower than issuing one.

The **description does not match the invoice, the packing list or the certificate of
origin.** Customs reads all of them together. One document saying 25.00 MT and another
saying 25.400 MT is a query, and a query is days.

The **bill is claused.** The tallyman noted wet bags or a short count. Under a credit, that
can end the payment. Outside a credit, it is the start of a cargo claim.

None of these are shipping problems. They are all document problems, which means they are
all upstream of the port, which means they are all fixable before the vessel sails.

## How do you keep the bill of lading from running you?

Work backwards from discharge, not forwards from booking.

Fix the release mechanism in the purchase contract: original set, sea waybill or telex, per
supplier, per payment term. Get the draft bill of lading from the shipper or the forwarder
before issue and check it against the credit, the invoice and the packing list on the same
screen. Name a courier deadline that sits ahead of the estimated arrival with real slack in
it, and chase against that date rather than against the vessel schedule. Ask the carrier for
the number of originals you actually need. Three originals moving through two banks is three
chances to lose one.

And know your last free day. Every document deadline on the shipment hangs off that date.

## Where Docket sits

Docket does not issue bills of lading and does not sign them. The carrier does that, and no
software changes it.

What Docket does is take the purchase contract, derive every document the shipment needs,
and chase the people who owe them. This is what
[trade documentation software](/solutions/import-document-checking-software) should mean in
practice: it reads the draft bill of lading against the contract and the rest of the pack,
flags the fields that disagree, and keeps asking the shipper, the forwarder and the customs
broker until the paper exists. When someone goes quiet it escalates on the channels they
already use: email, then WhatsApp at 24 hours, SMS at 48, an AI voice call at 72.

The per-container chase runs about 2.2 hours. Roughly 45 to 90
minutes of that was doc-pack preparation and checking. Docket automates about 85% of the
chasing and about 65% of the doc-pack drafting.

The target is narrow. Have the original in the right hands, or the release message sent,
before the last free day. Then there is nothing to pay.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/bill-of-lading

---

# Certificate of origin: the paper that sets your duty rate

A certificate of origin states the country where goods were produced. Non-preferential certificates prove nationality for quotas and trade remedies. Preferential certificates claim a lower or zero duty rate under a trade agreement. The preferential kind is worth real money, is time-limited, and gets refused for small mismatches. It is the document most often missing when the box lands.

A certificate of origin states the country where goods were produced. Customs uses it to
decide what you pay. The non-preferential kind proves nationality for quotas, anti-dumping
duty and marking rules. The preferential kind claims a lower or zero rate under a trade
agreement, and on a container of steel or plastics that single sheet is often worth more
than the freight.

## What is a certificate of origin?

Origin is not where the container was loaded and it is not where the seller is registered.
Origin is where the goods were obtained or last substantially transformed. A trader buying
Turkish-rolled coil from a Dubai seller shipping out of Jebel Ali has Turkish-origin goods,
a UAE contract and an Emirati port. Customs cares about the first one.

The certificate is issued by a chamber of commerce or by an authority the importing country
recognises, on the strength of a declaration by the exporter and the evidence behind it:
manufacturer's invoices, mill certificates, production records, bills of materials. The
issuer certifies the declaration. It does not visit the mill.

Two families exist and they do different jobs.

**Non-preferential certificates** answer the question "what nationality are these goods?"
That answer drives quota counting, anti-dumping and countervailing duty, government
procurement rules, marking requirements and trade sanctions. Everyone issues them and
almost every shipment can get one.

**Preferential certificates** answer a narrower question: "do these goods qualify for the
reduced rate under this specific agreement?" Form D under the ASEAN Trade in Goods
Agreement. EUR.1 movement certificates under the European Union's agreements. Form A under
the old Generalised System of Preferences arrangements. Each one is tied to an agreement,
has its own form, its own rules and its own issuing authorities.

## Preferential or non-preferential: which one do you need?

| | Non-preferential | Preferential |
|---|---|---|
| What it proves | Nationality of the goods | Eligibility for a reduced or zero duty rate |
| Legal basis | National law, WTO Agreement on Rules of Origin | A specific free trade agreement between the two countries |
| Typical issuer | Chamber of commerce | Designated authority named in the agreement |
| Form | General format, varies by country | Prescribed form: Form D, EUR.1, and others named in the agreement |
| Money at stake | Indirect: quotas, trade remedies, marking | Direct: the duty line on your bill of entry |
| Rules to satisfy | Where it was made | Where it was made, plus origin criteria, direct consignment and validity windows |
| Consequence of a defect | Query, delay | Full duty paid, and the difference is rarely refundable in practice |

The trap sits in the last row. A defective non-preferential certificate slows a clearance.
A defective preferential certificate turns a zero-rated consignment into a full-rate one,
and by the time you find out, the goods are cleared and the money is gone.

## What has to be true for a preferential certificate to hold?

Three conditions, and all three fail quietly.

**The goods have to meet the origin criterion.** Trade agreements define origin either as
wholly obtained, or as a change in tariff classification at the heading or subheading level,
or as a minimum share of regional value content, or as a specific processing rule for that
product. The World Customs Organization's Harmonized System is what those rules are written
against, so classification errors become origin errors. Get the HS code wrong and you can
satisfy a rule that does not apply to your goods.

**The consignment has to travel the way the agreement allows.** Most agreements require
direct consignment, with a carve-out for transhipment where the goods stay under customs
control and undergo nothing beyond unloading, reloading and preservation. Route the box
through a third-country warehouse for repacking and the preference dies even though the
goods never changed.

**The certificate has to be valid and present.** Preferential certificates carry a validity
window from the date of issue. Retroactive issue is allowed under many agreements and is
flagged on the face of the document, and a retrospectively issued certificate draws more
scrutiny than a clean one. If it is not with the customs house agent when the entry is
filed, you either wait or you pay full rate and argue later.

## Why does the certificate of origin turn up late?

Because it is the one document in the pack that a third party has to sign.

The commercial invoice is written by the seller. The packing list is written by the seller.
The bill of lading comes from the carrier at loading. The certificate of origin needs the
seller to compile evidence, submit it to a chamber or an authority, wait for issue, and then
courier the result. That queue sits outside the seller's control, which means it sits well
outside yours.

Document packs routinely run about **eight days** late against port
free time, and a week of demurrage on one container runs about **US$12,000**. The
certificate of origin is the paper most often at the back of that queue.

There is a second-order cost that does not show up as demurrage. When the certificate is
missing, the honest move is to file the entry at full duty to get the box out, then chase a
refund. The refund route exists on paper in most jurisdictions and is slow enough in
practice that desks write the money off.

## What gets a certificate of origin rejected?

Customs reads the origin certificate against the invoice, the packing list and the bill of
lading at the same time. Any disagreement between them is a query.

The descriptions differ. The invoice says "HDPE granules", the certificate says "plastic
raw material", and an officer has to decide whether these are the same goods.

The quantity or weight differs. 25.00 MT on one document and 25.400 MT on another. Gross
and net used interchangeably across two documents.

The HS code on the certificate does not match the code on the entry. This one is fatal for
preference, because the origin rule is written against the code.

The consignee is a different legal entity from the importer on the bill of entry. Group
companies get filed as one name in the seller's system and as another in yours.

The signature or the issuing body is not on the importing country's list of registered
specimen signatures and seals. This is invisible from your side until it is refused.

The vessel and voyage details on the certificate do not match the bill of lading, which
breaks the direct-consignment evidence.

Every one of these is checkable before the container sails, on a screen, in a few minutes.
Almost nobody checks them before the container sails.

## How do you run the certificate of origin properly?

Decide origin at contract time. Put the agreement, the form type, the origin criterion and
the issuing authority into the purchase contract as named terms. "Certificate of origin to
be provided" is not a term. "Form D under ATIGA, issued by the designated authority, origin
criterion stated, original couriered within 7 days of bill of lading date" is a term.

Ask for the draft before issue. A chamber-issued certificate is expensive to amend and slow
to reissue. A draft costs an email.

Check it against the invoice, the packing list and the bill of lading as one set. Same
description, same quantities, same HS code, same parties, same vessel and voyage.

Set the courier deadline off the last free day, not off the shipment date.

Keep the evidence. Origin verification requests arrive months or years after clearance, and
the importer carries the exposure even though the exporter made the declaration. Mill
certificates and production records that were easy to get during the deal are hard to get
two years later.

## Where Docket sits

Docket does not issue certificates of origin. A chamber of commerce or a designated
authority does that, and no software gets to skip that queue.

What Docket does is treat the certificate as a dated obligation instead of an attachment,
which is how its [import document checking](/solutions/import-document-checking-software)
works on every paper in the pack.
It reads the purchase contract, works out which documents the shipment needs and who owes
each one, and then chases them daily. It checks the certificate against the invoice, the
packing list and the bill of lading and flags the fields that disagree before the entry is
filed. When the exporter stops replying, it escalates on channels they already use: email,
then WhatsApp at 24 hours, SMS at 48, an AI voice call at 72.

The chase runs about 2.2 hours per container, of which supplier
follow-ups took 30 to 45 minutes and doc-pack preparation and checking took 45 to 90
minutes. Docket automates about 85% of the chasing and about 65% of the doc-pack drafting.

The goal is one date. Have the certificate in the customs house agent's hands before the
entry has to be filed, so the container clears at the rate you priced the deal at.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/certificate-of-origin

---

# Customs house agent (CHA): what they do and do not do

A customs house agent, now called a customs broker in India, is a licensed intermediary who files the customs declaration and handles port formalities on the importer's behalf. The licence carries real legal duties. What it does not carry is responsibility for getting documents out of your supplier, and that is where most demurrage is born.

A customs house agent files your customs declaration and moves your container through the
port. They are licensed by the customs administration, they sign the declaration on your
behalf, and they carry legal duties for what they file. They do not chase your supplier,
they do not own your free-time clock, and they cannot conjure a certificate of origin that
nobody has issued.

Importers who assume otherwise are the ones paying demurrage.

## What is the full form of CHA?

CHA stands for **Customs House Agent**. In India the licence has been reissued under the
Customs Brokers Licensing Regulations 2018, so the current legal name is **customs
broker** — the trade still says CHA, the statute says customs broker, and they are the
same licence under section 146 of the Customs Act 1962. In shipping paperwork you will
also see the same role called a clearing agent or declaring agent.

## What is a customs house agent?

The Revised Kyoto Convention calls them third parties: persons authorised to act on someone
else's account in dealings with customs. Every trading nation has a version of the licence
and a version of the name.

In India the Customs Act 1962, section 146, requires a licence to transact customs business,
and the Customs Brokers Licensing Regulations 2018 set out how that licence is granted,
what the holder has to do, and how it is suspended or revoked. India also changed the name.
"Customs house agent" was the term under the 2004 regulations. Since the 2013 regulations
the legal term is **customs broker**. Everyone on the docks still says CHA.

Elsewhere the label shifts. Singapore has declaring agents registered with Singapore
Customs and TradeNet declarants. The UAE has customs clearing agents licensed at each
emirate's customs authority. The United States has customs brokers licensed by Customs and
Border Protection. The European Union has customs representatives acting in direct or
indirect representation. Same function, different statute.

## What does a CHA actually do?

Six things, and it is worth being exact about the boundary of each.

They **classify and value** the goods for the declaration, working from your invoice, your
packing list and your certificate of origin. They **file the entry**: the bill of entry on
import, the shipping bill on export. They **present the supporting documents** to customs and
answer queries raised against the entry. They **arrange examination** when the consignment is
marked for it, and attend it. They **pay duty** on your behalf where you have funded them,
and take delivery of the assessed entry. And they **clear the box out of the port**,
surrendering the delivery order, settling terminal handling and arranging the move out of
the gate.

Under the Indian regulations the broker also carries obligations that traders forget are
theirs to comply with: verifying the identity and the address of the client, advising the
client to comply with the law, and passing on to customs any non-compliance they become
aware of. The licence is not a service contract. It is a regulated position with a suspension
mechanism attached.

## What is the CHA called in your market?

"CHA" is an Indian term. The role is universal, the word is not, and an importer
outside India searching for "CHA" will not find their own broker under that name.

| Market | What the broker is called | What gets filed | Filed through |
|---|---|---|---|
| India | Customs House Agent, licensed as a Customs Broker under CBLR 2018 | Bill of Entry | ICEGATE |
| Singapore | **[Declaring Agent](/glossary/declaring-agent)**, registered with Singapore Customs | Permit declaration | TradeNet |
| UAE / Dubai | **[Clearing Agent](/glossary/clearing-agent)** in working use, licensed by Dubai Customs as a Customs Broker under Customs Policy No. 17 of 2008 | Customs declaration | Mirsal 2, on the Dubai Trade portal |
| United States | **Licensed customs broker**, licensed by CBP under 19 CFR part 111 | Entry, then the [entry summary](/glossary/entry-summary) on CBP Form 7501 | ACE |
| Australia | **Licensed customs broker** | Import Declaration (N10), for consignments over A$1,000 and some goods regardless of value | Integrated Cargo System |

Two things hold across all five, and they are the two that decide whether you pay
demurrage.

**The broker files; the importer is liable.** In the US the importer of record is
the party liable for duties and for meeting the requirements of the entry, and
appointing a broker does not move that. India's CBLR duties sit on the broker for
what they file, not on your commercial position. Singapore's declaring agent
regime works the same way. The signature is theirs. The exposure is yours.

**The broker cannot file what they have not received.** Whatever the filing is
called, it needs the invoice, the packing list, the transport document and
whichever certificates the cargo attracts. Every market on that table has a
different form and the same failure mode: the pack arrives late and the clock
has already been running since discharge.

## CHA, freight forwarder, NVOCC: who does what?

Traders use these three words interchangeably and then argue with the wrong party when
something breaks.

| | Customs house agent | Freight forwarder | NVOCC | Shipping line agent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Licensed by | The customs authority | Usually a trade registration, not a customs licence | Carrier registration where required | Appointed by the carrier |
| Core job | Files the customs declaration | Books and coordinates the movement | Issues its own bills of lading and buys slots | Represents the vessel operator locally |
| Issues a bill of lading | No | Sometimes, as a house bill | Yes, house bills against a master bill | Yes, the master bill |
| Talks to customs on your behalf | Yes, that is the licence | Only through a CHA | Only through a CHA | No |
| Releases your container | Presents the entry and the delivery order | No | No | Issues the delivery order |
| Chases your supplier for documents | No | No | No | No |
| Who they answer to | The customs authority and you | You | You | The carrier |

Note the row that is empty all the way across. Nobody in that table chases your supplier.
Six parties touch a shipment, the supplier, the CHA, the bank, the forwarder, the insurer
and you, and coordination is not any one of their jobs. It defaults to the importer, which
means it defaults to whoever on your desk has time.

## Why does the CHA get blamed for demurrage they did not cause?

Because they are the last party holding the file before the clock stops, so the delay is
visible at their desk and invisible everywhere upstream.

Run the sequence. The vessel discharges and free time starts. The CHA cannot file the entry
without the invoice, the packing list, the bill of lading and, where preference is claimed,
the certificate of origin. The certificate is sitting with a chamber of commerce in the
country of export. The original bill of lading is in a courier pouch or with your bank. The
supplier has not answered the last three emails.

The CHA files nothing, because there is nothing to file. Demurrage accrues. The invoice for
it lands on your desk with the CHA's name on the covering note, and the conversation that
follows is about the CHA.

Document packs routinely run about **eight days** late against port
free time, and a week of demurrage on one container runs about **US$12,000**.
Almost none of that lateness is created inside the port.

## What should you actually hold your CHA to?

Four things, and they are all measurable.

**A document checklist per shipment type, in writing, issued before the goods ship.** Not
after. A good broker will tell you on day one that this HS code needs a mill test
certificate and that consignment needs a pre-shipment inspection certificate.

**Filing turnaround, counted in hours from a complete pack.** Once every document is in
their hands, how long until the entry is filed? That number is theirs to own and yours to
measure.

**Query response time.** When customs raises a query, how fast does the answer go back? This
is where days disappear, quietly.

**Escalation before the last free day, not after it.** A broker who tells you on day 6 that
the certificate of origin is missing has done their job. One who tells you on day 9 has not.

What you cannot hold them to is the arrival of documents from your seller. That is a term in
your purchase contract and it belongs to you.

## How do you stop the handover from leaking?

The handover from your desk to the CHA is where most import delay lives, and it leaks in
three predictable places.

**Documents arrive one at a time, over days, by email, with no list.** The broker cannot
tell whether the pack is complete because nobody agreed what complete means for this
shipment. Agree the checklist per HS code and per country of origin, once, and reuse it.

**Nobody counts backwards from the last free day.** Discharge date plus free time gives you
a hard date. Every document deadline hangs off it. Most desks track the vessel schedule
instead, which is the wrong date.

**The chase runs on whoever remembers.** Supplier follow-ups take 30 to 45 minutes per
container, sitting inside a total of about 2.2 hours of desk work
per container. On a 500-container month that whole desk load runs to roughly 1,100 hours.
Seven people at about 176 hours each gives 1,232 hours available. The desk is at about 90%
capacity on grunt work before anyone buys or sells anything.

That is the honest shape of the problem. The CHA is not the bottleneck. The bottleneck is
that chasing six parties is a full-time job that nobody was hired to do.

## Where Docket sits

Docket does not replace your customs house agent and does not file entries. Filing needs a
licence, the licence carries liability, and that liability sits with a named human. It stays
that way.

What Docket does is hand the CHA a complete pack, on time, without anyone on your desk
spending the day on it. It reads the purchase contract, derives which documents the shipment
needs and who owes each one, and chases them daily. Its
[import document checking software](/solutions/import-document-checking-software) reads the
invoice, the packing list, the bill of lading and the certificate of origin against each
other and against the contract, and flags the fields that disagree before the entry is filed. It counts the last free day
from discharge and works every deadline backwards from that date. And when someone stops
replying it escalates on the channels they already use: email, then WhatsApp at 24 hours,
SMS at 48, an AI voice call at 72. Nobody has to sign up for a portal.

Docket is built to automate about 85% of the chasing and about 65% of the doc-pack drafting,
which comes to roughly 70% blended across the desk work as a whole. Per container the chase
drops from about 2.2 hours to about 20 minutes.

Your CHA is better at their job when the pack is complete on the day the ship berths. That
is the only thing Docket is trying to buy you.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/cha

---

# Clearing agent: who files your Dubai customs declaration

A clearing agent is what an importer in Dubai calls the party that files its customs declaration. Dubai Customs licenses the role as a customs broker under Customs Policy No. 17 of 2008. An importer does not have to appoint one: Dubai Customs' guide says an import declaration can be submitted online by a registered Mirsal user or by an authorised customs broker.

In Dubai, the person who files your customs declaration is usually called a clearing agent.
Dubai Customs calls the licensed role something else, and both words are correct.

## Clearing agent, customs broker, same desk

Clearing agent is the working term. It is what an importer says, what a forwarder puts on
an invoice, and the business type a company registers against on the Dubai Trade portal.

Customs broker is the licensed role. Dubai Customs' customer guide puts it plainly: any
legal person can apply to Dubai Customs for a licence of a customs broker "to engaged in
the preparation of the Customs Declarations, signing and submitting them to the Customs
Office for completing the Customs Procedures and Customs Clearance for the others'
account". The eligibility conditions sit in Customs Policy No. 17 of 2008. A licensed
broker can also ask Dubai Customs to license a representative to act on their behalf.

Nothing turns on which word you use in conversation. It turns on knowing that when a
contract, a policy document or a customs officer says customs broker, that is the same
party you have been calling your clearing agent.

## You are allowed to file it yourself

This is the part importers do not always realise. For an ordinary import to the local
market from outside the GCC, Dubai Customs' guide says the declaration can be submitted
through online services by a registered Mirsal user, or by using the service of an
authorised customs broker.

So the choice is real: appoint an agent, or hold your own registration and submit through
Mirsal 2 yourself. Most desks appoint an agent, and that is a reasonable default: the
agent knows the classification arguments and the inspection routine. What it does not do
is move the responsibility. The declaration is made from your documents, and a wrong value
or a missing permit is your exposure whoever typed it in.

## The document list has a trap in it

For sea cargo imported to the local market from outside the GCC, Dubai Customs' guide
lists what the declaration needs:

- the master or house [bill of lading](/glossary/bill-of-lading)
- the commercial invoice
- the [certificate of origin](/glossary/certificate-of-origin)
- the [packing list](/glossary/packing-list)
- the [delivery order](/glossary/delivery-order)
- permits wherever applicable

Five of those six are documents your supplier or your carrier produces and hands over. The
sixth is the trap. The delivery order is not paperwork you collect at the start. It is
issued after the arrival charges are settled and the bill of lading is released, which
means the declaration is queued behind a step that is itself queued behind two others.

An importer reading that list as a checklist to be gathered on the day will find that the
day is too late. Read as a dependency chain, it tells you when to start: everything except
the delivery order can be complete and checked before the vessel arrives.

## The clock does not care which name you used

Free time on an import runs from discharge, and the terminal's storage clock and the
carrier's free time are two separate allowances that expire on different dates. At Jebel
Ali, the [published terminal tariff](/port/jebel-ali) and the carrier's service contract
are different documents with different numbers in them.

Planning a clearance around both of those dates rather than one is what
[demurrage planning software](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) is for: hold the
terminal tariff and the carrier's terms per lane, take the earlier expiry, and put every
document deadline behind it.

Your agent's speed is one input into whether the box clears inside those days. The other
inputs are a supplier who sends a corrected invoice, a bank that releases documents, and
whoever settles the arrival charges that release the delivery order. A clearing agent does
not own any of those. Somebody on your desk does, and on most desks that somebody is
chasing all of them by email and remembering the rest.

That is the work [customs documentation checks](/solutions/import-document-checking-software)
should be doing before the declaration is filed: every document in the pack checked against
the others for the mismatches that get a declaration questioned, with a deadline on each
one derived from the [last free day](/glossary/last-free-day) rather than from the day the
cargo lands.

## Accreditation is worth asking about at volume

Dubai Customs runs a Client Accreditation Program for traders with a compliance record.
Its guide sets the eligibility as registration with Dubai Customs as an importer or
exporter, a free zone company or a customs broker, plus a good track record of compliance
with customs laws, a high volume of trade, and quality controls with proper administrative
and financial management. The benefits it lists include credit facilities, an account
manager, and reduced customs intervention on declaration clearances.

That last one is the one worth the paperwork. Fewer interventions is fewer of the holds
that turn a clean import into a demurrage conversation, and the eligibility test is
mostly a description of a desk that already has its documents in order.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/clearing-agent

---

# Declaring agent: who files your Singapore import permit

A declaring agent is an entity holding a Declaring Agent Account with Singapore Customs, which allows it to lodge declarations via TradeNet. It is Singapore's customs broker, and an importer can appoint one or register as its own. Either way Singapore Customs requires the permit before the goods are imported, so the deadline sits ahead of the vessel, not after it.

In Singapore, the person who files your customs declaration is called a declaring agent.
Not a broker, not an agent, and not a Customs House Agent. The word matters because the
account behind it is a specific registration, and the registration is what decides
whether your permit can be lodged at all.

## What the account actually is

A Declaring Agent Account is an entity registration with Singapore Customs. In Singapore
Customs' own words, it allows an entity to lodge declarations via TradeNet. TradeNet is
the single window through which every permit application goes, reached either through
front-end software from an approved vendor or through the Government Front-End
Application.

Two registrations sit behind one declaration. The company holds the DA Account. The
person who submits the declaration is registered under it as a Declarant, and has to
pass the Customs Competency Test for Declarants before being registered.

## You can appoint one, or become one

Singapore Customs gives an importer both routes. A declaring agent can apply for customs
permits on your behalf, or you can apply yourself, which means registering your own
company as a declaring agent and obtaining a TradeNet user ID.

Doing it in-house is a real commitment rather than a form. Every DA must maintain a valid
Inter-Bank GIRO arrangement with Singapore Customs, and Singapore Customs notes that the
bank's approval usually takes three to four weeks. Accounts are then assessed under the
DA Governance Framework, which looks at personnel management, training on customs
procedures, the company's processes and SOP documentation, and its information management
and controls. The assessment sets both the renewal period, at one, two or three years,
and the security requirement, which ranges from full security to a waiver for most
transactions.

## The permit is not one document

An import permit in Singapore is a permit type, and the type follows what you are doing
with the goods rather than what the goods are. In-Payment permits cover GST on goods
imported for local consumption and duty with GST on dutiable goods. In-Non-Payment
permits cover movements where the money is not collected at that point: into a licensed
or zero-GST warehouse under an approved premises or scheme, into a free trade zone for
storage, duty and GST relief for entitled persons such as embassies, temporary
consignments for events, repairs, testing or exhibition, and goods going for destruction,
re-export or shut-out.

Choosing the wrong type is not a clerical matter. It changes what is payable and when.

## The deadline is the vessel, not the agent

The operative sentence for an import desk is short. Singapore Customs states that
importers must obtain the relevant customs permit before the goods are imported into
Singapore.

Read that against how a shipment actually runs and the consequence is direct. Your
declaring agent cannot lodge a declaration it does not have the documents for. The
invoice, the packing list, the bill of lading and the classification all have to be
complete and correct before the permit, and the permit has to be there before arrival.
So the deadline that governs the desk sits several days ahead of the vessel, and
everything upstream of it belongs to parties who do not work for you.

That is also why [free time](/glossary/free-time) is the wrong thing to plan against on
its own. Free time tells you how long you have after discharge. The Singapore permit rule
tells you the work was supposed to be finished before that clock even started.

## What it is called elsewhere

The role is the same across markets and the words are not. In India it is the Customs
House Agent, and the [CHA entry](/glossary/cha) carries the full vocabulary table for
each market the site writes for. In Dubai it is the clearing agent, filing through
Mirsal 2. In the United States it is a licensed customs broker filing an entry summary.
A buyer comparing tools across markets is comparing the same job under four names.

## Where Docket sits

Docket is not a declaring agent and does not lodge your TradeNet declaration. That is
your agent's registration and their liability.

What Docket does is make sure the declaration is not the thing waiting. It reads the
purchase contract, knows which documents this lane and this cargo need, chases the
supplier, the bank and the inspection agency for each one daily, and checks each document
against the contract as it lands, which is what
[import documentation software](/solutions/import-document-checking-software) is for. The
agent then gets a complete, checked pack days before the permit is due, rather than a
folder and a phone call on the morning the vessel berths.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/declaring-agent

---

# Delivery order: the document that releases your container

A delivery order is the written instruction from the carrier or its agent telling the terminal to hand a named container to a named party. It is not a bill of lading and not a customs document. It issues once the originals are surrendered or a telex release is in, and the freight and local charges are paid. Until it does, the container is at the terminal and free time is still running.

A delivery order is the piece of paper that turns a container you own into a container you
can collect.

It is a written instruction from the carrier, or its local agent, to whoever is holding the
box: release these containers to this party. The terminal acts on the carrier's
instruction. It does not act on yours, and it does not act on the fact that your file is
complete.

That is the whole reason this document deserves an entry. On most desks it is not tracked,
because it is not a document anyone produces or checks. It is a permission somebody else
grants, and the day it arrives is the day the shipment actually becomes yours to move.

## What it is not

Two confusions, both expensive.

It is **not the [bill of lading](/glossary/bill-of-lading)**. The bill of lading is the
contract of carriage and the document of title. It establishes who is entitled to the
goods. The delivery order is issued afterwards, by the carrier, once the carrier is
satisfied of that entitlement and of its own money. The bill is the right; the order is
permission to exercise it.

It is **not a customs document**. Customs clearance and carrier release are two separate
gates on two separate authorities, and passing one tells you nothing about the other. A
consignment can be assessed, duty-paid and cleared, and still be sitting in the terminal
because the release has not come. It can equally be released by the carrier and stuck on a
customs query. Both gates have to be open on the same day for the box to gate out, and
nobody coordinates that for you.

## What has to be true before it issues

The delivery order is the last link of a chain, and every earlier link is somebody else's.

1. **Title documents settled.** The original bills of lading surrendered to the carrier, or
   a telex release sent by the shipper at origin, which the shipper generally will not send
   until it has been paid, or until its bank tells it to.
2. **The carrier's money in.** Freight where it is payable at destination, plus the local
   charges: terminal handling, documentation, the delivery order fee itself.
3. **The paperwork the carrier itself asks for**, which varies by carrier and by lane, and
   which nobody discovers is missing until it is asked for.

Read that list as a sequence of inboxes. A bank's courier. A shipper's accounts department.
An agent's counter. Not one of them is looking at your free time, and no step in the chain
generates a warning when it stalls.

## The clock does not wait for the release

This is the part that turns an administrative step into a number on an invoice.

[Free time](/glossary/free-time) runs from discharge. The delivery order is a step that
happens *inside* free time, not an extension of it, so every day spent waiting for the
release is a day spent out of the allowance. The
[last free day](/glossary/last-free-day) is fixed the moment the box comes off the vessel,
whether or not anyone has yet asked the shipper for a telex release.

Document packs routinely run about **eight days** late against free time, and a week of
demurrage on one container has cost about **US$12,000**. A release stuck behind an unpaid
local charge is one of the ordinary ways those eight days get spent.

## Waiting for a release you could not obtain, and what that is worth

In US trade there is something to say about this at the dispute stage, and it is stronger
than most importers realise they hold.

The Federal Maritime Commission's interpretive rule on demurrage and detention sets out
what the Commission may weigh when it assesses whether a practice is unjust or
unreasonable. Among the particular applications of its incentive principle:

> Cargo availability. The Commission may consider in the reasonableness analysis the extent
> to which demurrage practices and regulations relate demurrage or free time to cargo
> availability for retrieval.

And, separately:

> Notice of cargo availability. In assessing the reasonableness of demurrage practices and
> regulations, the Commission may consider whether and how regulated entities provide notice
> to cargo interests that cargo is available for retrieval.

Note what that is and is not. It is an interpretive rule about how the Commission analyses
reasonableness, not a rule that voids a charge. But it points at the right question:
*could this cargo actually have been retrieved on the days it was charged for?* Cargo
sitting behind an unissued release was not available to the party being billed for it.

Two other provisions sharpen the same point. A US import demurrage or detention invoice must
state the **container availability date** as required minimum information, so the billing
party has to commit in writing to the date from which the box could be collected. And the
invoice must carry the billing party's certification that **its own performance did not
cause or contribute to the charge**. A carrier that had not released the container is
certifying something worth testing.

Outside US trade there is no equivalent framework, and the argument is a commercial one
against your own carrier, made better by having the dates. Which is the practical lesson
either way: the value is in the record. If you cannot show when you asked for the release,
what you were told, and when it came, there is nothing to
[dispute with](/blog/how-to-dispute-a-demurrage-invoice).

## The fee is a landed-cost line, not a filing

The delivery order fee is one of the destination charges that arrive after everyone has
stopped thinking about the shipment. It belongs on
[what the container actually cost](/glossary/landed-cost), with the invoice it came on attached, not in a folder
to be reconciled at month end when nobody remembers which box it was for.

It is also a fair yardstick for what running a desk should cost. On many lanes the delivery
order fee on a single container is more than what a whole shipment costs to put through
Docket.

## Where Docket sits

Docket cannot issue your release; only the carrier can. What it can do is stop the release
being the step nobody was watching.

From the purchase contract it knows the lane, the carrier and whether the shipment is on a
house bill, so it knows which releases have to happen and in what order. It puts each
precondition on the calendar counted back from the last free day rather than forward from
the arrival notice: when the originals have to be couriered, when the telex release has to
be requested, when the local charges have to be settled to leave the terminal a working day
to act. Then it chases the party who owes each one — email first, WhatsApp at 24 hours, SMS
at 48, an AI voice call at 72 — on channels they already use, with no portal for anyone to
sign up for.

And it keeps the record: who was asked, when, and what they said. That is what
[demurrage and detention software](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) should mean on
this step, and it is a different job from displaying a container's status. You can put your
own free days and per-diem tiers into the
[demurrage calculator](/demurrage-calculator) to see what a week of waiting for a release is
worth.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/delivery-order

---

# Demurrage meaning: what it costs, who owns the clock

Demurrage is what the carrier or terminal charges when your container sits inside the port past its free time. It is distinct from detention, which applies once the box leaves the gate. The clock starts at discharge and ignores your paperwork. Document packs routinely run about 8 days late against free time, and a week of demurrage costs about US$12,000 on one container.

Demurrage is the charge that accrues when a container stays **inside** the terminal
beyond its free time. It is rent on terminal space. It runs per container per day, it
starts at discharge, and it does not pause because your bank has not released the
originals yet. Almost every demurrage bill an importer pays is a document bill wearing a
logistics costume.

## Demurrage is not detention

The two are routinely conflated, including by people who pay both on the same box in the
same month.

- **Demurrage.** The box is still inside the port, past free time.
- **Detention.** The box has left the port, and you are holding the carrier's equipment
  past the free period.

The US Federal Maritime Commission draws exactly this line in its interpretive rule, and
most carrier tariffs follow it. The line is the terminal gate. Everything before the gate
is space. Everything after it is equipment.

| | Demurrage | [Detention](/glossary/detention) |
|---|---|---|
| What is being charged | Terminal space | The carrier's container |
| Clock starts | Discharge from the vessel | Gate-out from the terminal |
| Clock stops | Gate-out | Empty returned to the nominated depot |
| Billed by | Carrier, or the terminal, or both | Carrier |
| Usual cause | Documents, customs, finance | Transport, yard space, plant shutdown |
| Who fixes it | The importer's documentation desk | The importer's logistics desk |
| Where the fix sits | Before the vessel arrives | After the box is released |

Outside the United States there is often a third line on the same container: the terminal's
own [terminal storage charge](/glossary/terminal-storage-charge), billed by the port under a
published tariff with its own free days, beside the carrier's demurrage under your contract.

Read the last two rows again. The reason the distinction matters is not vocabulary. It is
that the two charges are produced by two different teams, and calling both of them
"demurrage" sends the post-mortem to the wrong desk. Every month.

## How does the demurrage clock actually start?

At discharge. Not at your convenience, and not on notification.

The sequence on a normal import runs like this:

1/ The vessel berths and the box is discharged onto the terminal stack. The
[free time](/glossary/free-time) clock starts here, in calendar days, weekends and public
holidays included unless your tariff says otherwise.

2/ The carrier's [arrival notice](/glossary/arrival-notice) reaches you, or does not, or
reaches the wrong mailbox. The clock does not care.

3/ Customs needs a filed and assessed declaration. In India that is the
[Bill of Entry](/glossary/bill-of-entry), due by the end of the day before the vessel
arrives, which means the pack has to be finished while the ship is still at sea.

4/ The carrier releases cargo against surrendered originals or a telex release, and
against payment of freight and local charges. A [delivery order](/glossary/delivery-order)
is issued.

5/ Your [CHA](/glossary/cha) books transport and the box gates out. Demurrage stops.
Detention starts.

Between step 1 and step 5 sit six parties who have never met: exporter, bank, carrier,
terminal, CHA, transporter. Free time is measured in a handful of days. That is the whole
design flaw.

## Why is demurrage a paperwork problem?

Because two clocks race on every shipment and only one of them is visible.

The first clock is the port's free time, which starts on discharge and does not know your
circumstances. The second is your document pack: bill of lading, commercial invoice,
[packing list](/glossary/packing-list),
[certificate of origin](/glossary/certificate-of-origin), and whatever inspection or
analysis certificates the commodity needs.

When the second clock loses, you pay demurrage on a container that was never physically
delayed. Paperwork routinely runs about **eight days** late against
free time, and a week of demurrage on one container comes to roughly **US$12,000**.

That is the failure mode in one line. Nobody was late with the ship. Somebody was late
with a PDF.

## What does a week of demurrage actually cost?

Two numbers, and they measure different things.

The catastrophic version is the one above: about **US$12,000** for a week on a single
container. That is the incident everybody
remembers, tells the board about, and then never sees again for a year.

The routine version is the one that quietly matters more. One missed document pack a
month, costing between **US$1,000 and US$2,000** each time, annualises to
**US$12,000 to US$24,000**. Nobody escalates any single instance of it. It never appears
as a line item called demurrage in the annual review, because it is spread across twelve
shipments and buried in clearing-agent reimbursements.

Set that against what the desk costs to run. Docket's operational baseline is about
**2.2 hours** of desk work per container, split as 30 to 45 minutes of supplier
follow-ups, 45 to 90 minutes of export document-pack preparation and checking, 20 to 30
minutes of status tracking and reporting, and 10 to 15 minutes of payment tracking. A
500-container desk burns about **1,100 hours a month** on that work. Seven people at
about 176 hours each give you 1,232 hours. The desk is at roughly **90% capacity** on
grunt work before anyone buys or sells anything.

So the demurrage bill and the ops-cost bill have the same parent. There is no spare hour
in the month to chase the certificate of origin, so the certificate of origin arrives
late, so the box sits.

## Who owns demurrage inside an importer's business?

Nobody, which is why it recurs.

The clearing agent knows the box is sitting but does not hold the missing document. The
buyer holds the supplier relationship but has moved on to the next cargo. Finance sees
the charge four weeks later, on a consolidated CHA reimbursement, with no trace back to
which shipment or which missing paper caused it. The trader who signed the contract never
sees the number at all.

Three questions worth asking on your own desk this week:

- Can you name, per shipment, the [last free day](/glossary/last-free-day)? If the answer
  is on a whiteboard or in one person's head, the answer is no.
- Can you name which single party owed the item that made the pack late? Not "the
  supplier". The person, the document, the date it was first requested.
- Does your demurrage cost sit in one account code, per shipment, or is it inside a
  clearing-agent reimbursement nobody itemises?

A charge with no owner and no line item is a charge that will be paid again next month.

## What can you actually dispute?

More than most importers try, and the ground has moved since 2022. Before any of it, read
the bill: what each field on a [demurrage invoice](/glossary/demurrage-invoice) means, and
which one is wrong most often.

The Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2022 amended the Shipping Act of 1984 and pushed the
Federal Maritime Commission to write billing rules. The resulting Demurrage and Detention
Billing Requirements rule sets out what a charge must contain to be billed at all: who
may be billed, what information the invoice must carry, the window in which the invoice
has to be issued, and the window in which the party billed may dispute it. A charge that
does not meet those requirements is challengeable on its face, before anyone argues about
the merits.

The older interpretive rule at 46 CFR § 545.5 carries the principle underneath all of it.
Demurrage exists as an incentive to move cargo. Where the cargo could not have been moved,
the charge does not serve the purpose it was created for, and the Commission weighs that
in deciding whether a practice is unreasonable.

Three fact patterns are worth documenting every time, because they are the ones that win:

**The terminal was shut or unworkable.** Gate closures, strikes, systems outages, weather.
Keep the terminal's own notice. It is the strongest evidence there is, because the carrier
cannot dispute its own operator.

**The carrier could not deliver.** No appointment slots released, equipment misplaced in
the stack, the box not available for pickup on the days you were charged for.

**Customs held the goods.** In India the Handling of Cargo in Customs Areas Regulations
2009 place obligations on the custodian, including a bar on charging rent or demurrage on
goods that customs itself has seized or detained. The evidence for the period is a
[detention certificate](/glossary/detention-certificate) from the formation that held the
consignment, and the Supreme Court applied the regulation against a port trust on exactly
that footing in 2017. If your box was held for examination and you paid demurrage for the
holding period, that is worth a letter.

What loses, every time: "our supplier was slow with the certificate of origin." That is
your contract, your counterparty and your problem, and no regulator will move it.

The order to work these in, the evidence each row needs and the windows that apply in
which trade are set out in the walkthrough on
[how to dispute a demurrage invoice](/blog/how-to-dispute-a-demurrage-invoice).

## What can an importer negotiate before the box ships?

Four levers, in the order they pay back.

1/ **Free time, in the service contract.** Extra free days cost a carrier little on a lane
where they want your volume, and they are worth more than a small freight-rate reduction
if your document pack is habitually late. Ask for the days. Get them in writing.

2/ **The [Incoterm](/glossary/incoterms).** Under the C rules the seller pays freight to
destination while risk passed at origin, and destination charges land on you in a shape
you did not choose. Buying on FCA or FOB and controlling the carriage yourself means you
choose the line, and you negotiate the free time directly instead of inheriting whatever
your supplier's forwarder agreed.

3/ **Document deadlines written into the purchase contract.** Not "documents to be sent
promptly." A named document, a named party, a number of days after the bill of lading
date, and a stated consequence. Most purchase contracts on a trading desk have a detailed
quality clause and nothing at all on documents, which is backwards given where the money
leaks.

4/ **Delivery to an [inland container depot](/glossary/icd).** Moving the box off the
gateway terminal can restart or extend the clock, depending on the lane and the tariff.
Check the tariff, not the folklore.

## Common misconceptions

**"Demurrage and detention are the same charge."** They are two charges, on two sides of
one gate, with two different causes. See the table above.

**"Demurrage is what the ship charges when it waits."** That is the charter-party sense of
the word, and it is a different charge with different parties: a charterer pays a shipowner
for exceeding the agreed [laytime](/glossary/laytime). If a shipbroker and a container
importer both say "demurrage" in the same meeting they are discussing two things. The
[charterer's charge has its own entry](/glossary/vessel-demurrage).

**"Free time is five days."** Free time is whatever your carrier's tariff or your service
contract says, per port, per direction, per equipment type. Two lines calling the same
berth allow different periods.

**"The charge starts when I am notified."** It starts at discharge. Arrival notices are a
courtesy, not the trigger. This is why importers end up
[paying demurrage when the ship arrived on time](/blog/why-am-i-paying-demurrage).

**"The clearing agent handles it."** The clearing agent files and collects. The clearing
agent does not own your supplier relationship, your bank release, or your contract terms,
and those are what make packs late.

**"It is the cost of doing business."** One missed pack a month runs
**US$12,000 to US$24,000** a year on the baseline desk, and a single bad week on one
container has cost **US$12,000** on its own. That money comes out of trading margin, which
is thin. The charge is not small. It is invisible, which is different.

## Where Docket sits

Docket does not move containers, does not negotiate with the terminal, and will not
dispute a carrier invoice for you. Demurrage that has already accrued is somebody's
argument to have, and it is not ours.

What Docket does is work the clock that produces it. It reads the purchase contract, takes
the vessel's arrival and discharge from the shipment, derives the last free day, and builds
the document checklist backwards from that date rather than forwards from the booking.
Then it chases the party who owes each item, daily, on the channels that party already
uses: email first, WhatsApp at 24 hours, SMS at 48, an AI voice call at 72. Nobody signs
up for a portal. That is the whole of what
[demurrage prevention software](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) means here: the
pack, finished inside free time. The other three things sold under that name, and the day
each one shows up, are set out in
[which kind of demurrage and detention software](/blog/demurrage-and-detention-software-what-each-kind-does)
an import desk needs first.

On the baseline desk, that takes about 2.2 hours of work per container down to roughly
**20 minutes**, an **85%** cut in the cost of the chase. Document-pack drafting automates
at about **65%**, because the judgement calls stay with your team.

The goal is narrow enough to check: have the pack complete and internally consistent
before the vessel discharges. Do that and there is no demurrage to argue about.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/demurrage

---

# Demurrage invoice meaning, and the field to check first

A demurrage invoice is the terminal's or carrier's bill for the days a container stayed inside the port past its free time. It should name the container and bill of lading, the day free time started and ended, the daily rate per tier, the days billed and where to dispute. The field most often wrong is the start date: free time runs from discharge, and invoices sometimes count from arrival.

A demurrage invoice bills you for days. That is all it is: a number of days multiplied by a
rate, for a container that stayed inside the terminal past its free time. Which means every
argument about it is an argument about the dates, and every one of those dates is on the
invoice or should be.

Most people pay it without reading it, because it arrives weeks after the shipment closed
and looks like a fait accompli. It is worth ten minutes.

## The fields, and what each one is doing

| Field | What it should say | What to check it against |
|---|---|---|
| Container number | The box the charge is for, one line per container | Your own shipment record; consolidated invoices mix boxes with different dates |
| Bill of lading | The B/L the container moved on | The B/L itself, not the booking |
| Free time start | The date free time began, which is discharge from the vessel | The terminal's discharge record. **This is the field that is wrong most often** |
| Free time allowance | The number of free days applied | Your service contract, not the carrier's default tariff |
| Last free day | Start plus allowance, on the counting basis your tariff sets | Recompute it. Calendar days and working days give different answers |
| Days charged, by tier | Demurrage usually steps up, so days sit in bands | The tariff's tier table for that port and equipment |
| Daily rate per tier | The rate applied in each band | Your contract rate, which may not be the published one |
| Total | The arithmetic | Do it yourself. Tier boundaries are a common error |
| Dispute route and deadline | Where to contest it and by when | The rules of the trade it moved in |

## Start with the start date

[Free time](/glossary/free-time) runs from discharge from the vessel. Not from arrival at
the anchorage, not from berthing, not from the day the arrival notice was emailed to a
mailbox nobody reads.

Those events can be days apart on a congested call, and an invoice that starts the clock at
the wrong one bills days you never owed. Because the last free day is derived from the
start date, and the tier bands are derived from the last free day, a two-day error at the
top can move the total by more than two days' worth: it can push days into a higher band.

Check that one field first, every time.

## Then check the allowance against your own contract

The second common error is the carrier applying its published tariff allowance when you
negotiated a longer one. Free time is not a standard number. It varies by carrier, port,
terminal, direction and equipment, and it varies by what you agreed. If your service
contract gives you seven days on a lane and the invoice applied five, two days have been
billed at the top tier.

This is only checkable if somebody on your desk holds the free-time terms per lane and per
carrier. Most desks do not, which is the real reason these invoices get paid unread.

## What the rules require it to contain

In US trades, quite a lot. The Federal Maritime Commission's billing rule at 46 CFR part
541 makes the invoice content mandatory, requires the invoice to be issued within 30
calendar days of the date the charge last accrued, and provides that where it is not, the
billed party is not required to pay. It also sets minimum dispute windows of at least 30
days each way.

One caution, because pages written in 2024 still get this wrong: the section of that rule
which limited *who* could be invoiced, 46 CFR 541.4, was set aside by the D.C. Circuit in
September 2025 and removed from the regulation in January 2026. The content and timing
requirements are untouched.

Outside US trades there is no equivalent. What the invoice must contain is whatever the
carrier's tariff and your contract say, which in practice means you have less to point at
and more need for your own dated record.

## If the days were not yours

Some periods are recoverable and most are not. Days Customs held the consignment can be
covered in India by a [detention certificate](/glossary/detention-certificate) against the
custodian's charge. Days the terminal was shut or the carrier could not release the box are
arguable. Days lost because a supplier had not sent the invoice are yours, and no rule
covers them.

The full order of work, per jurisdiction, is in the walkthrough on
[contesting the charge once the bill has landed](/blog/how-to-dispute-a-demurrage-invoice).

## The invoice you never receive

The cheapest demurrage invoice is the one that was never raised, and the whole of that
outcome is decided in the weeks before the vessel discharges. On an ordinary import desk
the document pack runs about eight days behind free time, and a week of demurrage on one
container has cost US$12,000 on a reported incident.

Reading the invoice well recovers a fraction of that. Finishing the pack inside free time
recovers the rest, which is what
[software that counts back from the last free day](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software)
is for.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/demurrage-invoice

---

# Detention: the charge that starts when the box leaves port

Detention is the daily charge a carrier levies for holding its container outside the terminal past the free period, from gate-out until the empty is returned to the nominated depot. Demurrage is the opposite side of the gate: the box still inside the port. Importers routinely pay both on one container and call the whole thing demurrage, which sends the post-mortem to the wrong desk.

Detention is rent on the carrier's **equipment**. Once the container passes the terminal
gate the clock runs, and it runs until you hand the empty back at the depot the carrier
nominates. It has nothing to do with whether the port is congested and everything to do
with how long the box sits at your yard, your warehouse, or your customer's plant.

## Detention is not demurrage

The two get merged in conversation and on invoices, which is how importers end up unable
to say which one they are actually paying.

- **[Demurrage](/glossary/demurrage).** The container is still **inside** the terminal,
  past free time.
- **Detention.** The container is **outside** the terminal, past the free period, and you
  are holding the carrier's equipment.

The US Federal Maritime Commission draws precisely this line in its interpretive rule, and
most carrier tariffs follow the same split. One container can incur both on a single
journey: demurrage while the paperwork is stuck, then detention while the box waits to be
unstuffed and returned.

| | [Demurrage](/glossary/demurrage) | Detention |
|---|---|---|
| The asset being charged for | Terminal ground space | The carrier's container |
| Clock starts | Discharge from the vessel | Gate-out from the terminal |
| Clock stops | Gate-out | Empty returned to the nominated depot |
| Root cause, nine times in ten | Documents, customs, bank release | Transport, yard, plant, depot |
| Who inside your business fixes it | The documentation desk | The logistics desk |
| Where the fix has to happen | Before the vessel arrives | After the box is released |
| Lever you hold | Document deadlines in the contract | Turnaround time and haulage choice |

## When does the detention clock start, and when does it stop?

Gate-out to empty-in. Both ends are less obvious than they look.

**The start.** The interchange record at the terminal gate is the timestamp that counts,
not your transporter's job sheet and not the delivery order date. Ask for the equipment
interchange receipt. It is the document that decides the first day.

**The stop.** The empty has to reach the depot the carrier nominates, and be accepted. A
depot that is full and turns your truck away does not stop your clock, because from the
carrier's system the box is still out. This is the single most common cause of detention
that importers think is unfair, and it is also the one worth documenting, because the
refusal is provable.

Between those two timestamps sit the unloading slot, the plant's shift pattern, public
holidays, and whether your transporter got a return appointment. None of that is visible
to the carrier, and all of it is billed at a daily rate.

## Why is it worth separating the two charges?

Because the fixes are different, and so is the person you argue with.

Demurrage is almost always a **document problem**. The ship arrived, the box was
discharged, and the [Bill of Entry](/glossary/bill-of-entry) or the
[certificate of origin](/glossary/certificate-of-origin) was not ready. You fix it
upstream, by having the pack complete before discharge.

Detention is a **scheduling problem**. Transport not booked, yard full, plant closed for a
holiday, empty return depot refusing the box. You fix it downstream, with slots and
turnaround.

Treating both as "demurrage" means the review meeting goes looking for the cause in the
wrong half of the journey. The document team gets blamed for a plant shutdown, the
logistics team gets blamed for a bank release, and the same charge recurs next month
because neither of them owned the real failure.

## What drives the per-diem rate?

First, a word on the word. "Per diem" is carrier and forwarder vocabulary for this charge,
and it is not a separate thing from detention. The US regulation folds the two together in
its own definitions: under 46 CFR § 541.3, demurrage or detention means any charges,
"including 'per diem' charges", assessed by carriers, marine terminal operators or NVOCCs
for the use of marine terminal space or shipping containers, freight charges excluded. So
an invoice line that says per diem is a detention line, and every rule about how a
detention charge must be billed applies to it.

Four variables set the rate, and none of them is a global constant.

- **Carrier.** Two lines calling the same berth publish different tariffs.
- **Equipment.** A 40-foot dry box, a reefer with a genset on it, a flat rack and an open
  top do not carry the same daily rate, and reefers are the expensive end because plug
  points are scarce.
- **Trade lane and port.** Rates track equipment scarcity. A lane where the carrier is
  short of boxes prices detention to get them back.
- **Days held.** Almost every tariff steps up. A rate that starts modestly can multiply
  once you pass a threshold, which is why day nine costs several times what day two cost.

We deliberately do not quote a single global number here, because there is not one. Pull
the rate from the tariff of the carrier on your bill of lading, for your equipment type,
on your trade lane, and read the escalation steps, not only the headline figure.

## Carrier haulage or merchant haulage?

The choice decides who carries the turnaround risk, and it is made at booking, not at
arrival.

| | Carrier haulage | Merchant haulage |
|---|---|---|
| Who arranges inland transport | The shipping line | You, or your forwarder |
| Who chooses the empty return depot | The line | The line, still |
| Detention exposure | Bundled into the line's combined free period | Yours, from gate-out |
| Visibility of the real cost | Low. It sits inside one rate | High. Every leg is invoiced |
| Flexibility on delivery timing | Low | High |
| Who you chase when the truck is late | The line's customer service | Your own transporter |

Neither is right in general. Carrier haulage suits a desk with no transport relationships
and irregular volumes. Merchant haulage suits a desk that ships a lane repeatedly, because
the combined free time under carrier haulage rarely reflects how fast you can actually
unload. What loses is choosing one by accident and discovering the free-time structure
after the first invoice.

## Where detention comes from on a real import desk

Walk one container through it.

1/ Box gates out on a Thursday afternoon. Detention clock starts.

2/ It reaches the plant Friday morning. The plant unloads on a first-in queue and there
are four boxes ahead of it.

3/ Saturday and Sunday count. Almost every tariff counts calendar days.

4/ Monday the box is unstuffed. The transporter asks for a return slot.

5/ Tuesday the nominated depot is full and turns the truck away. The box goes back to the
transporter's yard, still on your account.

6/ Thursday the depot accepts it. Seven days of detention on a box that was physically
handled for one.

Nothing in that sequence is a documentation failure. Nothing in it is visible to the
person who signed the purchase contract. And every step of it is fixable with a booked
slot and a phone call made two days earlier than it was.

## What can you negotiate, and what can you dispute?

**Negotiate, before the cargo moves.** Combined free time on carrier haulage. Extra
detention days in the service contract on a lane where the carrier wants your volume. A
named alternative return depot, in writing, so a full yard is not an automatic charge. A
street turn, where your empty goes straight to another shipper's export booking instead of
back to the depot, which the line has to authorise in advance.

**Dispute, after the charge.** The Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2022 amended the Shipping
Act of 1984 and led the Federal Maritime Commission to write the Demurrage and Detention
Billing Requirements rule. That rule sets out what an invoice has to contain, the window
in which it must be issued, and the window in which the billed party may dispute it. An
invoice that does not meet those requirements is challengeable on its face, before anyone
argues the merits. The section that also limited *who* could be billed, 46 CFR 541.4, was
set aside by the D.C. Circuit in September 2025 and removed from the regulation in January
2026; the rest of the rule is unaffected. Which arguments survive that change, and what
applies outside US trades, is set out in the walkthrough on
[contesting a demurrage or detention charge](/blog/how-to-dispute-a-demurrage-invoice).

Underneath sits the incentive principle in 46 CFR § 545.5. Detention exists to get
equipment back. Where the equipment could not have been returned, the charge is not doing
the job it was created to do, and the Commission weighs that.

The fact patterns that win are the ones you can prove with somebody else's paper: the
depot's refusal notice, the terminal's gate closure notice, the carrier's own failure to
release an appointment. The pattern that never wins is "our plant was busy."

## Common misconceptions

**"Detention is just demurrage after the gate."** It is a different charge on a different
asset, billed under different tariff lines, caused by a different team.

**"The clock stops when we finish unloading."** It stops when the depot accepts the empty.
Those two dates can be a week apart.

**"Free days are free days."** Some tariffs give a combined demurrage-and-detention
allowance, some give two separate allowances. Under a combined allowance, slow paperwork
eats the days you were counting on for turnaround.

**"The forwarder is handling it."** The forwarder books. The tariff, the depot nomination
and the escalation steps are the carrier's, and the invoice is yours.

## Where Docket sits

Detention is a scheduling failure, and Docket does not move containers, does not book
trucks, and does not negotiate with the depot. That work stays on your logistics desk.

What Docket removes is the upstream cause that turns a clean delivery into a late one; that
is what its [demurrage and detention software](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software)
is built around. It reads the purchase contract, derives the last [free day](/glossary/free-time) from
discharge, checks the document pack against the contract and against itself, names the
party who owes each missing item, and chases them daily. Email first, WhatsApp at 24
hours, SMS at 48, an AI voice call at 72, on channels the exporter and the
[CHA](/glossary/cha) already use. Nobody signs up for a portal.

On the baseline desk, a container carries about **2.2 hours** of desk work, of which 30
to 45 minutes is supplier follow-ups and 45 to 90 minutes is document-pack preparation and
checking. Docket automates about **85%** of the chase and about **65%** of the doc-pack
drafting. The rest is judgement, and judgement stays with your team.

A box that is cleared and released on day two of free time is a box your transporter can
schedule properly. That is the only detention lever a documents system holds, and it holds
it well.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/detention

---

# Detention certificate meaning, and what it actually waives

A detention certificate is Customs certifying the period for which imported goods were seized or detained by the department. Under regulation 6(1)(l) of the Handling of Cargo in Customs Areas Regulations 2009 the custodian (port, CFS or ICD) shall not charge rent or demurrage for that period, and the Supreme Court applied it against a port trust in 2017. It covers days Customs took, not yours.

A detention certificate is Customs writing down the dates. It says that between one day and
another, this consignment was in the department's hands: seized, detained for examination,
held pending a test report, held while a licence question was argued. Those days are not
the importer's fault, and the law says the custodian of the customs area cannot bill for
them.

That is the whole mechanism, and it is narrower than most people assume.

## What the regulation actually says

The Handling of Cargo in Customs Areas Regulations, 2009 are made under section 141(2) of
the Customs Act, 1962 and govern anyone approved to handle imported or export goods in a
customs area: a port terminal, a container freight station, an inland container depot.
The regulations call such a party a Customs Cargo Service Provider.

Regulation 6(1)(l) obliges that provider not to charge any rent or demurrage on goods
seized, detained or confiscated by the customs officers the regulation names.

Two things follow from the wording. It bites on the custodian, because the custodian is who
the regulation is addressed to. And it bites on a period defined by what Customs did, not by
what the importer wishes had happened faster.

## The Supreme Court applied it in 2017

In *Mumbai Port Trust v. M/s Shri Lakshmi Steels*, decided on 27 July 2017, the goods had
been detained at the instance of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence and the High Court
had found that detention illegal. On the demurrage question the Supreme Court held that the
port trust was not entitled to charge demurrage, in view of regulation 6(1) of the 2009
regulations, because Customs had issued a detention certificate.

That is the case an importer's counsel reaches for. It is worth reading the scope of it
honestly: the holding is about the custodian's charge, for a period Customs certified.

## Who it binds, and who it does not

This is the distinction that decides whether the certificate saves you money.

| Charge | Whose it is | What the certificate does |
|---|---|---|
| Rent and [demurrage](/glossary/demurrage) in the customs area | The custodian (port, CFS, ICD) | Regulation 6(1)(l) bars the charge for the certified period |
| Container [detention](/glossary/detention) | The shipping line, for its own equipment | A separate contract under the bill of lading and the line's tariff. Lines are commonly asked and often agree; the statutory bar the courts have enforced is the custodian's |
| Storage after the certified period ends | The custodian | Nothing. The clock restarts |

An importer who wins a waiver from the CFS and assumes the line will follow is going to be
surprised by an invoice. Ask both, in writing, and expect the two answers to arrive
separately.

## What it will not do for you

It will not cover a late document pack. If the [Bill of Entry](/glossary/bill-of-entry)
could not be filed because the supplier's invoice disagreed with the packing list, or the
original Bill of Lading was still in a courier bag, those days belong to you. Customs did
not hold the goods. Nobody held them. They simply sat.

That is the uncomfortable part of this entry, and it is the reason it exists on this site.
On an import desk, [free time](/glossary/free-time) runs from discharge and the paperwork
routinely lands about eight days behind it. None of those eight days is certifiable. A
detention certificate is a remedy for the days someone else took, and most of the days are
not those.

## Getting one

Your [customs house agent](/glossary/cha) files the request with the formation that held
the consignment, asking for a certificate of the detention period addressed to the
custodian. Ask while the file is still open. You are asking an officer to certify dates,
and dates get harder to establish once the consignment has gone and the officer has moved
on. Then present it to the custodian, and separately to the line, and keep both replies.

## Where Docket sits

Docket does not obtain detention certificates and does not argue with a custodian. What it
holds is the timeline the argument runs on: every document with the date it arrived and who
sent it, every chase, every reply. When a bill lands you can see which day the pack was
complete and which party sat on which paper, which is the difference between a waiver
request that names dates and one that asks for sympathy.

The larger point is the one above. The certifiable delay is the small half. The rest is the
paperwork clock, and that one is worked before the bill exists, not after — which is what
[detention and demurrage software](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) is for.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/detention-certificate

---

# Entry summary (CBP Form 7501): the filing after release

An entry summary is the filing that lets US Customs and Border Protection assess duty on an import, normally CBP Form 7501. It is not the filing that releases the cargo. The entry, normally CBP Form 3461, does that. The deadlines are separate: goods must be entered within 15 calendar days after landing, and the entry summary is due 10 working days after entry.

Importers arriving in the American market from almost anywhere else make the same
assumption, and it is a reasonable one everywhere except here: that one customs filing
both releases the cargo and settles the duty. In the United States those are two filings,
on two forms, with two deadlines. The entry summary is the second one.

## Two filings, two jobs

The regulations define the pair in one place, and the definitions do the work.

An **entry** is the documentation or data filed with CBP, or submitted electronically to
the Automated Commercial Environment, "to secure the release of imported merchandise from
CBP custody". It is normally CBP Form 3461.

An **entry summary** is "any other documentation or electronic submission of data
necessary to enable CBP to assess duties, and collect statistics on imported merchandise,
and determine whether other requirements of law or regulation are met". It is normally CBP
Form 7501.

Release, then assessment. The container can be collected on the strength of the first
filing while the second is still being prepared, which is why an American import desk talks
about the 3461 when it is worried about the box and the 7501 when it is worried about the
money.

| | Entry (CBP 3461) | Entry summary (CBP 7501) |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Secures release from CBP custody | Assesses duty, collects statistics |
| Deadline | Within 15 calendar days after landing | Within 10 working days after entry |
| Duties | Not deposited at this stage | Estimated duties attached on filing |
| What it gates | The container leaving the terminal | Liquidation, and what you owe |

The two can be collapsed: § 142.3(b) allows the entry summary to be filed at the time of
entry, in which case the 7501 does both jobs and the 3461 is not required. Plenty of desks
work that way. It is a choice, not the default, and choosing it means the duty numbers have
to be right before the cargo moves rather than a fortnight after.

The gap between the two filings is also where an import's cost stops being an estimate. The
entry carries estimated duties; the entry summary is where the assessed figure lands. A desk
that closes the shipment on the estimate never sees the difference, which is the whole
argument for tracking
[estimated vs actual landed cost](/solutions/landed-cost-tracking-software) per shipment
rather than reconciling at the quarter.

## The entry is the filing your clock is running against

This is the practical consequence for anyone watching [free time](/glossary/free-time).
The demurrage clock is not waiting for the 7501. It is waiting for the entry, and the
entry is waiting on the documents § 142.3(a) lists: the entry form, evidence of the right
to make entry, a commercial invoice or an acceptable substitute, a packing list where
appropriate, and anything another agency wants for that particular shipment.

Every one of those except the form itself comes from somebody who is not you. The
commercial invoice comes from the supplier and has to agree with the bill of lading. The
other-agency documents come from wherever that agency's process leads. A desk that treats
the 15-day entry deadline as "our broker's problem" has misread which party is holding the
paper.

## What the fifteenth day actually costs

The deadline in 19 CFR § 141.5 is plain: merchandise for which entry is required will be
entered within 15 calendar days after landing, or after arrival at the port of destination
for merchandise moving in bond.

What happens on day sixteen is the part worth knowing. Section 4.37 says merchandise may
remain at the place of unlading until the fifteenth calendar day after landing; after that
the carrier notifies a bonded warehouse certified to receive general order merchandise, and
it is then "the responsibility of the bonded warehouse proprietor to arrange for the
transportation and storage of the merchandise or baggage at the risk and expense of the
consignee". Failing to give that notification can draw a penalty of up to $1,000 per bill
of lading.

So an unentered container does not sit quietly accruing demurrage. It is moved, by someone
you did not appoint, to a warehouse you did not choose, and billed to you for the trip and
the storage. Demurrage is still running underneath that, because the box has not been
collected by you and the [gate-out](/glossary/gate-out) that would stop the terminal clock
has not happened.

## Who may file it

Under 19 CFR § 111.2(a) a person must hold a broker's licence "in order to transact customs
business as a broker", with an exception for importers and exporters transacting customs
business solely for their own account.

That is the same shape the rule takes in the other markets this site covers. The licence
gates doing it for somebody else. Doing it for yourself is allowed, and rarely taken up,
because the classification argument and the agency filings are a full job. It is worth
knowing the option exists before accepting that a broker's queue is a fact of nature.

## The same role, four names

Whoever files it, the role is the one an importer knows by a different word in every
market. The [vocabulary table](/glossary/cha) sets them side by side: a Customs House Agent
in India files a Bill of Entry, a [declaring agent](/glossary/declaring-agent) in Singapore
files a permit declaration through TradeNet, a [clearing agent](/glossary/clearing-agent) in
Dubai files through Mirsal 2, and a licensed customs broker in the United States files the
entry and the entry summary through ACE.

The names differ and one structural fact does not: the filing is made from documents you
supplied, and a wrong value or a missing certificate is your exposure whoever typed it in.
Which is why [entry documentation checks](/solutions/import-document-checking-software)
belong before the filing rather than after the query. The pack is checked against itself,
each document against the others, with a deadline on every item derived from the day the
cargo lands rather than the day somebody remembers.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/entry-summary

---

# Free time: the clock that starts without asking you

Free time is the grace period a carrier or terminal allows before demurrage and detention start charging. It begins at discharge, not when you are notified, and it counts calendar days. It is set by tariff or by your service contract, so it differs by carrier, port, direction and equipment. Document packs routinely run about eight days late against it.

Free time is the only part of the demurrage equation you can settle before the cargo
moves, and the part most importers never look at until they are already paying. It starts
at discharge. It counts calendar days. It is negotiable at contract time and almost never
negotiated.

## Two clocks, and one of them is rigged

Every shipment runs two clocks at once.

The **port's clock** starts on discharge. It does not know or care whether your exporter
has couriered the originals, whether the bank has released documents against payment, or
whether the fumigation stamp arrived. It counts calendar days, weekends and public
holidays included unless the tariff says otherwise.

The **paperwork clock** starts whenever the last party in the chain decides to act. There
are usually six of them: exporter, bank, carrier, terminal, [CHA](/glossary/cha),
transporter. None of them reports to you, and none of them is measured on the date that
matters to you.

When the second clock loses, you pay for a container that was never physically delayed. On
a normal desk, document packs run about **eight days** late against free
time. That is not a story about congestion. That is a story about a PDF.

## When does free time start, and when does it stop?

Three timestamps decide the whole thing, and only one of them is under your control.

**Start: discharge.** The box comes off the vessel and onto the stack. Some tariffs run
from the discharge of the container, some from the completion of vessel discharge, and the
difference can be a day or two on a big call. Read which one yours says.

**Stop, for [demurrage](/glossary/demurrage): [gate-out](/glossary/gate-out).** The box
leaves the terminal. The equipment interchange receipt at the gate is the timestamp that
counts, not the delivery order date. The same event starts the detention clock, so
gate-out does not end the charges — it changes which one is running.

**Stop, for [detention](/glossary/detention): empty-in.** The empty is returned to the
depot the carrier nominates and accepted there. A depot that turns your truck away has not
stopped your clock.

Notice what is missing from that list. The
[notice of cargo availability](/glossary/arrival-notice) is not a trigger. Customs
assessment is not a trigger. Your supplier finally couriering the originals is not a
trigger. None of the events your team actually watches has any effect on the clock that
bills you.

## Free time is not a standard number

This is the most common mistake in the whole subject. Free time is set by the carrier's
tariff or, better, by your service contract, and it varies along five axes.

| Variable | Why it moves free time |
|---|---|
| Carrier | Two lines calling the same berth publish different tariffs, and a line short of equipment on the lane gives fewer days |
| Port and terminal | Gateway ports and inland depots run different allowances, and moving to an [ICD](/glossary/icd) can change the count |
| Direction | Import and export allowances are set separately and are rarely equal |
| Equipment | Dry, reefer, flat rack and open top differ. Reefers are the tight end, because plug points are scarce |
| Your contract | Negotiated free time overrides the published tariff, and it is free to ask for |

Because it varies, we publish free-time data per port only where we hold a sourced row for
a named carrier. Where we do not have it, the page says so rather than showing a number
that would be wrong for your lane. A confidently wrong free-time table is worse than an
empty one, because somebody will plan a shipment against it.

The terminal's own allowance is a different matter, because a port tariff is a published
document rather than a negotiated term. Jebel Ali, for instance, allows an ordinary import
container ten free days of storage counted from discharge before the terminal starts
charging for the ground it stands on — the
[Jebel Ali terminal free time and storage rates](/port/jebel-ali) are set out in full. That
allowance is not your carrier's, and an importer who clears late pays both.

## Demurrage free time, detention free time, or a combined allowance?

Carriers structure the grace period in one of two shapes, and the shape changes how a slow
document pack hurts you.

| | Separate allowances | Combined allowance |
|---|---|---|
| How it is granted | X days inside the terminal, Y days outside | One pool of days covering both sides of the gate |
| Slow paperwork costs you | Demurrage days only | Demurrage days **and** the turnaround days you were counting on |
| Slow turnaround costs you | Detention days only | The same shared pool |
| Common on | Merchant haulage bookings | Carrier haulage bookings |
| What to check in the tariff | Two separate day counts | One count, and where the clock switches charge type |

Under a combined allowance the two failures compound. A pack that lands three days late
does not just cost three days of demurrage. It eats three days your transporter needed to
get the empty back, and the charge that follows is detention, billed at a different rate,
by the same carrier, on the same box. Importers read that second invoice as a separate
problem. It is the same problem, arriving twice.

## How do I find out what my free time actually is?

Ask three questions, and insist on paper for each.

1/ **Which document governs?** The carrier's published tariff, or a service contract you
signed. If you have a contract, the contract wins. If nobody on the desk can produce it,
you are on tariff, whatever anybody remembers agreeing.

2/ **What are the day counts, per direction, per equipment type?** Not "about a week."
The number, and whether it counts calendar days or working days.

3/ **What are the escalation steps after the free days end?** Almost every tariff steps the
rate up as the days run. The headline per-diem is the cheap one. Day nine is the one that
shows up on the invoice.

The Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2022 amended the Shipping Act of 1984 and pushed the
Federal Maritime Commission to write billing rules. The resulting Demurrage and Detention
Billing Requirements rule prescribes what an invoice must contain, when it has to be
issued, and how long the billed party has to dispute it. Those elements include the free
time itself and the dates it ran. (The part of that rule limiting who could be billed, 46
CFR 541.4, was set aside in September 2025 and removed in January 2026. Everything else
stands.) If your carrier's invoice does
not tell you which free-time allowance it applied and when it started, that is a question
you are entitled to ask.

## How to actually use free time

Four things, in order of how much they pay back.

**1/ Count backwards from the last free day.** Call the last free day D. Every document
deadline on the shipment is expressed as D minus something, and the owner of each document
is named. Most desks do the opposite: they count forwards from the booking, which produces
a plan that is comfortable in week one and impossible in week four.

**2/ Put the [Bill of Entry](/glossary/bill-of-entry) deadline before D, not on it.** In
India the filing is due by the end of the day before the vessel arrives, which sits ahead
of the free-time clock entirely. Any plan that treats customs as a step after arrival is
already late.

**3/ Chase on a schedule, not on a feeling.** The pattern that works is fixed and boring.
Ask, then follow up at 24 hours on a channel the counterparty actually reads, at 48 hours
on another, and put a voice call on it at 72. Silence is the signal, and silence has to
trigger something on its own.

**4/ Negotiate the days at contract time.** Extra free days cost a carrier little on a lane
where they want your volume, and they are worth more than a small rate reduction if your
document pack is habitually late. Also negotiate the [Incoterm](/glossary/incoterms):
buying FCA or FOB and controlling the carriage yourself means you pick the line and the
free time, instead of inheriting whatever your supplier's forwarder agreed with a carrier
you have no relationship with.

## What this costs when it goes wrong

Free time is short. Desk capacity is shorter.

Docket's operational baseline puts about **2.2 hours** of work on a single container: 30 to
45 minutes of supplier follow-ups, 45 to 90 minutes of document-pack preparation and
checking, 20 to 30 minutes of status tracking and reporting, and 10 to 15 minutes of
payment tracking. On top of that sits a fixed **1 to 2 hours a day** of price collection
from suppliers, which belongs to the desk rather than to any one container.

A 500-container desk consumes about **1,100 hours a month** on that work. Seven people at
about 176 hours each provide 1,232 hours. The desk runs at roughly **90% capacity** on
grunt work before anyone buys or sells anything.

That is why packs run eight days late. Not carelessness. Arithmetic. There is no spare
hour in the month for the fourth follow-up to a supplier who has stopped replying, so the
fourth follow-up does not happen, so the pack lands after D.

## Common misconceptions

**"Free time starts when I get the arrival notice."** It starts at discharge. The notice is
a courtesy and it is frequently late.

**"Weekends do not count."** Most tariffs count calendar days. Check yours before you plan
a Friday discharge.

**"Free time is five days."** There is no standard. It is per carrier, per port, per
direction, per equipment type, per contract.

**"Our forwarder gets us extra days."** Sometimes, on their own contract, for their own
volume. Whether any of that reaches your shipment is a question with a written answer. Ask
for it.

**"Extending free time is expensive."** Asking is free. Carriers trade free days against
volume commitments all the time, and a desk that never asks pays the tariff by default.

## Where Docket sits

Docket does not grant free time, does not talk to the terminal, and cannot extend a
clock that has already started. Free time is the carrier's to give and yours to negotiate.

What Docket does is treat the last free day as the fixed point everything else is planned
against; that is the job of its
[free time tracking software](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software). It reads the purchase contract, derives D from discharge, builds the document
checklist backwards from D, names the party who owes each item, and chases them daily:
email first, WhatsApp at 24 hours, SMS at 48, an AI voice call at 72. On channels those
parties already use. Nobody signs up for a portal.

On the baseline desk, that takes a container from about 2.2 hours of desk work to
roughly **20 minutes**, an **85%** cut in the cost of the chase. Document-pack drafting
automates at about **65%**, because the judgement calls stay with your team.

The goal is narrow and checkable: have the pack complete **inside** free time, so there is
nothing to pay and nothing to dispute.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/free-time

---

# Gate-out: where demurrage stops and detention starts

Gate-out is the moment a laden import container is released through the terminal gate. It stops the demurrage clock and starts the detention clock, so it does not end the charges. It changes which one you are paying. The US billing rule splits the two by what is being occupied: marine terminal space, or the carrier's container. Gate-out switches the answer.

An import container generates charges from the day it is discharged to the day the empty
is accepted back at a depot. Across that whole span there is exactly one event that
changes which charge is running. It is the gate-out, and most desks record it as a
logistics milestone rather than as the accounting event it is.

## What happens at the gate

A truck arrives with a release against the [delivery order](/glossary/delivery-order), the
terminal checks that customs has cleared the box and that the carrier's charges are
settled, and the laden container is driven out. The terminal writes an equipment
interchange receipt: date and time, container and seal numbers, and the condition of the
box as it left.

That receipt is the record. Not the date on the delivery order, not the date customs gave
release, not the day your haulier says they collected it. When a carrier's invoice and
your file disagree about when the box left, the gate timestamp is what settles it, and it
is the one document in the sequence that neither you nor your supplier produces.

## One definition, two objects

The clearest statement of why gate-out matters is in the American billing rule, which
defines both charges in a single sentence. Under 46 CFR § 541.3, demurrage or detention
means any charges, including per diem charges, assessed by carriers or terminal operators
"related to the use of marine terminal space (e.g., land) or shipping containers, but not
including freight charges".

Read the two objects in that sentence. Marine terminal space. Or shipping containers. The
rule does not separate demurrage from detention by who bills you or by which port you are
in. It separates them by which asset your cargo is occupying. While the box sits on the
stack you are occupying the terminal's land. Once it is out of the gate you are occupying
the carrier's container.

Gate-out is the event that changes the answer. That is the whole of it, and it explains
the behaviour that confuses importers: the charges do not stop when the container is
collected, because collecting it is precisely what moves you onto the second meter.

## Two allowances, two expiry dates

Because they are two charges, they have two free-time allowances, and those expire on
different days.

| | [Demurrage](/glossary/demurrage) | [Detention](/glossary/detention) |
|---|---|---|
| What you are occupying | Terminal space | The carrier's container |
| Clock starts | Discharge from the vessel | Gate-out |
| Clock stops | Gate-out | Empty accepted at the nominated depot |
| Billed by | Terminal or carrier, per the tariff | The carrier |

Some lines sell a combined free time covering both, which sounds generous and hides which
clock ate the days. The US rule is useful here even outside American trade, as a
specification for what an invoice ought to tell you: § 541.6(b) requires a demurrage or
detention invoice to carry the allowed free time in days, the start date of free time, the
end date of free time and, separately, the container availability date on an import. A
bill that cannot produce those fields per clock is a bill you cannot check.

## Why the detention clock only makes sense after the gate

There is a reason detention starts at gate-out rather than at discharge, and it is not
arbitrary. The charge exists to get the carrier's box back. The Federal Maritime
Commission's interpretive rule says so by its converse at § 545.5(c)(2)(ii): practices
that impose detention "when it does not serve its incentivizing purposes, such as when
empty containers cannot be returned, are likely to be found unreasonable".

A container still inside the terminal cannot be returned by you, because you do not have
it. The incentive has nothing to bite on until the box is in your possession, which is
what gate-out means. The same logic runs the other way at the end: if the nominated depot
turns your truck away, the clock is still running on a return you were prevented from
making, and that is the argument the rule leaves open.

## Nothing at the gate is the terminal's fault

The delays that push a gate-out past the [last free day](/glossary/last-free-day) are
almost never at the gate.

- The delivery order has not been issued, because the arrival charges are unsettled or the
  bill of lading is not released.
- Customs has not given release, because the declaration is queued behind a document that
  has not arrived from the supplier.
- There is no haulier slot, or no terminal appointment, on the day everything else came
  together.

Each of those sits with a different party, and none of them reports to you. That is the
shape of the problem the [arrival notice](/glossary/arrival-notice) does not solve either:
you are told the cargo has landed, and told nothing about the three dependencies between
that message and a truck leaving the gate.

## What a desk should do with the date

Two things, and both of them are dull.

**Capture the gate-out timestamp from the interchange receipt**, into the shipment file, on
the day it happens. It is the closing entry on one charge and the opening entry on
another, and reconstructing it four weeks later from a haulier's WhatsApp message is how
disputes are lost.

**Plan backwards from it, not forwards from arrival.** The date that decides whether you
pay demurrage is the gate-out, and the gate-out is gated by a delivery order, a customs
release and a truck. Work back from the [free time](/glossary/free-time) you were actually
allowed, put a deadline on each dependency, and chase the party that owes it before the
week it is due.

That second habit is what any serious attempt to
[reduce demurrage costs](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) has to automate.
Watching a countdown does not move a gate-out forward. Getting the delivery order, the
declaration and the truck lined up on the same morning does, and each of those is a person
who has to be asked, and asked again.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/gate-out

---

# HS code: the six digits every duty rate hangs off

An HS code is a product number from the Harmonized System, the World Customs Organization's classification, used by more than 200 countries for over 98% of merchandise in international trade. The first six digits are the same everywhere; national tariffs add two or four more. Your duty rate, your licences and your trade-agreement preference all read off that number.

Every duty rate you will ever pay is attached to a number, and the number is attached to a
description of your goods that somebody had to choose. That number is the HS code.

The Harmonized System is the World Customs Organization's product nomenclature. It comprises
more than 5,000 commodity groups, each identified by a six-digit code, and more than 200
countries and economies use it as the basis for their customs tariffs and their trade
statistics. Over 98% of the merchandise moving in international trade is classified with it.
The convention behind it, the International Convention on the Harmonized Commodity
Description and Coding System, has been in force since 1 January 1988.

That is the useful thing about it and the trap in it. The first six digits mean the same
thing to your supplier in Guangzhou, your buyer in Rotterdam and the officer looking at your
declaration. Everything after the sixth digit does not.

## What the digits are

Read a code from the left and it narrows.

| Part | Digits | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Chapter | 1–2 | One of 96 chapters, grouped into 21 sections. Chapter 72 is iron and steel |
| Heading | 1–4 | The commodity group. 7204 is ferrous waste and scrap |
| Subheading | 1–6 | The international leaf. 7204.49 is other ferrous waste and scrap |
| National subdivision | 7–8, sometimes 7–10 | Your own tariff's split, where the actual rate usually sits |

The six-digit level is where international agreement stops. Singapore and the other ASEAN
member states classify to eight digits under the ASEAN Harmonised Tariff Nomenclature, which
is built directly on the WCO's six. The United States goes to ten. So a six-digit code is
enough to agree with a supplier what you are buying, and not enough to file anything.

The national extension is not fixed either, and Dubai is changing its length right now.
Dubai Customs is moving to a twelve-digit Integrated Customs Tariff in four phases, and the
phase that matters to an importer outside the Gulf is running today: from **August 2026 to
January 2027** the roadmap is to "Mandate new classification system for all imports to
mainland from RoW". Earlier phases covered GCC trade flows from August 2025 and free-zone
and customs-warehouse movements into the mainland from February 2026; temporary flows such
as import for re-export follow from February 2027. If you ship into Dubai mainland from
outside the GCC, the code your
[clearing agent](/glossary/clearing-agent) files on the Mirsal 2 declaration is now twelve
digits, and the eight-digit code on your supplier's invoice no longer completes it. We read
Dubai Customs' own correlation table line by line to see what that costs a desk: a quarter
of the tariff splits, and what
[UAE 12-digit HS codes](/blog/uae-12-digit-hs-codes-dubai-import-declaration) ask for is a
product attribute the commercial invoice was never written to carry.

The HS edition matters too, because the nomenclature is amended on roughly a five-year cycle.
A code that was correct under an earlier edition may have been split, merged or renumbered in
the current one. Our own [HS 7204.49 page](/hs-code/7204-49) states which edition it is
written against for exactly that reason.

## The classification is read, not chosen

The part that surprises people the first time it costs them money: the code is not picked
from a dropdown of things that sound similar. It is derived from legal text: the General
Rules for the Interpretation of the Harmonized System, plus the section, chapter and
subheading notes that sit above the headings and often exclude the goods you were about to
classify there.

Which is why two competent people can classify the same consignment differently and both
have a case. Where the money is large or the description is genuinely ambiguous, most
administrations will issue an advance or binding classification ruling. That is the
mechanism; the reason to use it is that a ruling moves the argument to before the container
sails rather than after it has arrived.

## What rides on the number

Four things, and each of them is a different kind of expensive.

**The duty rate.** The rate is quoted against the tariff line. Get the line wrong and the
duty is wrong, which means the [landed cost figure](/glossary/landed-cost) you quoted your customer
against was wrong. If it was underpaid, you will hear about it later, with interest.
Our [landed cost calculator](/landed-cost-calculator) takes the rate as an input for this
reason: the rate belongs to your classification, and nobody should publish one on your
behalf. It is also why
[landed cost tracking systems](/solutions/landed-cost-tracking-software) ask for the code
before they ask for anything else: the code is what the duty line, and therefore the
container total, is computed against.

**Controls and licences.** Whether a shipment needs a permit, an inspection, a
[pre-shipment inspection certificate](/glossary/pre-shipment-inspection-certificate) or
nothing at all is decided against the code. A wrong code does not usually announce itself as
a wrong code; it announces itself as a container that will not clear. For
[chemical imports into Singapore](/industries/chemicals) the code is read against a schedule
of controlled ingredients, and it decides whether a licence was needed before the permit
could be filed at all.

**Preference under a trade agreement.** A preferential rate is claimed for a specific code,
and the origin rule that qualifies the goods is written against that code too. The
[certificate of origin](/glossary/certificate-of-origin) and the declaration have to agree.

**Statistics, including yours.** Trade data is compiled at the six-digit level worldwide.
That is what makes it possible to look up what a country actually imports before you go and
sell to it.

## Where it goes wrong on a real desk

Not in the classification decision. In the copy.

The code is agreed once, at contract or first shipment, and then it has to appear
identically on the commercial invoice, the [packing list](/glossary/packing-list), the
certificate of origin and the declaration. When a supplier's invoice carries a code from
their own eight-digit tariff and your broker files against yours, the two documents disagree
on the face of them, and a document set that disagrees with itself is the most reliable way
to spend a day answering questions at the port instead of selling.

The fix is unglamorous: the code is a field on the contract, it is checked on every document
against the contract rather than against the last shipment, and the check happens when the
document arrives rather than when the vessel does. That is one of the checks
[import document checking software](/solutions/import-document-checking-software) is for, and
it is the same discipline that keeps a document pack from arriving after the
[free time](/glossary/free-time) has run out.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/hs-code

---

# ICD: the customs port that is nowhere near the sea

An inland container depot is an inland facility with customs jurisdiction, where a bill of entry can be filed and a container cleared without the cargo ever being cleared at the seaport. It shortens the road leg and moves clearance closer to the factory. It also lengthens the chain, and the carrier's detention clock does not pause for the rail leg.

An inland container depot is a customs station with no coastline. A container discharged
at a seaport moves inland under customs bond to the ICD, and the bill of entry is filed
and assessed there. The importer never clears at the port. For a factory 900 kilometres
from the water, that is the difference between a two-day road haul on every box and a rail
move that ends in the next district.

Most jurisdictions call it an ICD. UN ESCAP, in the Intergovernmental Agreement on Dry
Ports, calls the same thing a dry port. Carriers and forwarders use both words, plus
"inland port", and mean roughly the same facility. Each notified ICD has its own UN/LOCODE,
which is how it appears on a bill of lading.

## What makes a facility an ICD rather than a yard?

Customs jurisdiction. That is the whole distinction.

An ICD is appointed by the national customs authority as a place where imported goods may
be unloaded and export goods loaded, which means a customs officer sits there, assessment
happens there, and a bill of entry filed against that location is a valid entry. In India
that appointment is made under section 7 of the Customs Act 1962 and administered by the
Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs. Other jurisdictions use different statutes
and the same principle.

A container yard without that appointment is storage. You can park boxes in it. You cannot
clear them.

## ICD, CFS, port terminal, bonded warehouse

Four facilities that traders mix up, because a single container can pass through all four.

| Facility | Customs jurisdiction | What happens there | Whose clock runs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Port terminal | Yes, it is the port of entry | Discharge, stacking, gate-out | Terminal demurrage, then carrier detention on gate-out |
| Inland container depot | Yes, appointed as a customs station | Bond transfer in, assessment, clearance, stuffing and destuffing, empty return | ICD ground rent, plus carrier detention if the box is on merchant haulage |
| Container freight station | Yes, but as an extension of a port or ICD | Consolidation and deconsolidation of LCL cargo, examination | CFS storage charges |
| Bonded warehouse | Yes, duty deferred while goods remain warehoused | Storage of cleared-but-unduty-paid goods | Warehouse rent and interest, per the bond terms |

The one that matters for the entry is the ICD. The one that generates surprise invoices is
the CFS, because LCL cargo is destuffed there by a party the importer did not appoint and
did not negotiate with.

## Why does an importer choose an ICD?

Four reasons, in the order they usually decide it.

**Distance.** Rail from the port to a depot near the plant beats road on cost per tonne
kilometre on any long haul, and it beats it decisively on bulk and heavy cargo like scrap,
metals and grain.

**Congestion.** A seaport under pressure has slow gate turns, restricted appointment slots
and terminal storage priced to force cargo out. Moving under bond to an ICD takes the box
off the terminal without needing your clearance to be ready.

**Clearance where your people are.** Your broker, your examination, your samples and your
own team are inland. Arguing a classification at a counter four hours away is cheaper than
arguing it at a counter four hours by plane.

**Empty return.** The same depot usually accepts the empty, so the box goes back where it
came off the train rather than making a second long road trip.

## What does an ICD do to the free-time clock?

This is where importers lose money, and the answer depends on one line in the transport
document.

Under a **port-to-port bill of lading**, the carrier's responsibility ends at the discharge
port. Everything after that, the rail move and the ICD, is arranged by the importer or the
importer's forwarder. This is merchant haulage. The carrier's detention clock started when
the box gated out of the port terminal and it keeps running through the rail transit, the
ICD dwell, the destuffing and the empty return. The train is not a pause.

Under a **combined transport or through bill of lading** naming the ICD as the place of
delivery, the carrier is contractually responsible to the ICD. Free time is usually
measured against arrival at the ICD rather than discharge at the port. This is carrier
haulage. It costs more per box and it removes an entire category of dispute.

The ICD itself runs a third clock: ground rent or storage on the container and on the
cargo, per its own published tariff, independent of anything the carrier charges. So an
importer clearing at an ICD on merchant haulage can be paying carrier detention and ICD
ground rent on the same day, for the same box, to two different parties, under two
different tariffs, with two different free periods.

We do not publish per-diem rates or free-time allowances for ICDs here. They are
carrier-specific, depot-specific and lane-specific, they are revised, and a number that is
right for one depot is wrong two states away. Pull them from the tariff of the carrier on
your bill of lading and from the notified tariff of the depot.

## What the paperwork has to say

Three things have to be consistent before a container can move inland under bond, and any
one of them being wrong stops the box at the port while the clock runs.

The **bill of lading** has to name the ICD as the place of delivery if you are on carrier
haulage, and it has to carry the correct UN/LOCODE. Amending a bill of lading after
issue costs a fee and time you do not have.

The **bill of entry** has to be filed at the ICD as the port of clearance, not at the
seaport. A prior entry filed against the wrong customs station is not a small correction.

The **bond and the transit document** covering the inland move have to be in place before
the box gates out. The bond is the reason customs allows an uncleared container to travel.

None of that is difficult. All of it is a chase, across a shipping line, a forwarder, a
broker and a depot, none of whom report to you.

## Where the time actually goes

The Docket baseline puts about **2.2 hours** of desk work on a single container, split
across supplier follow-ups at 30 to 45 minutes, document-pack preparation and checking at
45 to 90, status tracking and reporting at 20 to 30, and payment tracking at 10 to 15. An
ICD adds parties to every one of those lines. A second haulier, a depot operator, a
different customs counter.

Document packs routinely run about **eight days** late against free
time, and that is on shipments clearing at the gateway. Add an inland leg and the same
lateness has a longer runway to compound in, because the box is now moving through more
custodians while the paper is still incomplete.

A week of demurrage on one container has cost about **US$12,000**. The rail
saving on the same box is real, and it is smaller than that.

## Should you clear at the port or at the ICD?

The test is not cost per tonne kilometre. It is whether your document pack is reliably
complete before discharge.

If it is, the ICD wins on almost any long haul. The box moves under bond while your broker
works, the terminal is not charging you to store it, and clearance happens next to your
plant.

If it is not, the ICD adds a second place for a late document to strand a container, and
strands it with two meters running instead of one. Fix the pack first, then move the
clearance inland.

Ask a depot four questions before you commit volume to it. Which carriers accept empties
there. What the notified ground-rent tariff and free period are, in writing. Which
examination facilities are on site, because a mandated examination at a depot without the
equipment means another move. And what the actual rail transit time has been over the last
quarter, not the scheduled one.

## Where Docket sits

Docket does not run trains and does not own depots. It works on the part that decides
whether the inland move is a saving or a trap, which is whether the paper is ready.

It reads the purchase contract and the transport document, works out which clock applies
(the [demurrage prevention](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) page walks through
both),
derives the last free day from discharge or from ICD arrival depending on how the bill of
lading is drawn, and builds the document checklist backwards from that date. Then it
chases the parties who owe documents. Email first, WhatsApp at 24 hours, SMS at 48, an AI
voice call at 72, on the channels the exporter, the forwarder and the CHA already use. No
portal for anyone to sign up for.

Every charge that arrives, from the carrier, the depot or the haulier, is matched to the
consignment and traced back to the email it came in on, so the landed cost includes the
inland leg instead of discovering it at month end.

The honest limit: Docket cannot get a container out of a congested terminal, cannot make a
depot accept an empty it has no space for, and does not file your entry. It removes the
reason those things become expensive, which is a document that nobody chased.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/icd

---

# Incoterms 2020: where risk transfers, where cost transfers

Incoterms are eleven ICC rules that allocate delivery, risk, cost and clearance duties between seller and buyer. Seven work for any transport mode. Four apply only to sea and inland waterway. Under the C rules, risk passes at origin while the seller keeps paying to destination, so the two points are different. Incoterms say nothing about ownership, payment terms or applicable law.

Incoterms 2020 has eleven rules. Seven work with any transport mode, including containers
moving by sea. Four apply only to sea and inland waterway carriage. Under the four C rules
the seller carries cost to the destination and stops carrying risk at the origin, and
those two points are hundreds of nautical miles apart. That gap is the single most
expensive misreading in trade.

Incoterms are published by the International Chamber of Commerce. The 2020 edition came
into force on 1 January 2020. They apply to a contract only when the contract says they
do, and the reference has to name the edition and the place: "FCA Ningbo, Incoterms 2020",
not "FOB".

## What do Incoterms actually decide?

Six things:

- Who delivers, and at exactly which point delivery happens.
- Where risk of loss or damage passes from seller to buyer.
- Who pays which cost, itemised in article A9 and B9 of each rule.
- Who handles export clearance, transit formalities and import clearance.
- Whether either party has an insurance obligation, and at what level.
- Who provides which transport document, notice and information.

And five things they do **not** decide. Incoterms say nothing about transfer of ownership
or title. Nothing about payment terms, so an LC or a 90-day usance is a separate clause.
Nothing about price. Nothing about remedies for breach. Nothing about applicable law or
forum. A sale contract that has an Incoterm and no payment clause is not a contract, it is
a shipping instruction.

## Do Incoterms transfer title?

No. This is the one thing people most often assume an Incoterm does, and it is the one
thing the rules deliberately leave alone. An Incoterm allocates delivery, risk, cost and
clearance duties. Ownership — title — passes when the law governing your sale contract
says it does, and that law is a separate clause you have to write.

Risk and title are not the same event and they routinely happen on different days. Under
CIF, risk passes when the goods are on board at origin. Title may not pass until the
seller is paid, six weeks later, if the contract carries a retention-of-title clause. A
buyer who reads "CIF" and concludes "the goods are mine once they are loaded" has read a
risk allocation as a property transfer.

Three practical consequences for an import desk:

- **Write the title clause.** If you need title to pass on payment, or on shipment, the
  sale contract has to say so, along with the governing law. The Incoterm will not do it.
- **The transport document is what actually controls the goods.** A negotiable
  [bill of lading](/glossary/bill-of-lading) is a document of title: whoever lawfully
  holds it can claim delivery at destination. That is why a bank takes it as security
  under a [documentary credit](/glossary/letter-of-credit) and will not release it until
  the presentation is clean. The Incoterm says who has to provide it, not who owns what.
- **Insurance follows risk, not title.** Under CIP and CIF the seller buys cover for the
  buyer's benefit because risk has already moved. Ownership does not decide who claims.

So an Incoterm and a title clause answer two different questions, and a purchase contract
needs both. Docket reads both off the contract when the shipment is created.

## The eleven rules

| Rule | Mode | Risk passes | Seller pays cost to | Export clearance | Import clearance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EXW | Any | At seller's premises, goods placed at buyer's disposal, not loaded | Nothing beyond making goods available | Buyer | Buyer |
| FCA | Any | On delivery to the carrier named by the buyer | The named delivery place | Seller | Buyer |
| CPT | Any | On handover to the **first** carrier | Named destination | Seller | Buyer |
| CIP | Any | On handover to the **first** carrier | Named destination, plus insurance | Seller | Buyer |
| DAP | Any | At destination, on the arriving vehicle, not unloaded | Named destination | Seller | Buyer |
| DPU | Any | At destination, **after** the seller unloads | Named place, including unloading | Seller | Buyer |
| DDP | Any | At destination, on the arriving vehicle, not unloaded | Named destination, duty paid | Seller | Seller |
| FAS | Sea and inland waterway | Alongside the vessel at the port of shipment | Alongside the vessel | Seller | Buyer |
| FOB | Sea and inland waterway | When goods are on board the vessel | On board at the port of shipment | Seller | Buyer |
| CFR | Sea and inland waterway | When goods are **on board** at origin | Named port of destination | Seller | Buyer |
| CIF | Sea and inland waterway | When goods are **on board** at origin | Named port of destination, plus insurance | Seller | Buyer |

Read the CPT, CIP, CFR and CIF rows again. The risk column and the cost column point at
different ends of the voyage. These are the two-point rules, and the ICC says so in the
guidance to each of them.

## Why does risk transfer before cost under CIF?

Because the seller sells on board and then buys carriage on the buyer's behalf.

Under CIF, delivery happens when the goods are placed on board the vessel at the port of
shipment. From that instant the buyer carries the risk of loss or damage. The seller still
has to contract and pay for carriage to the named port of destination, and still has to
buy insurance, but the seller is spending money on a voyage whose risk belongs to somebody
else.

The practical consequences for an importer:

- If the cargo is damaged mid-ocean on CIF terms, it is **your** loss. You claim on the
  insurance policy the seller bought in your favour.
- The insurance the seller must buy under CIF is minimum cover, Institute Cargo Clauses
  (C) or similar, unless the contract says otherwise. Clause (C) is a named-perils cover.
  It is thin.
- Under **CIP**, Incoterms 2020 raised the default to Institute Cargo Clauses (A) or
  similar all-risks cover. This changed from the 2010 edition, where CIP also sat at (C).
  CIF stayed at (C) because the commodity trades wanted it there.
- Both CIF and CIP require cover of at least 110% of the contract value, in the currency
  of the contract, payable at destination.

If you buy CIF and want all-risks, say so in the contract. The rule will not do it for
you.

## Should I buy FOB or FCA for containers?

FCA, for anything that moves in a container. The ICC has said this in the guidance to
Incoterms 2010 and again in 2020, and the trade keeps ignoring it.

FOB fixes delivery and risk transfer at the moment the goods are on board the vessel. A
container is handed over at a terminal or a container yard days before it is loaded. So a
seller on FOB terms carries risk for a box that is already out of their control, sitting
in a stack they cannot reach, on a terminal whose operator answers to the carrier. When
the box is damaged in the yard, the FOB allocation puts that on the seller, who has no
practical way to prevent it or prove what happened.

FCA delivers at the named place: the seller's premises if the buyer's vehicle collects, or
the terminal or depot if the goods arrive there on the seller's truck. Risk and control
end at the same instant. That is the whole point of a delivery term.

The historic objection was that FCA broke letters of credit, because a seller who delivers
at a depot has no on board bill of lading to present. Incoterms 2020 answers it directly.
Under FCA A6 and B6 the parties may agree that the buyer instructs the carrier to issue a
transport document stating the goods have been loaded on board, and the seller passes that
document on. Put the mechanism in the sale contract and in the credit, and FCA presents
cleanly.

## What changed in Incoterms 2020?

Five changes worth knowing.

1/ **DAT became DPU.** Delivered at Terminal was renamed Delivered at Place Unloaded,
because the destination never had to be a terminal. DPU is the only rule of the eleven
that requires the seller to unload.

2/ **CIP insurance rose to Institute Cargo Clauses (A).** CIF stayed at (C).

3/ **FCA gained the on board bill of lading option**, described above.

4/ **Own means of transport is now explicit.** FCA, DAP, DPU and DDP recognise that the
buyer or seller may carry the goods on their own vehicle rather than contract a carrier.

5/ **Costs are consolidated in A9 and B9** of every rule, so the cost allocation can be
read in one place instead of hunted through ten articles. Security-related obligations are
also spelled out, at A4, A7, B4 and B7.

## Which rule should an importer actually pick?

Three positions, and the reasoning behind each.

**Buy FCA or FOB and control the freight yourself** when you ship regularly on a lane. You
choose the carrier, you negotiate the free time, you see the real ocean rate instead of a
number buried in the unit price. You also carry the risk from origin, which is why you buy
proper cargo cover rather than relying on a minimum policy.

**Buy CIF or CIP** when you ship occasionally, do not have carrier relationships, and want
one number to compare against another supplier's number. Accept that the freight and
insurance margin is inside the price and you cannot see it.

**Avoid DDP unless the seller is genuinely established in your country.** DDP puts import
clearance and duty on the seller. A seller who is not registered for your import taxes
will either fail at it or pay an agent to act in your name, and the entry filed against
your importer registration is still your liability with customs.

**Avoid EXW for exports out of a country with formal export controls.** EXW leaves export
clearance with the buyer, who is usually not resident and cannot file. FCA at the seller's
premises achieves the same commercial split with the export declaration on the party who
can actually make it.

## What this does to your landed cost

The Incoterm decides which cost lines appear on your side of the ledger. On EXW or FCA you
will see ocean freight, origin handling and insurance as separate invoices. On CIF you
will not, because they sit inside the unit price, and your customs value is calculated on
the CIF value anyway.

This is why comparing a CIF quotation against an FOB quotation on unit price alone is
meaningless. Build both out to the same delivered-and-cleared number before you decide.
The categories that have to be in that build are the ones the
[landed cost of an import](/glossary/landed-cost) is made of: customs duty, shipping-line
charges, port handling, CHA fees, inland transport, insurance, bank charges, inspection,
and demurrage and detention.

Doing that comparison once, by hand, on a quotation is an afternoon. Doing it on every
container, against what the invoices actually said, is what a
[landed cost tracking system](/solutions/landed-cost-tracking-software) is for — it holds
the Incoterm per contract and knows which cost lines to expect on your side because of it.

## Where Docket sits

Docket reads the Incoterm off the purchase contract and uses it to generate the rest of
the shipment: who owes which document, which costs to expect on your side, and which
deadlines belong to the seller.

On a CIF purchase it will chase the insurance certificate, because the seller owes it and
the credit will be refused without it. On an FOB purchase it will not, and will instead
expect your own policy on file. On DDP it watches for the entry filed in your name.
The contract sets the checklist. That is the entry wedge for the whole product.

The honest limit: Docket does not draft your sale contract and will not tell you that FOB
was the wrong rule for your containers before you sign. It reads what you agreed and works
that. On the baseline desk, supplier follow-ups run 30 to 45 minutes a container and the
document pack another 45 to 90 minutes. Docket automates about **85%** of the chase and
about **65%** of the doc-pack drafting. The remaining share is judgement, and it stays with
your team.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/incoterms

---

# Landed cost: every line between the invoice and your yard

Landed cost is the total cost of a consignment delivered into your warehouse: goods value plus customs duty, shipping-line charges, port handling, CHA fees, inland transport, insurance, bank charges, inspection, and any demurrage and detention. Most desks calculate it at month end, after the cargo has been sold. Getting it late is the same as not having it.

Landed cost is what one consignment costs you by the time it is standing in your yard,
cleared, unloaded and available to sell. Goods value is the smallest problem in that
sentence. The rest arrives as nine separate categories of charge, from six different
parties, over roughly six weeks, and about a third of it lands after you have already
quoted your customer.

A trader who sells on a 5% margin and misses US$600 of charges on a container has to write
US$12,000 of fresh business to get back to where they thought they were.

## What goes into landed cost?

Nine categories. Each one has a different party issuing it, a different point in the
shipment when it becomes known, and a different treatment for customs and for accounts.

| Cost category | Who charges it | When you know it | Typical timing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customs duty and import taxes | The customs authority | At assessment, on the declared value | Clearance |
| Shipping-line charges | Carrier or NVOCC | Booking, plus surcharges that move | Booking to delivery order |
| Port and terminal handling | Terminal operator | Tariff is published, quantity is not | Discharge to gate-out |
| CHA and clearing agent fees | Your customs broker | Agreed schedule, plus reimbursements | After clearance |
| Inland transport | Transporter | Rate known, waiting charges are not | Gate-out to delivery |
| Marine insurance | Insurer or the seller under CIF and CIP | Premium known at booking | Booking |
| Bank charges | Your bank | Schedule known, count is not | LC issuance to settlement |
| Inspection and survey | Inspection agency | Quoted per consignment | Pre-shipment and on discharge |
| Demurrage and detention | Carrier and terminal | Only when it has already happened | After the fact |

The last row is the one that ruins the number. Every other line can be estimated at
booking with reasonable accuracy. Demurrage and detention are unknowable at booking,
arrive weeks later, and are large. A week of demurrage on
one container runs about **US$12,000**, and a single missed document pack a month runs
**US$12,000 to US$24,000 a year**.

## How is the customs value calculated?

Under the WTO Customs Valuation Agreement, the primary method is **transaction value**:
the price actually paid or payable for the goods when sold for export to the country of
importation, adjusted by the additions listed in Article 8. Those additions include
commissions and brokerage other than buying commissions, packing, assists, royalties, and,
where the importing member has so elected, the cost of transport, loading and handling to
the place of importation and the cost of insurance.

Two consequences a trading desk feels directly.

**Your Incoterm changes what customs sees.** Buy CIF and the freight and insurance are
already inside the invoice value. Buy FOB or FCA and they are separate invoices that many
jurisdictions add back to reach the assessable value. Same cargo, same total cost,
different paperwork, and a different set of documents your broker needs from you.

**Your [HS classification](/glossary/hs-code) sets the rate.** The WCO Harmonized System governs the six-digit
code; national tariffs extend it to eight or ten digits and attach the duty rate,
preferential rates under trade agreements, and any anti-dumping or safeguard measures. A
classification argument with customs is a landed-cost problem wearing a technical costume.
Get the code right at contract stage, from the product specification, not at the port from
the packing list.

We do not publish duty rates on this site. They are jurisdiction-specific, they change on
notification, and the only correct source is the tariff schedule of the customs authority
you are importing into. Singapore Customs, India's Central Board of Indirect Taxes and
Customs, Dubai Customs and the UAE Federal Customs Authority each publish their own.

Which is also why the [landed cost calculator](/landed-cost-calculator) on this site takes
the duty rate as an input rather than looking one up. Bring your own rate and your own
charges and it will work the consignment through — including the two steps a spreadsheet
usually gets wrong: whether the duty is assessed on the CIF value or the goods value alone,
and whether the import tax is recoverable.

## Why is landed cost always late?

Because nobody owns it. The information exists, in nine mailboxes, and no single party is
accountable for pulling it into one number.

Here is the actual sequence on a normal import. The supplier invoice arrives at contract
stage. The freight invoice arrives at booking, then a fuel or congestion surcharge amends
it. The terminal handling charge appears on the delivery order. The broker's bill comes
after clearance, mixing their fee with reimbursements they paid on your behalf. The
transporter bills at month end, with detention on a separate line. The bank debits charges
across four dates. The demurrage invoice, if there is one, shows up last.

By the time all nine have landed, the cargo has been sold, the customer has been invoiced
and the margin was decided on an estimate.

The desk work behind this is not small. Our baseline puts about **2.2 hours** of desk work
on a single container, and payment tracking alone accounts for 10 to 15 minutes of it,
with status tracking and reporting another 20 to 30. On a 500-container desk that is about
**1,100 hours a month** against a seven-person capacity of about **1,232 hours**. The team
is at roughly **90%** capacity on grunt work before anyone negotiates a purchase.

## What a landed-cost number is actually for

Four uses, and they need different levels of precision.

**Pricing the next sale.** You need the cost per unit, per grade, on the lane you are
about to quote. An estimate built from the last three consignments beats a perfect number
that arrives in six weeks.

**Checking the margin you thought you made.** This one needs to be exact, traced to
documents, and reconciled against what was actually paid.

**Arguing with a counterparty.** A detention claim you cannot substantiate line by line
against the tariff and the gate-out timestamp is a claim you will lose.

**Filing accounts.** Duty and freight capitalise into inventory value in most accounting
regimes. Getting the split wrong between what capitalises and what expenses moves your
reported margin.

A single landed-cost figure that tries to serve all four ends up serving none. What works
is one traced record per consignment, updated as each invoice arrives, with an estimate
flag on the lines that are still open.

## How to build a landed cost that holds up

Five steps, in the order they pay back.

1/ **Fix the cost categories once and never change them.** Nine buckets, the same nine on
every consignment, across every lane. Comparability is worth more than precision.

2/ **Estimate at booking.** Populate every bucket with a number the day the contract is
signed, using your own history. Mark them as estimates. An estimated landed cost on day
one is a decision tool. An exact one on day forty is a history lesson.

3/ **Trace every actual back to a document.** Invoice number, date, party, the email it
arrived in. When a line cannot be traced, it cannot be defended in a dispute and it cannot
be audited.

4/ **Allocate on a rule you wrote down.** Ocean freight per container, duty per assessable
value, inspection per consignment, bank charges per settlement. Write the rule once so two
people do not allocate the same charge two ways.

5/ **Close the gap between estimate and actual, per line.** The variance report is where
the learning is. A freight estimate that is consistently 8% light is a fixable input. A
demurrage line that appears on one consignment in three is a process failure upstream, in
the document pack.

## Where Docket sits

Docket builds the landed cost from the contract forward instead of from the invoices
backward. That is what its
[landed cost tracking software](/solutions/landed-cost-tracking-software) is for. The
allocation across SKUs stays in your ERP; why the two have to run in that order is the
subject of [landed cost software, per container first](/blog/landed-cost-software-per-container-then-per-sku).
If you are shortlisting products, the three kinds of
[landed cost tools for an import desk](/blog/landed-cost-tools-for-an-import-desk) are set
out side by side there, with the column most comparisons leave out: which of them actually
collects the charge.

It reads the purchase contract, sets the expected cost lines from the Incoterm, and then
watches the mailbox. Each invoice that arrives is matched to a consignment and a cost
bucket, with the source email retained, so every line traces to a document rather than to
somebody's memory. The payment calendar comes off the contract terms, so you know what is
due before the bank does.

The demurrage line gets attacked at the cause. Docket derives the last free day from
discharge, works the document checklist backwards from it, and chases whoever owes the
missing paper. Email first, WhatsApp at 24 hours, SMS at 48, an AI voice call at 72, on
channels the exporter and the CHA already use.

The honest limits, stated plainly. Docket does not classify your goods for you and does
not compute your duty. Tariff rates are jurisdiction-specific and change on notification,
and a number a machine generated is a number a customs officer will disagree with. Docket
holds the classification you and your broker agreed and flags when a consignment departs
from it. It also cannot invoice a charge that no party has issued. What it removes is the
chasing and the retyping.

On the reference desk we model, that is about **770 hours a month** freed at the blended
**70%** automation rate, worth roughly **US$19,250** of desk time at a loaded **US$25** an
hour. Against Docket at 350 shipments on the Trade Desk rate, **US$2,100** a month, the net
is about **US$17,150** a month, near **US$205,800** a year. Demurrage and fraud savings are
deliberately left out of that arithmetic. They are proof, not the base case.

The four people that frees do not leave. They move to buying and selling, which is the
work that makes the margin the landed cost is measuring.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/landed-cost

---

# Last free day: the date an import deadline counts back from

The last free day is the final day of free time. After it, demurrage or detention starts. It is set at discharge, not when your paperwork is ready, and one container usually has more than one: the terminal's storage clock and the carrier's free time expire on different dates. In US trade the end date of free time is a required field on a demurrage invoice, and one missing it cannot be enforced.

Every deadline on an import shipment is derived from one date, and the last free day is it.

It is the last day the container can stay where it is without a charge starting. Take the
event the tariff counts from, add the free days allowed, and the last of those days is the
last free day. From the next day the meter runs.

Two things about that date decide whether a desk is calm or expensive. It is knowable
early, because for import demurrage it is fixed at discharge, usually days before anything
can go wrong. And it is not one date.

## One container, more than one last free day

The single most common error on an import desk is treating the last free day as a property
of the container. It is a property of a clock, and there is more than one clock.

| | Demurrage | Detention | Terminal storage |
|---|---|---|---|
| What is being charged for | The box occupying the terminal | The carrier's equipment, out in your yard | The ground the box stands on |
| Who charges | The carrier | The carrier | The terminal or port |
| Clock starts | Discharge from the vessel | Gate-out from the terminal | Discharge from the vessel |
| Where the allowance is set | Service contract or carrier tariff | Service contract or carrier tariff | The terminal's published tariff |
| Same for every importer? | No | No | Yes |

Read the last row twice. [Free time](/glossary/free-time) from a carrier is a commercial
term: two importers with boxes on the same vessel, in the same terminal, can hold different
allowances because they signed different contracts. Terminal storage is the opposite: a
published document that applies to whoever is standing there. At Jebel Ali an ordinary
import full container gets ten free days of terminal storage counted from discharge before
the port's own bands start, and that allowance is the same for everybody. The
[Jebel Ali page](/port/jebel-ali) has the bands.

An importer who clears late pays both. The carrier bills
[demurrage](/glossary/demurrage) for the same days the terminal bills storage, because the
two charges are for different things and neither is a discount on the other.

## The last free day is a required field, in one jurisdiction

In US trade the date is not something you have to reconstruct. It has to be on the invoice.

Title 46 of the Code of Federal Regulations, section 541.6, lists what a demurrage or
detention invoice must contain as a minimum. Among the timing elements are **the allowed
free time in days**, **the start date of free time** and **the end date of free time**, and
for imports the container availability date. The rate rule, the container numbers and the
bill of lading numbers are required alongside them.

Section 541.5 then says what happens if any of it is left off:

> Failure to include any of the required minimum information in this part in a demurrage or
> detention invoice eliminates any obligation of the billed party to pay the applicable
> charge.

That is a stronger position than most importers realise they hold, and it comes with its own
calendar. Under section 541.7 an invoice has to be issued within thirty calendar days from
the date the charge was last incurred. Under section 541.8 the billed party gets at least
thirty calendar days from the invoice date to request mitigation, refund or waiver, and the
billing party has thirty days to resolve the request. A charge billed late, or billed
without its free time dates, is a charge worth
[disputing](/blog/how-to-dispute-a-demurrage-invoice) rather than paying.

Section 541.4 is now marked reserved, so an explainer written against it in 2024 is
describing a rule that is no longer there. Check the current text before relying on any
summary of this part, including this one.

Outside US trade there is no equivalent. In India, the UAE, Singapore and most other
markets the last free day comes from the carrier's tariff or your service contract, nobody
is obliged to print it for you, and reconstructing it after an invoice arrives is
guesswork against somebody else's records.

## Why knowing the date early is the whole game

The last free day is not a warning. It is a deadline you can schedule against, and it is
available at discharge.

Work backwards from it and every document in the pack acquires a date: the bill of lading
has to be released by, the certificate of origin has to arrive by, the customs declaration
has to be filed by, the duty has to be paid by. None of those dates is a surprise. All of
them are arithmetic on a date you already have.

What goes wrong is not the arithmetic. Document packs routinely run about **eight days**
late against free time, and a week of demurrage on one container has cost about
**US$12,000**. Almost none of that is caused by not knowing where the container is. It is
caused by a document sitting in somebody's outbox and nobody chasing it.

A countdown does not fix that. Most software sold into this problem shows the box, counts
the days down and turns a tile amber when the last free day is close. The tile is not the
fix — by the time it changes colour, the missing document still has to be produced by a
person who has not answered three emails.

## Where Docket sits

Docket holds the free-time terms per lane, per carrier and per equipment type next to the
purchase contract, derives the last free day from discharge, and works every document
deadline backwards from it. Then it does the chasing itself: email first, WhatsApp at 24
hours, SMS at 48, an AI voice call at 72, on channels the counterparty already uses, with no
portal for anyone to sign up for.

That is what
[demurrage and detention software](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) is supposed to
mean, and it is a different job from showing you a date. You can put your own free days and
per-diem tiers into the [demurrage calculator](/demurrage-calculator) to see what a given
last free day is worth missing.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/last-free-day

---

# Laytime: the agreed time to load or discharge a chartered ship

Laytime is the period agreed between the parties during which the owner will make and keep the vessel available for loading or discharging without payment additional to the freight. It belongs to voyage charters of bulk and tanker cargo, not to containers. It starts after a notice of readiness is tendered and the charter's notice period runs; when it expires the charterer goes on demurrage.

Laytime is the clock on a chartered ship. A voyage charterer has bought the carriage of a
cargo, and with it a fixed allowance of time to get that cargo on or off. Use less and the
owner may owe you money. Use more and you owe the owner money.

The Laytime Definitions for Charter Parties 2013, agreed between BIMCO, the CMI, FONASBA
and the Baltic Exchange, define it at number 5 as "the period of time agreed between the
parties during which the owner will make and keep the Vessel available for loading or
discharging without payment additional to the freight."

Read the last clause. Laytime is not free time in the sense of a gift. It is time you have
already paid for inside the freight rate.

## This is the bulk and tanker world, not the container world

If you import in containers, this page is almost certainly not the one you want. Your
equivalent clock is [free time](/glossary/free-time), and the charge when it expires is
container [demurrage](/glossary/demurrage). Nobody tenders you a notice of readiness and
nobody is going to pay you despatch money.

The two vocabularies overlap badly, which is why "demurrage" means two different things
depending on who is saying it. The
[demurrage a charterer pays a shipowner](/glossary/vessel-demurrage) is a separate entry.

## How laytime is counted

Three things have to be settled before anyone can calculate anything, and all three are in
the charter rather than in any general rule.

**How much.** A number of days or hours, or a rate of tonnes per day against the cargo
quantity. A rate means the allowance is not known until the cargo figure is.

**Which days count.** This is where the 2013 Definitions do most of their work, by giving
separate meanings to formulations that people had been using interchangeably. A weather
working day is not a working day. Whether the charter says SHEX (Sundays and holidays
excepted) or SHINC (included) changes the answer, and so does whether excepted periods are
excluded from the count or merely suspend it.

**When it starts.** Definition 25 puts a notice of readiness as "the notice to the
charterer, shipper, receiver or other person as required by the Charter Party that the
Vessel has arrived at the Port or Berth, as the case may be, and is ready to load or
discharge." The notice is tendered, the charter's notice or turn time runs, and laytime
commences. Each of those steps has been litigated: whether the vessel had arrived in the
charter's sense, whether she was actually ready, whether the notice was tendered in the
manner and hours the charter required.

The arithmetic itself is then done from the statement of facts, the signed record of what
happened at the port hour by hour. Both sides work from that document, and both sides read
it differently.

## Running out, and finishing early

When laytime expires the vessel goes on demurrage: the agreed daily amount the charterer
owes the owner for the delay. Definition 30 frames it as an amount payable "in respect of
delay to the Vessel once the Laytime has expired, for which the owner is not responsible."

The reverse also exists. Definition 31 defines despatch money as "an agreed amount payable
by the owner if the Vessel completes loading or discharging before the Laytime has
expired." Whether you get it at all depends on the charter, and the conventional rate is
half the demurrage rate.

| | Laytime used | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Less than allowed | Charter may provide despatch money, owner to charterer | Commonly half the demurrage rate |
| Exactly the allowance | Nothing owed either way | — |
| More than allowed | Demurrage, charterer to owner | The daily rate written into the charter |

## Where Docket sits, and does not

Not here. Docket works the document pack on container imports: the purchase contract, the
chase, the checks, the deadline derived from discharge. Laytime calculation on a voyage
charter is a different discipline with its own specialist software, and we are not in that
market and will not pretend to be.

The entry exists because the word "demurrage" is shared and the two meanings get mixed up
in the same conversation, usually to somebody's cost. If your charge is a carrier line item
on a box that sat at a terminal past its free days, go to
[what demurrage costs an importer](/glossary/demurrage) instead.

The box version of the problem is also the one that can be scheduled. A voyage charter's
laytime is settled after the fact, in a statement of facts; a container's free time is
known at discharge, which is why the box side of the word is served by a
[container free time countdown](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) working document
deadlines backwards, and the charter side is served by laytime calculation software working
forwards from a notice of readiness.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/laytime

---

# Letter of credit: what it pays against, and what it does not

A letter of credit is an undertaking by a bank to pay the seller once documents matching the credit are presented. Banks check paper, not cargo. Under UCP 600 the bank has a maximum of five banking days to examine a presentation and must state every discrepancy in a single notice. An LC protects the seller's cash and the buyer's documents. It protects neither party's goods.

A letter of credit is a bank's promise to pay against **documents**. Not against goods,
not against quality, not against the ship arriving. If the paper matches the credit, the
bank pays. If the paper does not match, the bank can refuse, and the cargo sitting at the
port has no bearing on that decision. UCP 600 Article 5 states it in one line: banks deal
with documents and not with goods, services or performance.

That sentence is the whole instrument. Read it twice.

## Does an LC guarantee I get the goods?

No. It guarantees the seller gets paid when the seller produces the right paper.

An importer who opens an LC has bought a document-conditioned payment. The bill of
lading, the invoice, the packing list, the certificate of origin and the inspection
certificate become the object of the deal. A seller who ships rusted scrap and presents a
clean set of documents gets paid. A seller who ships perfect cargo and presents a bill of
lading dated one day after the latest shipment date does not, until the buyer waives.

The one lever an importer has is the document list. Every check you want performed on the
cargo has to exist as a piece of paper named in the credit, issued by a party you trust,
with wording you have specified. A pre-shipment inspection certificate from a named
agency is a real control. "Goods to be of merchantable quality" in the credit narrative
is not, because no bank will test it.

## Who are the parties, and what does each one owe?

Five roles, and the words matter because UCP 600 uses them precisely.

- **Applicant.** The importer. You instruct your bank to issue the credit, you post the
  margin or the limit, and you carry the amendment fees.
- **Issuing bank.** Your bank. Its undertaking to pay is independent of your sale
  contract (Article 4) and independent of your view on whether the goods are acceptable.
- **Beneficiary.** The seller. Gets paid on a complying presentation.
- **Advising bank.** The bank in the seller's country that authenticates the credit and
  passes it on. It takes no payment risk.
- **Confirming bank.** An advising bank that adds its own undertaking (Article 8). Now the
  seller has two banks on the hook, which matters when the issuing bank sits in a country
  the seller's bank does not like.

The independence principle in Article 4 cuts both ways for an importer. Your bank will
not withhold payment because your supplier let you down commercially. Your dispute with
the supplier is a separate matter, argued under the sale contract, after the money has
gone.

## What does the bank actually check?

Documents against the credit, documents against each other, and documents against UCP 600
and ISBP 745. Article 14(d) sets the standard: data in a document does not have to be
identical to data in the credit or in another document, but it must not conflict with it.

The provisions that catch importers most often:

- **Article 14(b).** The issuing bank, the confirming bank and any nominated bank each get
  a maximum of five banking days following the day of presentation to decide whether a
  presentation complies. That is the outer limit, not a service commitment.
- **Article 14(c).** A presentation including an original transport document must be made
  no later than 21 calendar days after the date of shipment, and never after the expiry
  date of the credit.
- **Article 16(c) and 16(d).** If the bank refuses, it must give a single notice stating
  each discrepancy it is refusing for, by the close of the fifth banking day. It cannot
  refuse for one discrepancy today and a fresh one next week.
- **Article 18.** The description of the goods in the commercial invoice must correspond
  with the description in the credit. Every other document may describe the goods in
  general terms. This is why a sloppy goods description in the LC application creates an
  invoice discrepancy months later.
- **Article 28(f)(ii).** Where the credit is silent, the insurance cover must be at least
  110% of the CIF or CIP value of the goods.
- **Article 30.** A tolerance of 5% more or less in quantity is allowed where the credit
  does not state the quantity in packing units or individual items and the drawing does
  not exceed the credit amount. "About" or "approximately" against the amount, quantity or
  unit price permits 10% either way, under Article 3.

None of that is negotiable at presentation. It is decided when the credit is drafted, by
the person filling in the LC application form at your desk.

## What is a discrepancy, and what does it cost?

A discrepancy is any point where the presentation does not comply. Late shipment. Expired
credit. Invoice value above the credit amount. A bill of lading that says "shipper's load
and count" where the credit called for a clean on board notation. A certificate of origin
naming a consignee spelled differently from the invoice. A missing signature.

The cost lands in four places, and only the first one is visible on a bank statement.

1. **The discrepancy fee**, charged by the issuing bank per presentation.
2. **The amendment fee**, if the fix requires amending the credit rather than waiving.
3. **The delay.** The documents sit while the seller re-presents or you waive. Meanwhile
   the container has been discharged, and free time is running.
4. **The demurrage.** This is the expensive one and it is never itemised as an LC cost.

Document packs routinely run about **eight days** late against
free time, and a week of demurrage on a single container runs about
**US$12,000**. The LC did its job perfectly. The importer still paid.

We do not publish a discrepancy rate here. The commonly quoted figures for first
presentations refused are widely repeated and thinly sourced, and this site does not print
a number it cannot stand behind.

## LC versus the alternatives

Four ways to settle an import, ranked by who carries the risk.

| Method | Who carries the risk | Bank's role | Cost to the importer | When it fits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Advance payment | Importer, fully | None. A wire | Bank charges only | New supplier who will not ship otherwise, small value |
| Letter of credit | Shared, shifted onto documents | Undertakes to pay on a complying presentation | Issuance, amendment, discrepancy fees, margin or limit blocked | New counterparty, large value, country risk on either side |
| Documentary collection, D/P | Exporter carries it | Handles documents, gives no undertaking | Modest collection charges | Established relationship, exporter wants control of the originals |
| Documentary collection, D/A | Exporter carries it, plus credit risk | Handles documents against acceptance | Modest collection charges | Established relationship, importer needs credit |
| Open account | Exporter, fully | None | Bank charges only | Long relationship, or the importer has the upper hand |

The trade is straightforward. An LC costs the most and blocks working capital, and it is
the only one of the five that puts a bank's balance sheet between two strangers. As a
relationship matures, desks move down the table toward open account, and the paperwork
burden falls with it.

## Sight, usance, confirmed, transferable

Four words that change the economics of the same instrument.

**Sight.** Payment on a complying presentation. Simplest, and hardest on the importer's
cash, because the money leaves before the goods clear.

**Usance, also called deferred payment or acceptance.** Payment falls due a stated number
of days after sight, after the bill of lading date, or after another defined event. The
importer gets the documents, clears the cargo, sells it, and pays later. The seller can
discount the accepted draft. This is the version that funds a trading desk.

**Confirmed.** A second bank adds its undertaking. The seller stops caring about your
bank's country. You pay the confirmation charge, directly or in the price.

**Transferable.** Under Article 38, a credit expressly marked transferable can be
transferred to a second beneficiary. Traders buying and selling the same cargo use this to
pay their supplier out of their customer's credit. It is precise, it is fiddly, and the
substitution of invoices under Article 38(h) is where it goes wrong.

## The document pack an LC usually calls for

The standard import pack, roughly in the order the bank reads it:

- Commercial invoice
- Packing list
- Full set of original bills of lading, marked as the credit requires
- Certificate of origin
- Insurance policy or certificate, where the Incoterm puts insurance on the seller
- Pre-shipment inspection certificate
- Certificate of analysis or weight, on commodity cargo
- Beneficiary's certificate confirming courier of documents, where the credit calls for it

Each line is a separate party, a separate deadline and a separate chase. The bank checks
the pack in five banking days. Assembling it takes weeks, and nobody owns that part.

## Where importers actually lose money on an LC

Three places, in order of size.

**The credit was drafted badly.** Latest shipment date too tight against the supplier's
loading schedule. Goods description copied from a quotation that no longer matches the
invoice. A document required from a party who has no practice of issuing it. Every one of
these becomes a discrepancy that was written into the credit at the application stage.

**Nobody chased the pack.** Documents are late because six parties each assume another one
is moving. The exporter waits on the surveyor. The surveyor waits on the loading date. The
CHA waits on the certificate of origin. No system has all six in one place, so the desk
finds out on the day the ship arrives.

**The amendment cycle.** One amendment starts a fresh round of seller consent, bank fees
and courier time. Two amendments on a shipment mean the shipment is now late.

The Docket baseline puts about **2.2 hours** of desk work on a single container, of which
45 to 90 minutes is document-pack preparation and checking, and 30 to 45 minutes is
supplier follow-ups. On a 500-container desk that is roughly **1,100 hours a month**, and
the seven-person team is at about **90% capacity** before anyone buys or sells anything.

## Where Docket sits

Docket does not issue letters of credit and does not replace your bank. It works on the
part that is failing, which is the pack.

It reads the credit and the purchase contract, builds the document checklist from them,
sets the [payment calendar from the contract terms](/solutions/payment-calendar-automation),
and checks each document as it arrives against the credit terms and against the other
documents, field by field, each one passing, warning or failing against the clause it
was tested on. Goods description against the invoice. Shipment date against the latest
shipment date. Consignee and notify party against the bill of lading. Insured value
against the 110% rule where the credit is silent. That check is part of its
[import document checking software](/solutions/import-document-checking-software).

Then it chases. Email first, WhatsApp at 24 hours, SMS at 48, an AI voice call at 72, on
the channels the exporter and the CHA already use. Nobody signs up for a portal.

The honest limit: Docket cannot make a bank waive a discrepancy, cannot shorten the five
banking days, and cannot fix a credit that was drafted wrong before it read it. What it
can do is have the pack complete and internally consistent before the vessel discharges,
which is the difference between a fee and a demurrage bill.

Every inbound email in that chain also passes the fraud shield, because an LC amendment
request is exactly the shape a payment-diversion attempt takes.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/letter-of-credit

---

# Packing list: what customs checks everything else against

A packing list is the shipment's physical inventory: how many packages, what marks they carry, what each weighs and measures, and which goods sit in which package or container. It carries no prices. Customs, the carrier, the surveyor and the insurer all cross-check it against the invoice and the bill of lading, so the cheapest document in the pack is the one that most often stops a clearance.

A packing list is the physical inventory of the shipment. How many packages, what marks
they carry, what each one weighs net and gross, what it measures, and which goods sit
inside which package or which container. No prices. No payment terms. The invoice handles
money. The packing list handles matter.

It is the cheapest document in the pack to produce and the one that most often stops a
container.

## What is on a packing list?

A usable packing list carries eight things.

The seller and the buyer, matching the invoice exactly. The invoice number and date it
belongs to. The shipping marks stencilled on the packages, so a tallyman can match paper to
pallet. The package count and the packing type: bales, bundles, drums, cartons, jumbo bags.
The goods in each package, described the way the invoice describes them. Net weight and
gross weight, stated separately and stated per package as well as in total. Dimensions and
cubic volume per package. And the container numbers with their seal numbers, mapped to the
packages inside each one.

That last line is the one traders drop and then need. When customs opens one container out
of four, the packing list is what tells the officer whether they are looking at the right
goods.

## What does the packing list do that the invoice does not?

Three different documents describe the same consignment, and each one is authoritative for
something different. Customs, banks and surveyors read them together.

| | Commercial invoice | Packing list | Bill of lading |
|---|---|---|---|
| Written by | The seller | The seller or the packer | The carrier |
| Authoritative for | Value, terms of sale, payment | Physical contents, counts, weights, marks | Receipt, carriage contract, title |
| Carries prices | Yes | No | No |
| Carries package-level detail | Rarely | Yes, package by package | Number of packages only |
| Carries weights | Total, sometimes | Net and gross, per package and total | As furnished by the shipper |
| Used at inspection | To value the goods | To verify the goods | To release the goods |
| Bank checks it for | Amount, Incoterm, description | Consistency with the invoice | Title, on-board date, ports |

Read that table as a workflow. The invoice sets the duty base. The packing list lets an
officer confirm that the physical box matches the declared value. The bill of lading decides
who is allowed to take the box away. Break any one link and the other two stop working.

## Why do weights on a packing list get people into trouble?

Weight appears on at least four documents and it is stated four different ways.

**Net weight** is the goods alone. **Gross weight** is the goods plus their packing.
**Tare** is the empty container. **Verified gross mass** is the whole packed container,
goods plus packing plus the container itself, and under SOLAS Chapter VI Regulation 2 the
shipper has to declare it before the box is loaded. A terminal is entitled to refuse a
container with no verified gross mass on file.

Now the common failure. The packing list gives net weight. The bill of lading gives gross
weight. Somebody copies one into the other. Customs sees a 400 kg gap between two documents
covering the same cargo and raises a query. The container is not going anywhere while that
query is open, and free time keeps counting.

The rule that avoids all of it: state net and gross on every document that carries weight,
label them, and derive them from one source. Never let two people type the same number
twice.

## What does a bank check on a packing list?

Under a documentary credit, less than you would expect and more than sellers assume. UCP
600 requires that data in one document does not conflict with data in another document or
with the credit. That is the whole test for a packing list in most credits: it does not have
to repeat the full goods description the way the invoice does, and it must not contradict
anything.

So the discrepancies that bite are boring ones. A package count of 240 on the packing list
and 24 on the bill of lading, because a zero got dropped. An invoice number that does not
exist. A buyer's legal name spelled two ways. Marks on the list that do not appear on the
bill. Each of these gives the issuing bank grounds to refuse the documents, and a refusal
turns a settled payment into a negotiation.

## Who should write the packing list?

The person who watched the container get loaded. That sounds obvious and it is rare.

On most desks the packing list is typed by the seller's back office, from the sales order,
before or after the goods were physically stuffed. The document then describes what was
supposed to go into the container. The container holds what actually went in. Those two
agree most of the time, which is why the habit survives, and the gap only surfaces at
examination when it is expensive.

Three sources beat the back office. A **packer's list** written at the loading floor,
against the seal, with the container number already on it. A **weighbridge ticket** for bulk
and semi-bulk cargo, which gives you a gross weight nobody typed from memory. And an
**independent surveyor's report** where the contract calls for one, which on scrap, ores and
other quality-variable commodities is doing double duty as your evidence in a claim.

That claim use is the reason to care beyond customs. When cargo arrives short, wet or mixed,
the insurer and the surveyor start with the packing list. A list that says "1 x 20ft, mixed
goods, 24.5 MT" gives you nothing to argue with. A list with package counts, marks, net and
gross per package, and photographs of the seal gives you a claim.

Write the requirement into the purchase contract. Who produces the list, from what evidence,
by when, and in what format. It costs nothing at contract time and it is unavailable later.

## What goes wrong with packing lists on an import desk?

Four patterns show up over and over.

**The packing list is generated after the goods are packed, from memory.** The person
typing it was not on the loading floor. Package counts drift.

**One packing list is used for a split shipment.** Two containers, one list, no container
mapping. Customs cannot tell which goods are in which box, and neither can you when one
container is held.

**Descriptions are shortened.** The invoice says "hot rolled steel coil, prime, 2.0mm". The
packing list says "steel". An officer now has to decide whether these are the same goods,
and deciding takes days.

**The list arrives with the goods instead of ahead of them.** The packing list is not a
title document, so it does not need a courier and it does not need a bank. It can be emailed
the hour the container is sealed. It routinely is not.

That last one is the expensive one, because it is free to fix. Document packs routinely run
about **eight days** late against port free time, and a week of demurrage on one container
has cost about **US$12,000**. Part of that lateness is
banks and couriers, which are slow for real reasons. Part of it is a PDF that was sitting
in someone's outbox.

## How do you make the packing list do its job?

Ask for it at sealing, not at sailing. The list should leave the loading point in the same
hour the seal goes on, with photographs of the marks and the seal number.

Derive it from the same data as the invoice. One source for the description, one source for
the HS code, one source for the quantities. If your supplier types the invoice in one system
and the packing list in another, expect them to disagree, and check them.

Map packages to containers, always. Even when there is only one container today, the habit
is what saves you on the shipment with four.

State both weights, labelled, everywhere. Net and gross. Never a bare number.

Check the set as a set. Invoice, packing list, bill of lading, certificate of origin, side
by side, before the vessel sails. Same parties, same description, same HS code, same
quantities, same marks. A mismatch found before departure costs one email. The same
mismatch found after discharge costs free time.

## Where Docket sits

Docket does not pack containers and does not weigh them. The supplier and the terminal do
that.

What Docket does is refuse to let the pack go out of sync. It reads the purchase contract,
derives which documents the shipment needs and who owes each one, and then cross-checks the
packing list against the invoice, the [bill of lading](/glossary/bill-of-lading) and the
certificate of origin: parties, descriptions, HS codes, package counts, net and gross
weights, marks, container and seal numbers. Where two documents disagree, it says which two
and on which field, before the entry is filed. That is what
[shipping document verification](/solutions/import-document-checking-software) means on an
import desk: not generating a clean document, but reading the ones that arrive.

Then it chases. Email first, WhatsApp at 24 hours, SMS at 48, an AI voice call at 72, on
channels the supplier already uses and with no portal for anyone to sign up for.

The chase runs about 2.2 hours per container. Doc-pack preparation
and checking alone took 45 to 90 minutes of it. Docket automates about 65% of the doc-pack
drafting and about 85% of the chasing.

The packing list is the easiest document in the pack to get right and the one most often
wrong. Getting it right is worth exactly one thing: the container clears on the first pass.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/packing-list

---

# Payment diversion fraud: the fake bank-account-changed email

Payment diversion fraud is business email compromise aimed at an import payment. An attacker impersonates your exporter or bank and asks you to wire to a new account, timed to a real invoice so it looks routine. Four signals give it away: a look-alike domain, a bank change mid-deal, a beneficiary that is not the contract party, and urgency. The control that works: a callback on a stored number.

This is the one that takes real money, in one transaction, from a desk that was doing
nothing unusual. There is no malware to find, no system to restore, and no insurance claim
that goes smoothly. A person on your team authorised a payment they were supposed to
authorise, to an account they were not supposed to use.

## How does payment diversion fraud work?

The attacker does not break into anything. They watch, or they guess, and they arrive at
exactly the right moment: after a contract is agreed, when an invoice is genuinely due.

Then an email lands from what looks like your exporter. The regular banking channel is
under a compliance audit, or the account is being restructured, or there is a temporary
hold with the correspondent bank. Please remit to the alternate account instead. Treat as
urgent and confidential.

Everything about it is plausible because everything about it is true except the account
number. The shipment is real. The invoice is real. The amount is right to the cent. The
signature block, the logo, the way the sender writes "kindly revert" are all correct,
because the attacker has been reading the thread.

The sequence, in the order it actually happens:

1/ **Access.** A mailbox somewhere in the chain is compromised, usually the smaller party's
and usually through a reused password. It does not have to be yours. Your exporter's
shipping clerk is enough.

2/ **Observation.** Weeks of silence. The attacker reads the thread, learns the shipment
cycle, the payment terms, the names, the tone.

3/ **Positioning.** A look-alike domain is registered, or a mail rule is created that
quietly moves the real replies to a folder nobody opens.

4/ **The ask.** One email, at the right moment in the cycle, with new banking details.

5/ **The cover.** If you reply to verify, the reply goes to the attacker, who confirms
warmly and provides a phone number that also belongs to them.

6/ **The exit.** The money lands in a mule account, is moved within hours, and is gone.

## The four signals

One such attempt on a single shipment was worth **US$62,500**. These were the
signals that gave it away, and they generalise — they are the same four Docket screens
every inbound email for.

1/ **Look-alike sender domain.** In that case the mail came from a domain registered six
days earlier, one character different from the exporter's real domain of many years.
Nobody reads the domain closely on the fortieth email of a working day.

2/ **Bank details changed mid-deal, and to the wrong country.** A new Hong Kong account for
an exporter based in Oman, when originals were already lodged with the bank against the
Oman account.

3/ **Beneficiary name does not match the contract party.** The money was requested for a
company that was not the exporter named on the shipment.

4/ **Urgency and secrecy.** "Urgent, confidential, confirm today." Genuine banking changes
are boring, documented, and never in a hurry.

Any one of these deserves a pause. Two together is close to conclusive.

## What are the variants, and how do you tell them apart?

Four shapes, one outcome. The shape decides which control catches it.

| Variant | What the attacker controls | The tell | What catches it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Look-alike domain | A newly registered domain one character off yours or theirs | Domain age, character substitution, reply-to differing from sender | Domain screening on every inbound mail |
| Thread hijack from a compromised mailbox | The real mailbox, the real domain, the real history | Nothing in the headers. Only the content is wrong | Callback on a number you already had |
| Supplier compromise upstream | Your supplier's actual account and their outbound invoices | The bank change itself, and the beneficiary name | Bank details matched to the contract party |
| Impersonation of a service provider, CHA, forwarder or bank | A plausible third party in the chain | A payment instruction from a party who never invoiced you before | A named payee list per counterparty |

The second row is the dangerous one. Everything in the message is genuine, including the
sending address, because the attacker is sitting inside the real mailbox. Domain checks do
not see it. Signature-based email security does not see it. The only thing that catches a
thread hijack is a verification path the attacker does not control.

## The control that actually works

Call back on a number you already have.

Not the number in the email. Not the number in the signature block of the email announcing
the change. A number from the contract, from your own records, from the last time you
spoke to them. The entire scam depends on your verification path running through a channel
the attacker controls. Break that, and the scam has nothing left.

Everything else is useful and none of it survives a busy Friday afternoon on its own.

| Control | Catches | Fails when | Cost to run |
|---|---|---|---|
| Callback on a stored number | Every variant, including thread hijack | Nobody makes the call | Two minutes, per change |
| Bank details fixed in the contract, changes by signed addendum only | Mid-deal switches | A genuine change is needed and the process is slow, so somebody bypasses it | One clause |
| Beneficiary name matched to the contract party | Mismatched payee | The attacker registers a company with a similar name | One check at payment entry |
| Domain-age and look-alike screening | Newly registered spoof domains | The mailbox itself is compromised | Automated |
| Dual authorisation above a threshold | Careless single approvals | Both approvers see the same forged email | Slows every payment |
| Verification of payee at the bank | Name-account mismatch, where the corridor supports it | Cross-border payments outside schemes that offer it | Bank-side |

That last row is moving. The EU Instant Payments Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2024/886,
requires payment service providers to offer a verification-of-payee check on credit
transfers, and the UK has run Confirmation of Payee through Pay.UK for years. Both help.
Neither covers most of the corridors an importer in Singapore or Dubai actually pays into,
which is why the callback stays first on the list.

## Why are import desks exposed?

Six to ten parties touch a single shipment: exporter, [CHA](/glossary/cha), bank, shipping
line, forwarder, insurer, transporter, inspection agency. Payment instructions legitimately
arrive by email from several of them, in several currencies, on several schedules.

There is no portal, no single system of record, and no one person whose job is to notice
that this particular message is different from the last forty. The desk that pays the
invoice is the desk that is also chasing the certificate of origin, the delivery order and
the bank release, on a container that is already accruing
[demurrage](/glossary/demurrage).

That pressure is the attack surface. Docket's operational baseline puts about **2.2 hours** of
desk work on a single container, with a 500-container desk consuming about **1,100 hours a
month** against 1,232 available hours across seven people. The desk runs at roughly
**90% capacity** on routine work. A team at 90% does not read the domain on the fortieth
email. It processes it.

An [LC](/glossary/letter-of-credit) amendment request is exactly the shape this attack
takes. So is a request to reissue a bill of lading to a different consignee. So is a
courier tracking number for originals that were never sent. The fraud does not need a new
disguise. It borrows the ones the trade already uses.

## What do you do in the first hour after the money has gone?

Speed is the only variable you still control.

**Call your bank and ask for a recall immediately.** Not an email. The window in which
funds can be frozen is measured in hours, and it closes when the mule account is emptied.

**Ask the receiving bank's country regulator or police unit to act.** In the US the FBI's
IC3 Recovery Asset Team runs a process for exactly this and works with the receiving
institution. Singapore's police anti-scam unit runs an equivalent line. Report through the
official channel, not through a lawyer's letter that arrives next week.

**Preserve the mailbox.** Do not delete the email, do not clean the mailbox, and do not let
IT reimage the machine before the headers are exported. The full headers and the mail rules
are the evidence.

**Check for the mail rule.** If the compromise is on your side, there is almost always a
rule quietly filing the real counterparty's replies somewhere you do not look. Find it
before you tell the counterparty anything, because the attacker may be reading that too.

**Call the counterparty on a stored number.** They may be the compromised party and may not
know it, and their next customer is about to get the same email.

**Tell your insurer the same day.** Crime and cyber policies carry short notification
windows, and a claim reported late is a claim argued about.

## Common misconceptions

**"Our email is secure, so we are covered."** Most of these attacks never touch your
mailbox. They touch a supplier's, and everything that arrives at you is authentic.

**"We would spot a fake domain."** The US$62,500 attempt used a domain registered six
days earlier, one character off. It passed several readers before anyone questioned it.

**"The bank will get it back."** Sometimes, within hours, through a recall process. After a
day, rarely.

**"Dual authorisation solves it."** Two people looking at the same forged email reach the
same conclusion twice.

**"It only happens to big transfers."** It happens at whatever size your desk pays without
a second thought, which is the exact amount the attacker has been reading about for six
weeks.

**"We will train people to be careful."** Careful is not a control. A stored phone number
is a control.

## Where Docket sits

Docket is not an email security product, does not sit in your mail flow as a gateway, and
does not stop your bank from executing a payment you authorise. If you decide to wire the
money, it goes.

What Docket does is screen every inbound email on a shipment against the four signals
above, which is what [trade fraud screening software](/solutions/trade-fraud-screening-software) means here, check the payment instruction against the contract party and the bank account
already on file, and hold the payment when something does not line up, with the reason
spelled out rather than a generic warning banner nobody reads. It knows the contract party,
because it read the contract. It knows the account on file, because it recorded the first
one. It knows the shipment is at the stage where a payment is genuinely due, which is what
makes a mid-deal bank change stand out instead of blend in.

That is the shape of the US$62,500 attempt: a mid-deal bank change, on a real shipment,
at a moment a payment was genuinely due. Docket pauses the wire on that pattern and asks
the desk to confirm with the exporter on their verified number — before the money moves,
not after. On a Tuesday, on a desk doing nothing unusual.

The screening runs on the same inbound mail that Docket is already reading to chase
documents. One pass, two jobs. The chase is what pays for the shield.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/payment-diversion-fraud

---

# Phytosanitary certificate: what it certifies and who issues it

A phytosanitary certificate is the exporting country's official statement that a consignment of plants or plant products was inspected and meets the importing country's plant health requirements. For India it must be the original, in PQ Form 21 from the country of origin or Form 22 on re-export, and a consignment without it is not permitted import under the Plant Quarantine Order 2003.

A phytosanitary certificate is the exporting country telling the importing country, on
its own authority, that a consignment of plants or plant products has been inspected and
meets the importer's plant health rules. The model certificate is set internationally by
the International Plant Protection Convention; each country prints its own version and
names the officers who may sign it. India's scheme calls the origin certificate PQ Form 21
and the re-export certificate PQ Form 22.

## What it says

That the plants or plant products described were inspected or tested according to
appropriate procedures, are considered free from the quarantine pests the importing
country specifies, and conform to its current phytosanitary requirements. Where a
treatment was required, the certificate records it: the treatment, the chemical or
method, the duration and temperature, the concentration, and the date.

The certificate describes a specific consignment: the botanical name, the quantity, the
number and description of packages, the distinguishing marks, the means of conveyance.
Those fields are the ones the officer at the port reads against the
[packing list](/glossary/packing-list) and the [bill of lading](/glossary/bill-of-lading),
and they are where a genuine certificate most often fails.

## Why it is the late document

The certificate is issued at the loading end, by an authority, after an inspection that
the supplier has to book. It cannot be produced by the importer, cannot be reissued
quickly from a distance, and cannot be corrected by anyone but the authority that signed
it. The [agri commodity import](/industries/agri-commodities) page sets out the whole
document set it belongs to, including the import permit that only the importer can
produce and the food-authority clearance that follows.

## Where Docket sits

Docket does not inspect plants and does not sign certificates. The plant protection
authority's officer does that, at the other end.

What Docket does is know, from the purchase contract and the commodity, that this
shipment needs the certificate and any treatment the schedule demands; chase the
supplier for it before loading, daily, on email and then WhatsApp, SMS and an AI voice
call; and read the certificate that arrives against the invoice, the packing list and the
bill of lading, naming the botanical name, quantity or container number that disagrees
while the vessel is at sea. The certificate that is issued late is a chasing problem. The
certificate that describes a different lot is a checking problem. Both are the desk's, and
the second is what [import document checks](/solutions/import-document-checking-software)
is for: reading each arriving document against the others and against the contract, field
by field, rather than filing it and discovering the mismatch at the port.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/phytosanitary-certificate

---

# PSIC certificate: what a pre-shipment inspection proves

A pre-shipment inspection certificate is a document issued by an inspection agency at the port of loading, before the goods ship, stating what was inspected and what was found. For metal scrap into India it is the certificate that says the consignment carries no arms or explosives and does not exceed background radiation, and without it customs examines the whole consignment.

A pre-shipment inspection certificate is the document that lets an importing country
check a consignment before it leaves, using an inspector it trusts, rather than after it
arrives, using an examination bay it has to find room for. The agency inspects at the
loading end, records what it found, and signs. The certificate then travels with the pack.

## What it certifies

That depends on the regime. In the case an Indian importer meets most often, metallic
waste and scrap, the certificate has a prescribed content: that the consignment does not
contain arms, ammunition, mines, shells, cartridges or any other explosive material in any
form, and that it was checked for radiation and does not exceed natural background for
gamma and neutron radiation. It records the container numbers and the weights inspected.

That last line is why the certificate fails so often on a desk that does everything else
right. The container numbers on it have to match the [bill of lading](/glossary/bill-of-lading).
The weights have to match the [packing list](/glossary/packing-list). Three parties
produced those three documents, at three different moments, and the certificate is the
one with the least slack, because a customs officer reads it first.

## Who issues it

For scrap into India, only an agency the Directorate General of Foreign Trade recognises,
listed in Appendix 2G of the Handbook of Procedures. The list is finite and it changes. A
certificate from an unlisted agency, however well known, does not satisfy the policy
condition, and the consignment is treated as if it had none.

## When it is not needed

Public Notice 43/2023 introduced a waiver: scrap from the USA, the UK, Canada, New
Zealand, Australia and the EU, cleared through eleven named ports equipped with radiation
portal monitors and container scanners, does not need the PSIC. It needs a certificate
from the supplier or scrap yard confirming the absence of radioactive material and
explosives instead. The eleven ports are Chennai, Tuticorin, Kandla, JNPT, Mumbai,
Krishnapatnam, Mundra, Kattupalli, Hazira, Kamarajar and Adani Gangavaram. The waiver is
tied to the port: the same European lot booked to a port outside the eleven needs the
PSIC again. The [metals and scrap](/industries/metals-and-scrap) page carries the whole
document set for that cargo.

## What happens without it

CBIC Circular 48/2016 sets the procedure: unshredded, compressed or loose scrap that
arrives without the prescribed certificate is examined in full, and the missing document
is pursued under the Foreign Trade Policy. Shredded scrap with its papers in order is
examined at 10%, minimum one container. Full examination is measured in days, and
[free time](/glossary/free-time) does not pause for it.

Which is why the way to [avoid demurrage charges](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software)
on a scrap lot is upstream of the port entirely. The certificate is issued at the loading
end, before the goods ship. Once the vessel has sailed without it, every remedy left costs
days, and the days are the charge.

## Where Docket sits

Docket does not inspect cargo and does not issue certificates. The inspection agency's
signature is the agency's.

What Docket does is know, from the purchase contract and the lane, that this shipment
needs a PSIC and from whom; chase the supplier and the agency for it before loading,
daily, on email, then WhatsApp, SMS and an AI voice call; and read the certificate that
arrives against the packing list and the bill of lading, naming the container number or
weight that does not agree while the vessel is at sea. The certificate that is issued
late is a chasing problem. The certificate that is wrong is a checking problem. Both are
the desk's, and both are the part of the desk Docket is built to run.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/pre-shipment-inspection-certificate

---

# Terminal storage charge: the port clock beside demurrage

A terminal storage charge is what the terminal operator bills for the ground an import container stands on once its free dwell time expires. It is published and identical for every importer at that terminal, unlike the carrier's demurrage, which is set in a service contract. The two clocks start on different days and allow different numbers of days, so a late clearance draws both bills.

Most importers learn the phrase when a second invoice arrives. The carrier's bill for
[demurrage](/glossary/demurrage) was expected, argued over, sometimes partly waived. Then the
terminal's storage bill lands, for the same container and an overlapping set of days, and
nobody on the desk can immediately say whether it is a duplicate.

It is not a duplicate. It is rent for the ground.

## What is being charged for

A terminal storage charge is levied by the marine terminal operator for an import container
occupying its yard after the free dwell time expires. The carrier's demurrage is levied for
the container itself. Two assets, two owners, two bills.

The cleanest statement of the split sits in the American billing rule, which defines both
charges in one sentence and separates them by object rather than by biller. Under 46 CFR
§ 541.3, demurrage or detention means charges assessed by carriers or terminal operators
"related to the use of marine terminal space (e.g., land) or shipping containers, but not
including freight charges". Marine terminal space, or shipping containers. Land, or box.

Outside the United States the two are usually billed by different parties under different
names, which is why a desk that has only ever seen one word for it is caught out.

## The published one and the private one

The practical difference is not the amount. It is whether you can look it up.

| What you are comparing | Terminal storage | [Demurrage](/glossary/demurrage) |
|---|---|---|
| Who bills | The terminal operator or port custodian | The carrier |
| Where the rate lives | A published scale of rates or tariff book | Your service contract |
| Same for everyone? | Yes, at that terminal | No, it is negotiated |
| Clock starts | Landing or discharge, per the tariff | Discharge, per the contract |
| Can you check it before shipping? | Yes | Only if you hold the contract terms |

A terminal's scale of rates is a document. It is approved, dated, and applies to every user
of that terminal on that day, which means a desk can know its storage exposure on a lane
before the vessel sails. The carrier's [free time](/glossary/free-time) cannot be looked up
at all — it is a term of your contract, and two importers moving identical boxes on the same
vessel routinely have different allowances.

## Three days, or ten

The numbers are further apart than most desks expect, and the gap is not explained by the
size of the port.

At **Jebel Ali**, an ordinary import full container gets **10 free days**, counted from the
date of discharge from the vessel, then AED 82 a day up to 20ft and AED 164 over 20ft for
five days, rising to AED 153 and AED 306 thereafter. The rates are in DP World's published
UAE Region tariff book, and the [Jebel Ali port page](/port/jebel-ali) carries the bands in
full.

At **Nhava Sheva International Container Terminal**, the import free dwell is **3 days**.
After that, days 4 to 15 cost US$9.33 a day up to 20ft, US$18.66 above 20ft and up to 40ft,
and US$27.99 above 40ft; days 16 to 30 double those; beyond 30 days they double again, to
US$37.28, US$74.56 and US$111.84. Those are the rates in the edition indexed by 0.39% with
effect from 1 May 2026; the tariff is re-indexed annually, so check the current edition
before planning against them. The port's other four container terminals publish their own
storage tariffs, with their own free periods, set out on the
[Nhava Sheva port page](/port/nhava-sheva).

Both terminals are operated by DP World, which JNPA's own terminal listing confirms for
NSICT. Same operator, one ocean apart, and the free allowance differs by a factor of more
than three. Whatever number your desk carries in its head for "how long we have at the
port", it is right for at most one lane.

## The clocks do not even count the same days

This is the part that survives into the invoice dispute, and almost nothing written about
demurrage mentions it.

NSICT's scale of rates says the storage period "shall be reckoned from the day following
the day of landing", and that free dwell time "shall be exclusive of customs notified
holidays and port non-working days". Jebel Ali counts from the date of discharge. A
carrier's demurrage free time is ordinarily counted in straight calendar days from
discharge.

So on one container you can have two free periods that begin on different days and consume
days at different rates. A public holiday costs you a demurrage day and no storage day. The
[last free day](/glossary/last-free-day) you wrote on the file is one of two, and a desk
working to a single date is working to the wrong one about half the time.

Three further clauses in the same section are worth reading before an invoice arrives:
hazardous containers attract storage 25% above the ordinary slab, over-dimensional and
over-high containers three times it, and charges denominated in US dollars are recovered in
rupees at the reference rate prevailing on the date the vessel entered port limits — not the
date of the bill.

## When it is not payable

Storage is waivable on grounds written into the tariff, which is a different thing from
negotiation.

NSICT's own notes say users "will not have to pay storage charges for the period during
which NSICT is not in a position to deliver/ shift the containers when requested by the
users", and the section sets out when storage ceases on containers seized or confiscated by
customs. Those are clauses you can cite by number, and they sit beside the Indian customs
route to a waiver on the carrier side, which runs through a
[detention certificate](/glossary/detention-certificate).

None of that helps with the ordinary case. Storage that accrued because the document pack
was not ready is payable, and arguing it is a waste of a week.

## What a desk does about it

Hold both tariffs per lane, and derive two dates rather than one.

The terminal's number can be read off a published document and stored against the port. The
carrier's has to come out of the service contract and be stored against the carrier, the
lane and the equipment type. Then the deadline that matters is the earlier of the two, and
every document in the pack gets a due date counted back from it.

That is the arithmetic. The work is getting the pack finished before the date, which means
chasing a supplier, a bank, a forwarder and a broker who between them owe you six documents
and none of whom reports to you. Software that
[counts free time](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) tells you the date is coming.
It is the chasing that changes whether you make it.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/terminal-storage-charge

---

# Vessel demurrage: the charter-party charge, not the container one

Vessel demurrage is an agreed amount payable to the shipowner for delay to the vessel once laytime has expired, for which the owner is not responsible. It runs between charterer and owner under a voyage charter of bulk or tanker cargo. Container demurrage, which an importer pays a terminal or carrier for a box left inside the port, is a different charge that happens to share the word.

Two charges share the word "demurrage" and they have almost nothing in common except that
somebody is being billed for time.

Vessel demurrage is the charter-party one. Definition 30 of the Laytime Definitions for
Charter Parties 2013 states it as "an agreed amount payable to the owner in respect of
delay to the Vessel once the Laytime has expired, for which the owner is not responsible."
A voyage charterer has bought a ship's carriage and an allowance of time to load or
discharge; run past the allowance and the owner is compensated at a daily rate written into
the charter.

## Which one is on your invoice

Check who sent it before you do anything else.

| | Vessel demurrage | Container demurrage |
|---|---|---|
| Who bills | The shipowner | The terminal, the carrier, or both |
| Who pays | The voyage charterer | The importer, normally the consignee on the bill of lading |
| Governed by | The charter party | The carrier's tariff or your service contract |
| The clock | [Laytime](/glossary/laytime), agreed per voyage | [Free time](/glossary/free-time), set by tariff |
| Calculated from | The statement of facts | The discharge date and the gate-out date |
| Typical cargo | Bulk, tanker, breakbulk | Containers |
| The rate | Written into the charter | The tariff's daily tiers |

If your cargo moved in boxes, the charge on your desk is the second column and the entry
you want is [demurrage on a container import](/glossary/demurrage). Everything below is the
first column.

## Why it is more than a late fee

Vessel demurrage is compensation for the owner's ship being held up, agreed in advance so
that neither side has to prove loss when it happens. That character has consequences.

**The rate is not negotiable after the fact.** It was agreed when the charter was fixed.
Arguing about it once the vessel has sailed is arguing about the wrong thing.

**Once on demurrage, always on demurrage.** The general rule is that when laytime expires,
the exceptions that would have stopped the laytime clock no longer stop the demurrage
clock. Weather, holidays and stoppages that were excluded from laytime keep running once
you are on demurrage. A charter can displace that, but only by saying so clearly, and the
absence of clear words is the reason many charterers discover the rule the expensive way.

**The argument is almost always about the statement of facts.** Both sides calculate from
the same signed record of what happened at the port. The dispute is which hours in it were
laytime, which were excepted, and when the notice of readiness validly started the clock.

**Charters commonly time-bar the claim.** Tanker charters in particular require a demurrage
claim to be presented within a stated period with specified supporting documents, and a
claim that misses it can fail regardless of merit. The period and the document list are in
the charter.

## What this shares with the container problem

One thing, and it is the thing this site is about: the money is decided by whether a set of
documents and timestamps was assembled correctly and on time, not by anything that happened
at sea.

On a charter that means the statement of facts, the notices, the pumping logs and the
letters of protest. On a container import it means the invoice, the packing list, the
certificate of origin and the bill of lading reaching the customs broker before the last
free day. Different documents, same failure: nobody owned the chase, so the paper arrived
after the clock had already run.

## Where Docket sits, and does not

Docket does not calculate laytime and does not draft or defend a charter-party demurrage
claim. That is a specialist discipline with specialist software, and a product built for
container document packs has no business pretending otherwise.

What Docket does is the container side: read the purchase contract, derive the deadline
from the discharge date, chase every party who owes a document, and check each one before
it goes anywhere near a bank. If that is the problem you actually have, the
[demurrage and detention page](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) is the right one.

Source: https://dodocket.com/glossary/vessel-demurrage

---

# Demurrage and detention software: four kinds, one prevents

Four products sell as demurrage and detention software: container visibility with free-time alerts, invoice audit and dispute tools, laytime claims software for chartered vessels, and document-chase software that finishes the pack inside free time. The first three act after the clock has started. Packs run about eight days late; a week of demurrage on one container has cost US$12,000.

Type demurrage and detention software into a search box and the first page of results is
four different products wearing one name. They do not compete with each other. They are
bought by different people, on different days, to fix different failures.

Here is what each one does, in its own words, and which day of the shipment it shows up.

## Why does one search return four products?

Because the charge has one name and several causes.

[Demurrage](/glossary/demurrage) is the carrier's charge for a container inside the
terminal past its free days. [Detention](/glossary/detention) is the charge for the
carrier's equipment outside the terminal past its return date. Both are set by the
carrier's tariff or your service contract, and both start counting without asking you.

What starts them is not one thing. A bill of lading that arrived on day six. A customs
hold. A transporter who could not get a slot. A vessel that discharged on Friday evening.
Each failure has a vendor.

The US Federal Maritime Commission's interpretive rule on the subject is a useful anchor
here. It tests these charges against what it calls the incentive principle: whether the
charge serves to move cargo. From the importer's seat that reads simply. The charge exists
to make you finish. The software question is what "finish" means on your desk.

One note on the vocabulary before the four kinds, because it decides which results you
are reading. The category is sold as demurrage and detention software, as D&D software,
as demurrage management software and, shortest of all, as
[demurrage software](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software). That last phrasing pulls
in charter-party laytime as well as containers, so a results page under it will mix two
unrelated trades. Everything below is about containers on an import.

## Kind one: visibility and free-time alerts

This is the largest group and the one most searches land on.

The products track the container through the carrier's milestones, count down the
[free days](/glossary/free-time), and alert a person when the
[last free day](/glossary/last-free-day) is close. The
product pages promise alerts before free time expires, and status colours that move from
normal to approaching to incurring as the free days run down. project44 sells the same
idea inside a visibility platform, with the last free demurrage day as a data point beside
holds and availability.

What they are for: knowing where every box stands, across carriers, without logging into
each portal. That is a real problem on a desk with forty open shipments and it is worth
solving.

What none of them usually tells you is whose free time is being counted. The number comes
off a carrier's milestone feed, so it is the carrier's allowance; the terminal is running
its own [storage clock on the same container](/blog/demurrage-software-counts-one-clock-ports-have-two),
on a published tariff, with a different start date and often a very different number of
free days.

What they do on the day that matters: they tell you. An alert that free time expires on
Thursday, sent on Tuesday, is only useful if the thing that will make you late can be fixed
in two days. If the thing that makes you late is a document the exporter has not sent,
the alert arrived a week after the useful moment.

## Kind two: invoice audit and dispute

The second group works after the charge has been raised.

The carrier's invoice is checked against the free time and rates in your contract. The gate
and pick-up messages are kept as evidence, so that a deviation can be shown and a dispute
with the carrier argued. project44's release
talks about auditing pick-up and gate messages "to refute inappropriate charges". Cocoon
sells a calculator that applies contract rates and carrier rules so the number on the
invoice can be tested.

What they are for: paying the right amount, not the invoiced amount. Carriers make
mistakes, free-time terms get lost in folders, and a desk that pays every demurrage invoice
as billed is leaving money with the line.

What they do on the day that matters: nothing, because the day that mattered was three
weeks earlier. Audit is the product you buy when prevention already failed. It is worth
having. It is not a substitute.

## Kind three: laytime and demurrage claims

The third group is a different trade and the word is the only thing it shares.

On a chartered bulk or tanker vessel, demurrage is the charterer's payment for exceeding
the laytime allowed under the charter party, calculated from the statement of facts. It is
a claim, prepared and argued, sometimes for months. Marcura's own article on demurrage
software says out loud that this is "the other kind", and that their platform is about
"laytime and demurrage on a chartered vessel moving oil, chemicals or dry bulk".

If you searched for demurrage software and your cargo is in containers, this group is not
for you, and the pages will tell you so in the second paragraph. If your cargo is a bulk
parcel on a chartered ship, none of the other three groups apply, and neither does this
article.

## Kind four: finishing the pack before free time ends

The fourth kind starts from a different premise. It treats the paperwork as the cause.

On an import desk, the container is rarely late. The paper is. Free time starts at
discharge, and the document pack starts when the last party in the chain decides to act:
the exporter, the bank, the insurer, the chamber, the forwarder, the CHA. Packs routinely
run about **eight days** late against free time. A week of demurrage on one container has
cost **US$12,000**.

None of those eight days is a tracking problem. A visibility tool would have shown the box
sitting there, correctly, every one of them.

So this kind of [demurrage and detention software](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software)
works the other clock. It derives the last free day from discharge and the contract's free
time, takes the full document checklist for the lane and the letter of credit, assigns each
item to the party who owes it with a deadline set backwards from the last free day, chases
every party daily, and escalates when someone goes quiet: email first, WhatsApp at 24
hours, SMS at 48, an AI voice call at 72.

What it is for: having nothing to pay, because the pack was complete on day four.

What it does on the day that matters: the chasing, on the day the chase should start. Not
the alert. The email, the follow-up, the call.

## Which day do you want to find out?

Put the four on one timeline and the choice makes itself.

| Kind | Sold as | Acts on | Tells you or does it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visibility and alerts | Demurrage tracking, D&D management, container visibility | The last few free days | Tells you |
| Audit and dispute | Freight audit, D&D optimisation, deviation evidence | After the invoice | Tells you what to argue |
| Laytime claims | Laytime and demurrage software | After the voyage, on a charter party | Prepares the claim |
| Document chase | Demurrage prevention, demurrage and detention software | Before free time starts | Does it |

Three of the four are honest, useful products. Two of them belong on a large import desk
alongside the fourth: you want to see the box, and you want to check the invoice. But if
you buy either of them to stop paying demurrage, you have bought a clock to fix a document
problem.

The question to ask any vendor is short. On the day the exporter has not sent the bill of
lading, what does your product do? If the answer is "shows you that the free days are
running out", you have found the first kind.

There are five more questions worth putting to a vendor, and the separate piece on
[how to choose demurrage and detention software](/blog/how-to-choose-demurrage-and-detention-software)
works through them. The sharpest one asks whether the product can produce, for a
container that moved last month, the same lines a carrier's invoice is legally required
to carry.

## What the fourth kind does not do

It is worth being as plain about this as the other three are about their limits.

Document-chase software does not move containers, book trucks or talk to the terminal. It
does not file the customs declaration; your customs broker does — the declaring agent in
Singapore, the clearing agent in Dubai, the CHA in India — and that is their licence. It does not
remove congestion, customs holds, inspection queues or equipment shortages, and any of
those can produce demurrage no software touches. It does not dispute a charge after the
fact, though the record it keeps is the timeline a dispute turns on.

What it removes is the eight days that came from paperwork. On most import desks, that is
most of the gap.

## Where to start

Take your last three demurrage invoices and, for each one, write down the day the document
pack was actually complete and the day free time ended. If the pack was late on two of the
three, the visibility tool would have shown you the problem and the audit tool would have
priced it. Neither would have changed it.

If you have paid demurrage because a document was late, bring the invoice and the
timeline. We will show you which day the chase would have started.

Source: https://dodocket.com/blog/demurrage-and-detention-software-what-each-kind-does

---

# Demurrage software counts one clock. The port runs another

Software sold as demurrage and detention software counts the carrier's free time and shows one last free day. An import container usually runs a second clock too: the terminal's own storage tariff, published, and not counted the same way. Jebel Ali gives 10 free days from discharge; NSICT at Nhava Sheva gives 3 from the day after landing, excluding customs holidays. Both are DP World terminals.

Every product in this category shows you a date. The last free day, in a coloured chip, with
a countdown beside it. It is the single most reproduced interface element in container
logistics software, and on a large share of shipments it is answering a different question
from the one the desk asked.

The date is the carrier's. The container is also standing on somebody's ground, and that
party has a tariff of its own.

## Two bills, two owners, one box

An import container that clears late can generate two separate charges for overlapping days.
The carrier bills [demurrage](/glossary/demurrage) for the use of its container. The
terminal bills a [terminal storage charge](/glossary/terminal-storage-charge) for the use of
its yard.

American rules put both under one definition, which is where a good deal of the confusion
starts. 46 CFR § 541.3 defines demurrage or detention as charges assessed by carriers or
terminal operators "related to the use of marine terminal space (e.g., land) or shipping
containers, but not including freight charges". One sentence, two objects: land, or box.

That definition is tidy in a US trade, where the carrier commonly bills both and the
importer sees one line. Ship into Jebel Ali or Nhava Sheva and the tidiness disappears. The
terminal has a published scale of rates, the carrier has your service contract, and the two
documents do not agree about anything: not the number of free days, not the day the count
starts, and not which days count.

## Three days, or ten, from the same company

Take the two terminals, and read their own numbers.

**Jebel Ali** allows an ordinary import full container **10 free days**, counted from the
date of discharge from the vessel. After that it is AED 82 a day up to 20ft and AED 164 over
20ft for five days, then AED 153 and AED 306. The bands are in DP World's published UAE
Region tariff book and are set out in full on the [Jebel Ali port page](/port/jebel-ali).

**Nhava Sheva International Container Terminal** allows **3**. Section 9 of its scale of
rates, in the edition indexed by 0.39% with effect from 1 May 2026, prices import FCL and
LCL storage at nothing for days 0 to 3, then:

| Days | Up to 20ft | Above 20ft to 40ft | Above 40ft |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0–3 | Free | Free | Free |
| 4–15 | US$9.33 | US$18.66 | US$27.99 |
| 16–30 | US$18.64 | US$37.28 | US$55.92 |
| Beyond 30 | US$37.28 | US$74.56 | US$111.84 |

Both terminals are operated by DP World. JNPA's own listing of its container terminals names
the operator for NSICT, and the UAE tariff book is published by the same group. One company,
two ports, and a free allowance that differs by more than a factor of three.

There is no regional rule to infer here, and no company policy to carry between lanes. The
number belongs to the terminal.

## The clocks do not count the same days

This is the part that decides disputes, and it is almost never written down outside the
tariff itself.

NSICT's note to Section 9 says the storage period "shall be reckoned from the day following
the day of landing", and that free dwell time "shall be exclusive of customs notified
holidays and port non-working days". Jebel Ali counts from the date of discharge. A
carrier's demurrage free time is ordinarily counted in plain calendar days from discharge.

Put those together on one shipment and you get two free periods that start on different days
and burn days at different rates. A public holiday at Nhava Sheva costs a demurrage day and
no storage day. Over a long weekend the two [last free days](/glossary/last-free-day) can
drift two or three days apart, in either direction depending on the port.

Three more clauses in the same section change the number materially, and none of them is
visible in a countdown chip: hazardous containers are charged storage 25% above the ordinary
slab, over-high and over-dimensional containers three times it, and dollar-denominated
charges are recovered in rupees at the reference rate prevailing on the day the vessel
entered port limits rather than the day of the invoice.

## The test to run on a vendor

None of this is a reason not to buy software. It is a reason to ask one question before you
do, and the answer sorts the category faster than a feature list.

**Whose free time is the date on the screen?**

There are three honest answers and one bad one.

1. *The carrier's, from a data feed.* Most common. Fine, as long as you know it and hold the
   terminal's tariff somewhere else.
2. *The terminal's, from its tariff.* Rare, and useful mainly at ports that publish.
3. *The earlier of the two, held per lane.* What the desk needs.
4. *We show the last free day.* This is the bad answer, because it means nobody has asked the
   question, and the number on the screen is whichever one the integration happened to carry.

Ask it of any [demurrage and detention software](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software)
you are evaluating, including ours, and ask where the terminal side is stored. A product that
cannot say is not wrong about the carrier's date; it is silent about the second bill, which
is the one that arrives after the argument about the first has been settled.

## Why a second clock does not change the work

Holding two dates instead of one is a data problem and it is solved by typing. What neither
date does is move itself.

The reason a container is still on the ground on day eleven is almost never that nobody knew
the date. It is that a document pack was not finished: the bill of lading not released,
the [delivery order](/glossary/delivery-order) unsettled, the declaration queued behind an
invoice a supplier has not sent. Packs routinely run about eight days late against free time,
and a week of demurrage on a single container has cost US$12,000 — before the terminal's
storage bill is added to it.

Counting backwards from the earlier of two clocks is the arithmetic. Getting six parties to
produce nine documents before that date is the job, and it is done by asking, and asking
again, on the channels those people answer. That is the part
[how to choose demurrage and detention software](/blog/how-to-choose-demurrage-and-detention-software)
comes down to, and it is why the date on the screen, whichever clock it came from, was
never the product.

Source: https://dodocket.com/blog/demurrage-software-counts-one-clock-ports-have-two

---

# My exporter is not sending the shipping documents

A supplier goes quiet because your follow-up has no schedule and no consequence. Fix it with a timer, not a tone: email today, WhatsApp at 24 hours, SMS at 48, a phone call at 72. Chasing suppliers costs 30–45 minutes per container, and it is the single largest recoverable block of desk time.

Ravi runs documentation on an import desk. On a Tuesday morning he has forty-one open shipments and one supplier in a different country who has not answered three emails about a corrected packing list. He sends a fourth. It is politer than the third. It works about as well.

That supplier is not ignoring Ravi. That supplier has an inbox too, and in it Ravi's request is one line among eighty, with no deadline attached to it and no consequence behind it.

The exporter who will not send documents is not a relationship problem. It is a follow-up problem with no owner and no schedule.

## Why does an exporter go quiet on documents?

Four reasons, in rough order of frequency.

The document does not exist yet. The certificate of origin is with a chamber of commerce, the survey report is with a surveyor, the mill test certificate is with a mill. The supplier has nothing to send and no incentive to say so, because saying so invites another email.

The document exists and it is wrong. The supplier knows the weight on the packing list disagrees with the invoice. Sending it starts an argument. Not sending it postpones one.

The request is unclear. "Please send the documents" is not a request. It is a mood. The supplier does not know which document, in which format, by when, or what happens if it is late.

The request has no cost attached. Nothing happens on day one. Nothing happens on day three. On day nine [something happens, at the port, to you](/blog/why-am-i-paying-demurrage).

Notice that only one of those four is about the supplier being difficult. Three of them are about how the ask was made.

Which is also why [demurrage and detention alert software](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) does not fix this. An alert tells you the last free day is close. You knew. The document is still sitting with a chamber of commerce, or sitting on a desk because sending it starts an argument, and no countdown on a screen has ever asked anybody for it.

## What is the escalation ladder, and why does it work?

The ladder is four steps on a clock. Not four tones of voice.

| Step | Channel | When | The ask |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Email | Day 0 | Named document, named field, named date |
| 2 | WhatsApp | +24 hours | Same ask, one line, on the phone in their hand |
| 3 | SMS | +48 hours | Same ask, shorter, gets past a full WhatsApp |
| 4 | Voice call | +72 hours | Same ask, spoken, to a person who must answer or decline |

Three things make this work and none of them are the technology.

The ask never changes. Same document, same field, same date, four times. A supplier who gets four different phrasings thinks four different people are confused. A supplier who gets the same sentence four times understands that this one is not going away.

The channel changes. Email is where requests go to queue. WhatsApp is where this trade lives. A voice call is the only channel where a human has to say yes or no in real time. Moving up the ladder is not aggression, it is arriving somewhere the message will be read.

The timer replaces the judgement. This is the part that matters on a busy desk. Ravi with forty-one shipments has to decide, every hour, which supplier deserves a nudge. That decision is expensive and he gets it wrong under load, in a predictable direction: the loud shipment gets chased and the quiet one goes to demurrage. A fixed timer takes the decision off him entirely.

## What should the chasing message say?

Bad, and the most common message in this trade:

> Hi, please send the documents at the earliest. Thanks.

Good:

> Packing list for BL SLBK-4471, container MSKU 731. Gross weight shows 24,180 kg. Contract and invoice both say 24,860 kg. Please send an amended packing list with 24,860 kg by Thursday 5pm your time. We file the [Bill of Entry](/glossary/bill-of-entry) Friday.

Six things are in the second message. The shipment reference. The document. The exact field. The exact value. A deadline with a time zone. The reason the deadline exists.

The second message gets answered because it is answerable. The supplier can act on it in ninety seconds without opening a thread or asking a colleague. The first message requires the supplier to reconstruct your problem before they can help with it, and nobody does unpaid work to make someone else's email make sense.

The ICC's document-examination standards, ISBP 745, exist because banks refuse documents over exactly this class of mismatch: [a weight, a description, a spelling that disagrees across two pages of the same pack](/blog/import-document-checklist-that-actually-holds). The bank will catch it. The bank will catch it three weeks later, after the box has been sitting at a terminal. Catch it at the supplier and it costs one message.

## How much is the chase costing you?

Timed container by container, the work breaks down like this.

| Task | Time per container |
|---|---|
| Supplier follow-ups | 30–45 min |
| Export doc-pack prep and checking | 45–90 min |
| Status tracking and reporting | 20–30 min |
| Payment tracking | 10–15 min |

[About 2.2 hours a container](/blog/how-much-desk-time-a-container-really-takes), with a real range of 2 to 2.5 depending on how cooperative the supplier is that week. Sitting on top of that, and belonging to the desk instead of the container, is one to two hours a day of price collection: asking every supplier what they are quoting this morning.

Five hundred containers a month works out at roughly 1,100 hours. Seven people at 176 hours each gives you 1,232. The desk is at about ninety percent capacity on grunt work before anyone buys or sells anything.

The follow-up line is 30 to 45 minutes of that, and it is the most recoverable block on the sheet, because almost none of it is judgement. It is the same message, to a different supplier, on a different day, sent by a person whose actual skill is knowing what a wrong weight means.

## What if the exporter is not the problem?

Run this check before you escalate, because on a busy desk a meaningful share of "the supplier has not sent it" turns out to be something else.

The document arrived and nobody logged it. It is in a shared mailbox, in a thread with a subject line about something else, sent to a colleague who was covering last Thursday. The supplier has been answered and the desk does not know.

The document went to the wrong party. Suppliers send packs to whoever they dealt with last. If your CHA received it directly, your file is empty and the shipment is fine.

The request never left your building. Somebody decided to raise it after the price discussion concluded, then the price discussion took four days.

You are waiting on your own instruction. The supplier is holding the certificate of origin because they asked which consignee name to put on it, three emails ago, and that question is sitting with your commercial team.

Check those four before you send a fourth email, and check them in that order. The last one is the most common and the most embarrassing, because the escalation ladder works beautifully at chasing a supplier for an answer only you can give.

## What do I do when the supplier still will not answer?

Three moves, and take them in this order.

1/ Change who you are asking. The person on the email thread is often a sales contact with no access to a mill certificate. Ask them, once, who issues the document. Then ask that person.

2/ Attach the consequence to the date, in writing, before the date. "If the amended packing list is not with us by Thursday, we file with the original weight and the discrepancy sits on your invoice." Not a threat. A schedule.

3/ Bring the buying decision into the room. The single fastest unblock in this trade is the person who signs the next purchase order asking the question. It works because it changes what the supplier is protecting.

If none of those work, you have learned something about that supplier that belongs in the file, and the next contract should carry a document deadline with a stated remedy in it.

## The gap in this post

The timings here are an operational baseline, not an industry survey. Follow-up load moves with commodity, lane, supplier mix and how much your CHA absorbs, so treat 30 to 45 minutes as the shape of the problem rather than a number to quote back at your own team. Count yours for a week and you will have something better than this page.

The escalation ladder runs in a live demo against a real import SOP end to end. What it does on day three with your slowest supplier is the test that matters, and that one is worth running before you believe any of this.

## Where Docket fits

Docket does the chase. It reads your purchase contract, works out which documents are due and when, and sends the specific ask on email, then WhatsApp at 24 hours, then SMS at 48, then an AI voice call. Same ask each time, on channels your counterparties already use, with no portal for anyone to sign up for. Docket is built to handle about 85% of supplier chasing without a person — an 85% cut in the operations cost per shipment on the chase, taking 2.2 hours down to roughly 20 minutes of human time.

The judgement stays with Ravi. What leaves him is the part where he decides, forty-one times a morning, who to nudge.

Start smaller than the product. Pick your five worst suppliers this week, set a 24-hour timer on each open document, and send the same specific ask up the ladder. Count what comes back by Friday.

A supplier answers a deadline. A supplier does not answer a mood.

Source: https://dodocket.com/blog/exporter-not-sending-shipping-documents

---

# Food imports clear at 171 points of entry. Book to the 172nd and wait.

Imported food is cleared in India only at points of entry where FSSAI has notified an authorised officer. After CBIC Instruction 04/2026 of 20 April 2026 there are 171 of them: 28 seaports, 19 airports, 89 ICDs and SEZs, 35 land customs stations. The list is set by notification and grows a few at a time, so the port on your booking is a document check, not a logistics preference.

There is a question that does not appear on any import checklist and decides whether a
food consignment clears this week or next month: is the port on the booking one where
FSSAI has an officer?

Imported food in India is released only after the Food Safety and Standards Authority has
looked at it. That looking is done by an authorised officer, and authorised officers exist
only at the points of entry FSSAI has notified. Book a container of pulses or edible oil
to a port that is not on the notification and there is nobody there to draw the sample,
scrutinise the documents or issue the no-objection certificate. The customs entry can be
filed. The food cannot be cleared.

## The list, as of April 2026

CBIC Instruction 04/2026-Customs of 20 April 2026 relayed FSSAI's current list to every
customs formation: **171 points of entry**, made up of 28 seaports, 19 airports, 89
inland container depots and SEZs, and 35 land customs stations. The instruction pulls
together two FSSAI notifications, of 6 January 2026 and 9 April 2026, which between them
added five inland points: ICD Dhirpur in Haryana, the Electronic SEZ Park at Gandhinagar,
ICD Naya Raipur, ICD Dahej and ICD Varnama.

Two things about that list matter to a desk.

It is set by notification, not by geography. A port with a customs house and a container
terminal is not automatically a food point of entry; it becomes one when FSSAI names an
officer there. The five points added this year were all inland depots that had customs
formations for years.

And it grows a few at a time. 165 in 2024, 166 later, 168 in January, 171 in April. A
desk that checked the list once, when it set up its lanes, is working from a list that is
now wrong in both directions: points that have been added, and the occasional point whose
officer has been withdrawn.

## Why this is a document problem, not a logistics one

A desk thinks of the discharge port as a freight decision: the forwarder's routing, the
consignee's location, the inland leg. For food it is a document decision, because the
port determines whether the [Bill of Entry](/glossary/bill-of-entry) can be followed by
the one thing that releases the goods.

The consequence lands on the free-time clock. FSSAI clearance is itself a sequence:
documents scrutinised, goods visually inspected, a sample drawn where the authority's
risk profile calls for it, a laboratory report due within five days of the laboratory
receiving the sample. That is a rule the 2025 amendment to the Import Regulations
restated with effect from 1 May 2026, and it is a laboratory's five days, not the
whole clearance. All of it runs after discharge, inside [free time](/glossary/free-time).
At a point of entry with an officer, a sampled consignment can spend most of a short
free-time allowance waiting for a result. At a point of entry without one, the wait has
no end date until the goods move.

Document packs routinely run about **eight days late** against free time on ordinary
cargo. A week of demurrage on one container has cost about **US$12,000**. Food is
perishable and the demurrage is the smaller loss.

## The check that prevents it

One line, at contract time, before the booking: is the intended port of discharge on the
current FSSAI notification? If it is, the food pack is the usual set plus the
[agricultural documents](/industries/agri-commodities) the commodity carries: the
importer's own FSSAI licence, labels that meet the standards, the plant-quarantine permit
and [phytosanitary certificate](/glossary/phytosanitary-certificate) where the commodity
needs them. If it is not, the booking changes before the goods ship, which costs an email.
After the goods ship, it costs a port.

The check is cheap because the list is public and short. It gets missed because it does
not live on any document in the pack; it lives on a notification that changes three or
four times a year and that nobody on the desk is asked to reread.

## Where Docket sits

Docket does not clear food, does not draw samples and does not talk to FSSAI. The
authorised officer's decision is the officer's.

What Docket does is treat the port as part of the document set. When the purchase
contract is recorded and the commodity is food, the port of discharge is checked against
the notified points of entry as a document item, with a date: before booking. The rest of
the food pack, the licence, the labels, the plant-quarantine permit, the phytosanitary
certificate, is derived from the contract and the lane, with the party who owes each one,
and chased daily on email, then WhatsApp, SMS and an AI voice call. Every date counts back
from the last free day with the laboratory's five days already taken out of it.

That is the [import document checking](/solutions/import-document-checking-software) job
applied to the one document that is not a document, the port on the booking. About
**65%** of the checking and about **85%** of the chasing is built to run without a
person. The decision to ship to a port that is not on the list stays with you, which is
the point: it should be a decision, not a discovery.

Source: https://dodocket.com/blog/food-import-points-of-entry-india

---

# How much desk time does one container really take?

One container takes about 2.2 hours of desk work: 30–45 min chasing the supplier, 45–90 min on the document pack, 20–30 min tracking, 10–15 min on payments. At 500 containers a month that is roughly 1,100 hours against a seven-person desk's 1,232, so about 90% of the team is consumed before anyone trades.

Ask a trader what one container costs to process and you get a shrug. Ask the documentation executive on the same desk and you get a number to the minute, because that is the person doing the work.

We asked them. Then we timed it, container by container, before we wrote a line of product code.

Two point two hours.

## Where do the 2.2 hours go?

| Task | Time per container |
|---|---|
| Supplier follow-ups | 30–45 min |
| Export doc-pack prep and checking | 45–90 min |
| Status tracking and reporting | 20–30 min |
| Payment tracking | 10–15 min |

The real range is 2 to 2.5 hours, and the variable is the supplier. A cooperative supplier who sends a correct pack the first time takes you to the bottom of the range. One who sends [a packing list whose gross weight disagrees with the invoice](/blog/import-document-checklist-that-actually-holds) takes you to the top, because the correction loop touches every downstream document.

Look at the widest band on that table. Document-pack prep swings from 45 minutes to 90, a full 45-minute spread on a single line. That spread is not skill. It is rework.

Sitting on top of all four lines, and belonging to no container at all, is **1 to 2 hours a day of price collection**. Someone asks every supplier what they are quoting this morning, and lays the answers out against yesterday. It is a fixed daily tax on the desk. It never shows up in a per-container estimate. It always shows up in the payroll.

## What does 2.2 hours a container do to a seven-person desk?

This is the arithmetic that changes the conversation, and it is four lines long.

| Line | Value |
|---|---|
| Containers a month | 500 |
| Hours consumed at 2.2 h each | ~1,100 |
| Desk capacity: 7 people × 176 hours | 1,232 |
| Share of capacity on grunt work | ~90% |

Ninety percent.

The desk is not busy because trade is busy. The desk is busy because the coordination has no owner and lands, by default, on the people who are best at documents. Buying and selling happens in the ten percent that is left, which is one reason a good trading desk plateaus at a volume that has nothing to do with its credit line.

Nothing on that list is hard. Nothing on it is un-automatable because the work is subtle. It is un-automated because every ERP, every CTRM and every documentation tool on the market records what already happened and then hands the follow-up back to a human.

## What is that time worth in money?

Take Singapore, since it is one of the two markets we sell into and its cost structure is public.

Market rates for the four roles a trade-ops desk hires, from 2025–26 listings:

| Role | Base S$/month |
|---|---|
| Trade ops / shipping manager | 7,000–8,500 |
| Trade operations executive | 4,200–5,500 |
| Export documentation executive | 3,300–4,500 |
| Shipping / ops coordinator | 2,800–3,500 |

A representative seven-person desk is S$30,000 to S$36,000 a month in base payroll. Load it with 17% employer CPF, applied to wages up to the Ordinary Wage ceiling, and the customary annual wage supplement, and you land at **S$38,000 to S$44,000 a month**. Call it S$460,000 to S$530,000 a year, roughly US$340,000 to US$390,000.

That is the price of the desk. Ninety percent of it is going to the four lines in the first table.

## How do I measure this on my own desk?

Do not run a time-and-motion study. Nobody finishes those. Run this instead, and it takes one week.

1/ Pick twenty shipments that are live right now. Not your best twenty. The next twenty.

2/ Make four columns and only four: supplier follow-ups, document pack, tracking and reporting, payment tracking. Resist adding a fifth. Five columns is where these exercises die.

3/ Log minutes at the end of each block of work, not once at day's end. Memory at 6pm rounds everything to fifteen minutes and hides the rework.

4/ Log the rework separately, in the same column. When a document comes back wrong, that is a second entry against the same shipment, not an extension of the first.

5/ At the end of the week, divide by twenty. Then multiply by your monthly container count. Then divide by 176 to get the answer in people.

That last number is the one to walk into a management meeting with. Hours are abstract. "This is 4.25 people" is not.

Two warnings for anyone running this. Your team will guess low in week one, by a wide margin, because the follow-ups feel like nothing. Each individual follow-up is nothing. And your document-pack numbers will be higher than you expect on exactly the shipments where the supplier is a long-standing relationship, because the packs from familiar suppliers get checked less and corrected more.

## Why does everyone guess low?

Three reasons, and they compound.

Each follow-up is small. Four minutes to write a message asking for a corrected weight. Nobody logs four minutes. Nobody remembers four minutes at 6pm. [The follow-up line](/blog/exporter-not-sending-shipping-documents) disappears from every estimate a desk makes about itself, and it is 30 to 45 minutes a container.

The waiting is invisible. A shipment that sits three days for a reply consumed no hours, so it costs nothing on a timesheet and [everything at the terminal](/blog/why-am-i-paying-demurrage). Time-to-answer and time-spent are different measurements and only one of them shows up in payroll.

The rework is filed under the original task. A pack corrected twice is remembered as "doing the pack", not as three separate pieces of work. That is why the document line swings 45 minutes and why the swing is invisible to the person doing it.

There is a fourth, softer one. People undercount work they are good at. The documentation executive who has done this for four years does not experience the check as effort, so they report it as fifteen minutes when the log says forty.

## What share of it can a machine take?

We publish three automation rates separately, because a single blended claim hides where the product is weak.

| Work | Share automated |
|---|---|
| Supplier chasing | 85% |
| Document-pack drafting | 65% |
| Tracking and reporting | 85% |
| **Blended across the desk** | **~70%** |

Sixty-five percent on document drafting is the weakest line and it is the honest one. Drafting a pack against a contract and a set of masters gets you most of the way. The last stretch is judgement about a specific counterparty in a specific country, and we are not going to claim a machine does that today.

Applied to the 500-container desk, 70% of 1,100 hours is **770 hours a month**. At 176 hours a person, that is 4.25 people of capacity.

Two rates live in this business and mixing them inflates the answer. The 85% figure is the cut in operations cost on the chase, which is what takes a container from 2.2 hours to about 20 minutes of human time. The 70% figure is the blended rate across all desk work, which is what you use for a whole-desk calculation. Computing freed hours from the 20-minute figure would overstate the result by about a fifth. It is a tempting mistake and a prospect with a calculator will find it.

## Capacity, not headcount

Here is the framing that matters, and it is not a marketing preference.

At 70% blended, the same seven people handle 1,000 to 1,200 containers instead of 500. Or two or three of them move to buying and selling, which is the work that makes money.

Nobody forwards an internal memo that reads as "fire four people". A trader will forward a memo that reads as "we double volume without hiring", because that memo is about growth, and growth is what they are paid on. If your business case only works by removing people, it will not survive contact with the person who has to present it upstairs.

## The gap in this post

These timings are an operational baseline, not an industry benchmark, and calling them one would be a claim you could check and break. They describe a desk running physical commodity imports with documents on the critical path. The method below is the transferable part — run it on your own desk for a week and your number beats ours by definition.

The Singapore cost basis is market listings and published CPF rates, not a payroll file. UAE and India loading we have not published, because getting end-of-service gratuity or employer PF wrong is the kind of error a prospect catches in ten seconds.

## Where Docket fits

Docket takes the contract, derives the deadlines, chases the supplier up the ladder from email to WhatsApp to SMS to a voice call, drafts the pack against your masters, and [tracks the box](/blog/replacing-excel-for-import-tracking). On the 500-container desk that is 770 hours a month of desk time removed, worth about US$19,250 at a US$25 loaded hourly cost. Docket at that volume costs US$2,100 a month. Net, US$17,150 a month, or US$205,800 a year.

Money freed minus what we cost. That is the only formula on this site.

Before you look at any product, including ours, go and measure your own twenty shipments. If your number comes back well under 2.2 hours, tell me, and tell me what your desk does differently. I will publish it.

Your desk is leaving about US$200k a year on the table to manually type what a machine learns in a month. If you own that desk, the [software for importers](/for/importer-owner) page puts the same arithmetic in your terms.

Source: https://dodocket.com/blog/how-much-desk-time-a-container-really-takes

---

# How to choose demurrage and detention software

Four products sell as demurrage and detention software and the demo rarely says which one you are in. Six questions separate them: which clock it moves, whether it chases or alerts, where its last free day comes from, whether it can produce the lines a US demurrage invoice must carry by law, and what it costs against a week of demurrage on one container, which has cost US$12,000.

Four products sell under this name, and the demo rarely tells you which one you are
looking at. They share a vocabulary, a set of screenshots and a promise about free time.
They do different things to the number on your invoice, and
[what each kind of demurrage and detention software does](/blog/demurrage-and-detention-software-what-each-kind-does)
is worth reading before any call.

What follows is the shorter version: six questions, each of which has a checkable answer,
and each of which a sales deck will avoid if the answer is inconvenient.

## Which clock does it move

Every import runs two clocks. The port clock starts at discharge and counts down your
free days. The paperwork clock starts whenever the last party in the chain decides to
act: the exporter, the bank, the insurer, the chamber of commerce, the forwarder, the
customs broker.

Demurrage is what you pay when the second clock loses. So the question is not whether the
product knows about demurrage. It is which clock it touches. A tool that reports the port
clock more accurately, more often, in a nicer colour, has still not moved the clock that
decides the outcome.

Ask: what did this product change about the date the pack was complete?

## Does it chase, or does it alert

An alert is a message to you. A chase is a message to the person holding the document.

That distinction sounds pedantic until you count the work. Supplier follow-ups, document
preparation and checking, status tracking and payment tracking run to about 2.2 hours of
desk work per container. An alert adds to that number, because someone on your desk now
has to act on the alert. A chase removes from it.

Ask: who receives the message this product sends, me or the supplier?

## Where does its last free day come from

Free time is not a standard number. It varies by carrier, port, terminal, direction and
equipment, and two lines calling the same port allow different periods. Any product that
shows you a [last free day](/glossary/last-free-day) got it from somewhere, and there are
only two possibilities: your contract, or a generic table.

A generic table is wrong for somebody on every lane, and the person it is wrong for is
the one who plans against it and pays. If the vendor cannot say which carrier tariff or
service contract a date came from, the date is decoration.

Ask: show me the free-time term this date came from, for this carrier and this lane.

## Can it produce the lines an invoice has to carry

This is the question nobody expects, and it is the most useful one, because the answer is
written down in law rather than in a brochure.

In US trade, 46 CFR § 541.6 sets out what a demurrage or detention invoice must contain
as a minimum. Among the required lines: the bill of lading and container numbers, the
allowed free time in days, the start date and the end date of free time, the container
availability date on an import, the rate and the tariff or service contract it comes
from, a contact for questions and the timeframes for requesting mitigation, refund or
waiver, and a certification by the billing party that its own performance did not cause
or contribute to the charge.

Read that list as a specification for your own records rather than the carrier's. For any
container that moved last month, can the product you are buying show you its version of
each line? The date the box became available, the free time that applied, the day the
pack went complete, who was chased and when, and what came back?

If it can, you can check the carrier's invoice against your own account of the same
facts, which is the whole of what it means to be able to
[dispute a demurrage invoice](/blog/how-to-dispute-a-demurrage-invoice). If it cannot,
you have bought a dashboard.

## Does it reach the people who actually hold the paper

The documents that decide the outcome sit with counterparties: a supplier's export
executive, a bank's documentary credit desk, a broker's filing clerk, an inspection
agency. None of them works for you and none of them is going to log in to your portal.

Any product whose chasing model requires the other side to onboard has quietly moved the
hard part onto you, because now you are chasing people to join a system so that the
system can chase them. Ask what channels it reaches counterparties on without their
having to sign up for anything.

## What it costs, against what it is preventing

Price this against an event rather than against a software budget. A week of demurrage on
one container has cost US$12,000. One missed document pack a month annualises to
US$12,000 to US$24,000. Document packs routinely run about eight days late against free
time.

Against those numbers, per-shipment pricing in single-digit dollars is not the decision.
The decision is whether the product changes the eight days. If you want to see the shape
of the exposure on your own lane, the [demurrage calculator](/demurrage-calculator) takes
your own free days and your own per-diem tiers and publishes no tariff of its own.

## What none of them can do

No demurrage and detention software prevents congestion, a customs hold, an inspection or
an equipment shortage. Any vendor claiming otherwise has told you something useful about
the rest of their claims.

What is addressable is the paperwork clock. That is the part caused by a document that
arrived late and a person who did not reply, and it is the part
[demurrage and detention software](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) should be
judged on. Six questions, and the one about the invoice lines is the one that will change
how the call goes.

Source: https://dodocket.com/blog/how-to-choose-demurrage-and-detention-software

---

# How to dispute a demurrage invoice, and why most disputes fail

Disputing a demurrage invoice turns on who is billing you, whether the bill is valid where you trade, and whose days it covers. In US trades the FMC's billing rule sets 30 days to invoice and 30 to contest. In India a detention certificate covers days Customs held the goods. Elsewhere it is contract. Everywhere, days lost to a late document pack are yours, which is why most disputes fail.

The invoice arrives about three weeks after the container finally moved, and it is for
more than the freight was. The instinct is to write back and argue. The disputes that work
do not argue. They list dates, and they attach the paper that proves each one.

Which is why the answer to "how do I dispute this" mostly gets decided weeks before the
invoice exists.

## First, work out who is billing you

There are two bills and they are not the same charge.

[Demurrage](/glossary/demurrage) is the custodian's charge for the box sitting inside the
terminal past its free days. The counterparty is the port, the container freight station or
the inland depot. [Detention](/glossary/detention) is the carrier's charge for its own
equipment being out of the system, and the counterparty is the shipping line. One late
document pack can trigger both, from two parties, on two clocks, under two contracts.

Disputing the wrong one at the wrong party is the most common wasted week on an import
desk. Read the header of the invoice before you read the figure.

## Second, work out whether the bill is even valid

This depends entirely on where the shipment moved, and importers routinely apply the rules
of a trade they are not in.

**US trades.** The Federal Maritime Commission's billing rule, 46 CFR part 541, took effect
on 28 May 2024 and put real limits on the invoice itself. A demurrage or detention invoice
has to be issued within 30 calendar days of the date the charge was last incurred, and where
it is not, the billed party is not required to pay it. The invoice has to carry the
information the rule requires. And it sets minimum dispute windows: at least 30 days for the
billed party to request mitigation, refund or waiver, and at least 30 days for the billing
party to resolve it, with longer periods allowed by agreement.

One part of that rule is gone, and pages written in 2024 still tell you it is there. Section
541.4 limited who could be invoiced to a party in contractual privity or the consignee. In
*World Shipping Council v. FMC*, decided on 23 September 2025, the D.C. Circuit set that
section aside, and the Commission removed it from the regulation by a final rule in January
2026. So "you cannot bill me, I am not the contracting party" is no longer an argument on
the face of the rule. Everything else in part 541 is unaffected and still applies: the issuance deadline, the
content requirements, the dispute windows.

Behind all of it sits the older interpretive rule, 46 CFR § 545.5, which asks whether a
charge served its purpose of getting cargo moving. That is the argument to make when the
charge accrued during a period when nothing you did could have moved the box.

**India.** The route is different and narrower. Regulation 6(1)(l) of the Handling of Cargo
in Customs Areas Regulations, 2009 bars a customs cargo service provider from charging rent
or demurrage on goods seized, detained or confiscated by Customs. The evidence for that
period is a [detention certificate](/glossary/detention-certificate) from the officer or
formation that held the consignment. In *Mumbai Port Trust v. M/s Shri Lakshmi Steels*,
decided on 27 July 2017, the Supreme Court held the port trust was not entitled to
demurrage in view of that regulation, where Customs had issued such a certificate. Note the
scope: the custodian's charge, for the certified days. The line's container detention is a
separate contract and a separate conversation.

**Singapore, the UAE and most other trades.** No statutory equivalent. What you have is the
carrier's tariff, the bill of lading, and whatever free time and waiver language you
negotiated into the service contract. Which means the pressure you have is commercial: your volume
on that lane, next year's rate discussion, and the fact that the line would rather keep the
account than win US$3,000.

## Third, work out whose days they actually were

Here is the table to build before you write anything. One row per day, or per block of days,
with a party against each.

| Period | Whose delay | Recoverable? |
|---|---|---|
| Goods held by Customs for examination, testing or a licence question | The department | In India, via a detention certificate against the custodian's charge |
| Terminal congestion, a strike, equipment shortage, a port closure | The terminal or the carrier | Sometimes, on the interpretive-rule argument in US trades; commercially elsewhere |
| Invoice issued outside the regulatory window, or missing required content | The billing party | In US trades, on the face of the rule |
| Document pack incomplete, supplier unresponsive, invoice disagrees with the packing list | You | No |

Most demurrage invoices are mostly the last row. That is the finding that matters more than
any of the legal footing above, and it is why this post is not a template letter.

## Why most disputes fail

[Free time](/glossary/free-time) starts at discharge. It does not start when your paperwork
is ready, it does not pause at the weekend, and it does not care that the supplier's office
was shut. On the desks this site is written from, the document pack routinely lands about
**eight days** behind free time. Not through negligence: one container takes about **2.2
hours** of desk work, and a seven-person desk running 500 containers a month is at roughly
90% capacity on that work alone before anyone buys or sells anything.

Eight ordinary days, produced by an ordinary desk under ordinary load. And not one of them
is certifiable, waivable or arguable, because nobody else caused them.

So the dispute you can win is the narrow one: the days a third party took, named, dated and
evidenced. Ask for those. Do not bundle them with the other eight and hope the whole thing
gets waived, because bundling is how a request that had a good half in it gets refused
whole.

## What to send, and in what order

1. **Read the invoice against your own contract.** The free days you negotiated, not the
   tariff default. Two lines calling the same port allow different periods.
2. **Check the invoice's own validity** against the rules of the trade it moved in: the
   issuing date, the party billed, and whether the same charge went to someone else too.
3. **Separate the periods** into the table above, with a date range and a party per row.
4. **Attach the paper per row.** The detention certificate, the terminal's own gate and
   availability timestamps, the carrier's notice of arrival, the email in which the party
   who held things up said so.
5. **Ask for the specific days**, in writing, with a number. Not a waiver of the invoice.
6. **Send it to both counterparties separately** where both are billing you, and expect two
   independent answers.

## Do this before the invoice exists

The uncomfortable arithmetic of the section above is that the recoverable half is small and
the preventable half is large. A week of demurrage on one container has cost **US$12,000**
on a reported incident, and the quieter version — one missed document pack a month — runs
**US$12,000 to US$24,000 a year** without ever being big enough to trigger a meeting.

Nothing in a dispute process touches either number reliably. Working the document pack
backwards from the last free day does, because it addresses the eight days rather than
litigating them afterwards. That is what
[demurrage and detention software that works the document pack](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software)
is for: the checklist derived from the purchase contract, the chase running daily on email,
WhatsApp, SMS and then a voice call, and the pack checked before it goes anywhere near a
bank.

The by-product is the dispute file. Every document with the date it arrived and who sent
it, every chase and every reply, in one place. When a bill does land, you are not
reconstructing six weeks of a mailbox to work out which day the pack was complete. You
already know, and so does the person you are writing to.

## The gap in this post

I am not a lawyer and this is not advice on your invoice. The 30-day windows apply to US
trades and nowhere else; the Indian route runs through a certificate you have to apply for
and a regulation addressed to the custodian, not the line; and outside those two, the
footing is contractual and the outcome commercial.

The 2.2 hours, the eight days and the US$12,000 are an operational baseline from an
import–export desk, not an industry survey. A desk buying DDP with a forwarder absorbing
the coordination will see smaller numbers, because it has a smaller problem.

What holds everywhere is the shape of it. Disputes are won on dates. The dates are made, or
lost, in the six weeks before the invoice.

Source: https://dodocket.com/blog/how-to-dispute-a-demurrage-invoice

---

# The import document checklist that actually holds

A document checklist that only names documents will not save you. Packs fail on fields that disagree across pages: weight, description, party name, quantity. Check eight fields across the whole pack instead of ticking eight documents. Doc-pack prep and checking runs 45–90 minutes per container, and one payment-diversion attempt on a single shipment was worth US$62,500.

A packing list showed 24,180 kg. The invoice for the same container showed 24,860 kg. Both documents were present, signed and on time. The pack was complete on every checklist you can download.

It still failed, three weeks later, at a bank counter, with the box on the ground and a clock running.

That is the problem with import document checklists. They check that documents exist. Documents existing is not what fails.

## Why does a complete document pack still get rejected?

Because a document pack is not a list. It is one story told eight times, and it fails at the sentence that disagrees with itself.

The ICC's standards for examining documents, ISBP 745, run to hundreds of paragraphs for exactly this reason. Almost none of it is about whether a document was sent. It is about whether the description on page four matches the description on page one. A bank examiner reads across the pack. A trader ticks down a list. Those are different actions and only one of them catches the error.

Four failure shapes cover most of what goes wrong.

The number that disagrees. Gross weight, net weight, quantity, unit price, total. One of them was corrected on one document and not on the other four.

The name that drifts. "Pte Ltd" on the contract, "Pte. Ltd." on the invoice, the trading name on the certificate of origin. Three spellings of one company.

The description that got helpful. Someone rewrote the goods description to be clearer than the contract. Clearer is worse. The description has to match, not improve.

The date that moved. The shipment date changed, the transport document caught up, the insurance certificate did not.

None of these is a hard problem. Each of them is a five-second comparison that nobody owns.

## What documents does an import shipment need?

Build the list from your contract, not from a template you found. That said, this is the shape of most packs.

| Document | Issued by | What it has to agree with |
|---|---|---|
| Commercial invoice | Seller | Contract: parties, description, quantity, price, incoterm |
| Packing list | Seller | Invoice: quantity, gross and net weight, marks, packages |
| Transport document (BL or AWB) | Carrier | Invoice and packing list: description, marks, weight, consignee |
| Certificate of origin | Chamber or authorised body | Invoice: description, consignee, country of origin |
| Insurance certificate | Insurer | Invoice value and incoterm, plus the transport document dates |
| Inspection or survey report | Independent surveyor | Contract specification and the packing list quantities |
| Analysis or mill certificate | Producer or lab | Contract specification, by grade and composition |
| Import declaration | You or your CHA | All of the above, plus the classification and the valuation |

The right-hand column is the checklist. The left-hand column is the filing system. Most desks treat the left as the work and the right as an afterthought, which is backwards.

## The eight-field check

Do this once across the whole pack instead of eight times down a list.

1/ Party names. Buyer, seller, consignee, notify party. Character for character, against the contract. Not against last month's shipment.

2/ Goods description. One wording, taken from the contract, repeated on every document. Repeat the words. Do not improve them.

3/ Quantity and packages. Number of units, number of packages, and the two agreeing with each other on both the invoice and the packing list.

4/ Gross and net weight. The single most common break we see on metals. Check that gross minus tare equals net on the same page before you check it across pages.

5/ Unit price, total value and currency. Multiply it yourself. A total that was typed instead of calculated is a real category of error.

6/ Incoterm and named place. "CIF" is half an incoterm. "CIF Singapore, Incoterms 2020" is an incoterm. The insurance certificate has to make sense against it.

7/ Dates. Shipment date, document issue dates, any expiry. Nothing dated after the document that depends on it.

8/ Shipping marks and container numbers. Marks on the packing list, container and seal numbers matching the transport document.

Eight fields. Fifteen minutes if the pack is clean. The whole point is that the fifteen minutes is fixed. Three days of correction is not.

## What does this cost on a real desk?

Timed container by container, the work breaks down like this.

| Task | Time per container |
|---|---|
| Supplier follow-ups | 30–45 min |
| Export doc-pack prep and checking | 45–90 min |
| Status tracking and reporting | 20–30 min |
| Payment tracking | 10–15 min |

[About 2.2 hours a container](/blog/how-much-desk-time-a-container-really-takes). The document line is the biggest single block and it carries the widest spread: 45 minutes to 90. That 45-minute swing is rework, and it is the block
[document-checking software](/solutions/import-document-checking-software) exists to
remove. A pack that arrives clean sits at the bottom. A pack with one wrong weight sits at the top, because the correction touches the invoice, the packing list, the certificate of origin and sometimes the transport document.

Multiply. Five hundred containers a month is roughly 1,100 hours, against a seven-person desk's 1,232. Around ninety percent of the team is consumed before anyone buys or sells anything.

And when a pack [misses its window](/blog/why-am-i-paying-demurrage), one missed document pack a month at US$1,000 to US$2,000 an event is **US$12,000 to US$24,000 a year**. No single event is large enough to trigger a meeting. The year-end total is a salary.

Which is why the checklist and the clock are one problem, not two. A [demurrage management system](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) that watches the free days and leaves the pack alone is watching the symptom: the item that ran the pack late is on the list above, and it was late because nobody chased the party holding it.

## Where should the correct values live?

In your masters, and this is the part most desks skip.

A master is one stored record of a thing that repeats: a counterparty, a commodity grade, a port, a bank account, a standard clause. The legal entity name, spelled once, with the suffix punctuated the way it appears on the incorporation certificate. The goods description, worded once, taken from the contract. The consignee and notify blocks, formatted once.

Without masters, every document on every shipment is a fresh opportunity to type a name. With masters, the check stops being a comparison between eight documents and becomes a comparison between each document and one source. That is the difference between twenty-eight pairwise comparisons across a pack and eight straight ones.

Two rules that keep masters honest.

A master is changed on purpose, never in passing. If a counterparty's registered name changes, that is a deliberate edit with a date on it, not something a person fixes inline while assembling a pack at 7pm.

The contract beats the master, once, for that shipment. If a specific deal negotiated a different description or a different named place, the shipment carries the exception and the master stays alone. Exceptions that quietly rewrite the master are how a one-off becomes your default two years later.

Build the masters from your last fifty shipments, not from a blank page. The variation you find while doing it is itself the audit.

## The check that is not on any checklist

While you are examining the pack, someone is examining you.

A [payment-diversion attempt](/glossary/payment-diversion-fraud) arrives inside a legitimate-looking document thread. The email carries a corrected invoice, a plausible reason, and new bank details. It comes at the point in the deal where new bank details are least surprising, which is the point at which you are already frustrated about a correction.

One such attempt, on a single shipment, was worth **US$62,500.**

Four signals stopped it, and they are worth taping to a monitor.

A look-alike sender domain. One character different, or a swapped top-level domain.

Bank details changed mid-deal. There is almost never a good reason for this. If there is one, it survives a phone call.

A beneficiary name that does not match the contract party. The account name is the check, not the account number.

Urgency or secrecy language. "Before end of day." "Do not discuss with the sales team." Pressure is the tell.

The rule that goes with the four signals: confirm on a phone number you already had, from a previous document, before this thread started. Never the number in the email asking for the change.

## The gap in this post

The 2.2 hours and the 45 to 90 minutes are an operational baseline, not a study. The US$62,500 is one payment-diversion attempt on one shipment — a single event, not a rate, and not something to annualise.

The document table above is the common shape of an import pack, not a legal requirement in your country. Commodity, jurisdiction and payment terms all move it. Your customs broker and your bank are the authorities on your specific set, not this page.

## Where Docket fits

Docket drafts the pack from your contracts and masters, then runs the eight-field cross-check before the pack leaves your desk. It also screens every inbound email for the same four fraud signals that gave away the US$62,500 attempt. Document-pack drafting is built to run at about 65% without a person, which is the weakest of our three automation lines and the honest number to publish. The last stretch is judgement about a specific counterparty in a specific country, and a machine does not do that today.

Take the eight fields and run them across your next five packs by hand this week. Count how many break. The answer tends to surprise the person who has been assembling those packs for years.

Documents get filed. Fields get you paid.

And for one cargo the pack has a field that is not on any document at all: whether the port on
the booking is one of the [food import points of entry](/blog/food-import-points-of-entry-india)
FSSAI will clear at.

Source: https://dodocket.com/blog/import-document-checklist-that-actually-holds

---

# Landed cost software: per container first, then per SKU

Landed cost software comes in two kinds. The ERP kind allocates a container's charges across SKUs by value, weight or quantity, so stock is valued and margin per product is known. The import-desk kind collects those charges from the six parties who email them and matches each to the container with evidence. The ERP kind cannot start until the desk kind has finished.

The phrase landed cost software covers two products that do not do the same job, and
almost every page that ranks for it is about the second one.

The first collects the charges. The second allocates them. The second is what inventory
and accounting vendors sell, and it is good. It also cannot start until the first has
finished, and on most import desks the first is a person with a shared mailbox and a
spreadsheet.

## What does the ERP kind of landed cost software do?

It answers the accountant's question: what is each unit on this container now worth?

Read the product pages and the method is the same everywhere. Blue Link describes
allocating landed costs "proportionately" on "different percentages based on weight,
container etc." Finale lists the choices: subtotal, quantity, weight, volume, or equally.
Aquilon says by weight, volume, value or quantity. The charges on a purchase order are
spread across the SKUs on it, the average cost of each product updates, and the stock
valuation and the cost of goods sold come out right.

That is allocation, and the ERP is the right place for it. The ledger needs a per-unit
figure, and the rule for spreading a freight invoice across two hundred line items is a
policy decision the finance team should own.

Two of these vendors add something an import desk should notice. Aquilon describes
estimating the extra costs "right at the purchase order management stage" and fine-tuning
them once the items land. VISCO talks about projected landed cost against actual, per
shipment. Estimate first, true up later. Both are right that this is how the number should
work. Neither says where the actuals come from.

## Where do the actuals come from?

From six parties, by email, over about six weeks, none of whom agrees on how to name your
shipment.

The goods invoice comes from the supplier at contract time. Freight comes from the
forwarder, sometimes as a quote and again as the real thing. Insurance comes from the
broker. Duty comes off the CHA's working sheet after clearance. The delivery order fee
arrives on a separate note from the line. Transport bills at month end. Bank charges land
across four dates. And if the [document pack](/blog/import-document-checklist-that-actually-holds)
ran late, the demurrage invoice arrives last of all.

One says the BL number. One says the invoice number. One says "your consignment". A person
on the desk reads each mail, decides which container it belongs to, checks it against the
quote if there was one, and types it into a sheet. Payment tracking alone runs **10 to 15
minutes** a container. Status tracking and reporting adds **20 to 30**. The whole container
takes about **2.2 hours** of desk work, and on a 500-container desk that is roughly
**1,100 hours** a month before anyone buys or sells anything.

The ERP allocation module waits at the end of that. It is only as complete as the sheet
that feeds it, and it has no way of knowing that the DO fee has not arrived yet or that
the CHA's reimbursement line was already invoiced by the forwarder.

That is the first kind of landed cost software, and it is the kind most import desks do
not have.

## Why per container has to come first

Because that is the unit the charges arrive in.

Nobody invoices per SKU. The forwarder invoices the shipment. The line raises the delivery
order for the container. The CHA bills the Bill of Entry. Demurrage accrues per box per
day. The container total is not an intermediate step on the way to the SKU figure. It is
the only thing that can be checked against a document.

One ERP vendor's customer story makes the point backwards. Their old system, the customer
says, calculated landed costs "for an entire shipment" and they then had to apply the cost
to each item by hand; the ERP fixed the second half. True, and useful. But the shipment
total was still assembled by someone, from invoices, before any of that could happen.

So the sequence on a well-run desk is fixed. Collect and match per container, with
evidence. Then allocate per SKU, on a rule. A desk that skips to the allocation is
spreading a number it cannot defend.

## What "collect and match, with evidence" means

It means the cost line and the email it came from are the same object.

An import-desk [landed cost software](/solutions/landed-cost-tracking-software) reads the
mailbox the desk already uses. When a charge lands, it matches it to the container from
what it already holds: the purchase contract, the bill of lading number, the container
numbers, the party masters and the way each forwarder writes your name. The charge posts
against that shipment, the message stays attached to the line, and the estimate that was
sitting there is replaced by the invoiced figure with the variance visible.

Six months later, when a supplier says the freight was quoted lower or an auditor asks why
one container carried an extra fee, nobody searches a shared mailbox. The line opens and
the mail is under it.

Where the match is not clean, the right behaviour is to say so and ask. A charge posted to
the wrong container quietly corrupts two shipments. A charge in a queue for a day costs
somebody thirty seconds.

## The line the ERP cannot estimate

Every landed-cost component has a party, a moment it becomes known, and a treatment for
customs and for accounts. The [glossary entry on what goes into landed cost](/glossary/landed-cost)
lays out all nine. Eight of them can be estimated at booking with reasonable accuracy.

Demurrage and detention cannot. They are unknowable at booking, arrive weeks later, and are
large: a week of demurrage on one container has cost **US$12,000**. One missed document
pack a month works out at **US$12,000 to US$24,000** a year.

They are also the one line caused by paperwork. Free time starts at discharge; the document
pack starts when the last party in the chain acts, and packs routinely run about **eight
days** late. Which makes demurrage the only landed-cost line an import desk can prevent
rather than record. An ERP module records it accurately, after the fact. An import-desk
system that chases the pack inside free time stops it appearing.

## Per container, then per SKU: the hand-off

None of this argues against the ERP. It argues for the order.

Docket does the first half: the collecting, matching and evidencing per container, with
each line estimated from the purchase contract and the [incoterm](/glossary/incoterms) on
day one and replaced by the actual as the invoice lands. It hands the ERP a complete,
traced container total as accounting-ready expense records with the evidence attached,
into SAP, QuickBooks or Xero on the Enterprise plan.
The ERP does the second half: allocation per SKU on the rule the finance team chose, stock
valuation, margin per product.

Docket does not allocate per SKU, does not value stock, does not pick a duty rate, and does
not convert currencies at a rate it invented. Charges stay in the currency they were
invoiced in; a single-currency view uses the rate you book at. The accountant still runs
the ledger.

What leaves the desk is a container that can be opened, line by line, and defended.

## Where to start

Open last quarter's worst container in whatever you use today. Count how many of its cost
lines you can trace to the document that produced them without leaving the screen. If the
answer is fewer than all of them, the allocation module downstream is spreading a
reconstruction.

Send us that container. We will show you what it looks like traced.

Source: https://dodocket.com/blog/landed-cost-software-per-container-then-per-sku

---

# Landed cost tools for an import desk: three kinds

Three kinds of software answer to the words landed cost. Allocation modules inside an ERP spread a container total across SKUs. Trade-compliance suites price the duty term from rate data. Evidence capture collects the invoiced charges as they arrive and matches each to a shipment. The first two start from a number somebody already has, and the vendor pages say so in their own words.

Search for landed cost software and the results are not one category. They are
three, sold with the same two words and answering different questions. A desk
that buys the wrong one gets a tool that works exactly as advertised and still
leaves the job undone.

The cleanest way to tell them apart is to take a definition none of them will
argue with. Descartes, whose business is trade data, defines landed cost as
"the total cost that must be paid for a good or item being imported into the
country" and puts the arithmetic like this:

> Landed Cost = import tariffs and duties + customs fees + shipping costs +
> other overhead expenses

Four terms. One of them, duties, has a published rate you can look up before
the goods ship. The other three arrive as invoices, from different parties,
over the weeks after arrival. Each category owns a different part of that
line, and the part that is hardest is not the part most of them own.

## Kind one: the allocation module inside an ERP

This is the biggest group and the one that owns the phrase. VISCO, Blue Link
and Aquilon all sell it, usually as a feature of an inventory and accounting
system rather than a product of its own. What it does is take the charges
belonging to a shipment and spread them across the items on it, so stock is
valued correctly and margin per product is knowable.

They are good at this. Blue Link offers the "ability to allocate landed costs
proportionately — different percentages based on weight, container etc." VISCO
says that when a shipment goes "In Transit" it begins "to gather costs and
accruals against that Venture", and reports "accurate landed costs, projected
landed costs, and profitability analysis at the transaction level". Aquilon
lets you "estimate expenses and set your prices correctly" before the shipment
arrives.

Now read the seam. Blue Link's own sentence is that the software "automatically
tracks and accounts for the landed costs **identified by your company**".
Aquilon's is that once the items land, "you can fine-tune those numbers for
perfect accuracy before you finalize the receipt". In both sentences the
automation begins after a person has identified a charge and typed it in. That
is not a criticism of the software. Allocation is fiddly and worth
automating. It is a statement about where the module's boundary sits, written
by the people who built it.

Aquilon is also the vendor that states the underlying problem most plainly:
"You should not have to wait for a stack of bills to arrive weeks after your
stock is already sold." That is the right problem. The answer offered is a
better estimate at the purchase order and a true-up at receipt, which helps
and does not make the bills arrive any sooner.

## Kind two: the trade-compliance suite

The second group is trade data and compliance: Descartes, and the enterprise
suites a buyer meets alongside it. Here the product is classification and rate
coverage: what the HS code is, what duty, tariff and VAT apply in each country,
kept current as they change. For an importer working many tariff lines across
several jurisdictions, this is real work and it is hard to do by hand.

What it prices is the first term of the formula. Duty is knowable in advance
precisely because it is published, and that is also why it is the term software
can own end to end. The other three terms in Descartes' own equation, being
customs fees, shipping costs and other overheads, are not rate lookups. They are
somebody else's invoice, and no rate database contains them.

There is a second trap in the duty term for anyone importing into more than one
market: the duty base is not universal. Article 8.2 of the WTO Customs
Valuation Agreement leaves it to each member whether freight and insurance are
included in the customs value, so the same cargo at the same rate produces a
different duty in Singapore than it does where the base is CIF. Our
[landed cost calculator](/landed-cost-calculator) makes the duty base an input
for that reason rather than assuming one.

## Kind three: evidence capture

The third kind barely registers as a category because most desks do it by hand
and do not think of it as software at all. It is the collection step: the
freight invoice from the forwarder, the bill from the customs broker, the
delivery order, the transporter's charge, the insurer's premium, the carrier's
demurrage line, arriving as email attachments, across weeks, in no order, and
each one needing to be matched to the right container before either of the
other two kinds of tool has anything to work with.

This is the job Docket takes: [landed cost reconciliation](/solutions/landed-cost-tracking-software)
where each charge is pulled from the mailbox it arrived in, traced back to the
email and the party that sent it, and posted against the shipment with that
evidence attached. The output is a container total that is complete and
checkable, which is exactly the input the allocation module has been waiting
for.

It is also where [estimated versus actual landed cost](/glossary/landed-cost)
stops being a reporting feature and becomes a question about collection. A
variance report can only compare what it has. If three invoices are still
unopened in a shared inbox, the actual is not wrong, it is absent, and the
report will not say so.

## The column that is missing from every comparison

Comparison tables for this category compare allocation bases, integrations,
reporting and price. Here is the column they leave out.

| The question | Allocation module in an ERP | Trade-compliance suite | Evidence capture |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it produces | Cost per SKU, valued stock, margin per product | Classification and the duty, tariff and VAT rate | A complete, sourced charge list per container |
| Which term of the formula | Spreads all four, once known | Term one: duties | Terms two to four, as invoiced |
| Where the charge comes from | "identified by your company" (Blue Link) | Maintained rate data, for duty only | The mailbox the invoice arrived in |
| Does it collect the charge? | No | No | Yes |
| What it needs before it can start | A complete container total | An HS code and a destination | Nothing; it starts at the inbox |

Read down the "does it collect the charge?" row and the shape of the market is
clear. Two of the three kinds are downstream of a step nobody sells, and the
desk is doing that step in a spreadsheet at seven in the evening.

## What the empty column costs

Payment tracking alone runs 10 to 15 minutes per container, inside roughly 2.2
hours of desk work per container across the whole job. That is the visible
cost, and it is the smaller one.

The larger cost is the charges that close late. Demurrage is the clearest case:
a week of it on one container has cost US$12,000, and it reaches the desk as a
carrier invoice long after the box has gone. A landed cost signed off before
that invoice landed was signed off wrong, and by then the stock is often sold
at a margin computed from the wrong number. The tool that prevents it is not a
landed cost tool at all. It is
[demurrage and detention software](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software),
working the document pack backwards from the last free day so the charge is
never raised.

Docket is priced per shipment, $10 up to 50 a month, $8 from 51 to 300 and $6
above 300, with a shipment billing at most two containers. Against one late
demurrage line that comparison is not close, and against the allocation module
it is not even a comparison, because that module is a different tool doing a different
job, downstream, correctly, once somebody hands it a number it can trust.

## What to do with this before your next demo

Ask each vendor one question and watch where the demonstration starts. If the
first click is on a field that already contains a number, you are looking at
kind one or kind two, and you should buy it for what it does well. The question
to keep asking afterwards is who, on your desk, is going to put the number
there, and whether that person's afternoon is the thing you meant to
buy back.

Source: https://dodocket.com/blog/landed-cost-tools-for-an-import-desk

---

# Replacing Excel for import tracking: what actually works

Excel does not break because it is Excel. It breaks when the number of open shipments passes what one person can hold in their head, because a spreadsheet records status and cannot go and get it. Tracking and reporting alone costs 20–30 minutes per container. Replace the chasing first, and the file second.

The best-run file in most import businesses is a spreadsheet called something like Shipment Tracker 2026 v4 FINAL. It has thirty-one columns, conditional formatting on the free-time column, a filter that only one person knows how to reset, and it is correct.

It is correct because Priya updates it. Every morning, between 9 and 10, before anything else.

The file is not the problem. The hour is.

## When does Excel stop working for import tracking?

Not at a volume. At a behaviour. Three signals, and none of them is the row count.

Two people need the same row in the same hour. The moment the file is on a shared drive and two people edit it, you are running a database with no locking and a version convention held together by a filename.

The status column is copied, not derived. Somebody read an email, decided what it meant, and typed a word into a cell. That word is now the truth of your business, and the email it came from is in an inbox nobody else can see.

The desk slows down when one person takes leave. This is the loudest signal and the one most desks explain away. If the tracker is only correct because a specific human keeps it correct, the tracker is that human's memory with borders drawn on it.

A spreadsheet is a very good place to keep the answer. It is not able to go and get the answer. That distinction is the whole subject of this post.

## What is the tracking costing?

Timed container by container, the work breaks down like this.

| Task | Time per container |
|---|---|
| Supplier follow-ups | 30–45 min |
| Export doc-pack prep and checking | 45–90 min |
| Status tracking and reporting | 20–30 min |
| Payment tracking | 10–15 min |

Status tracking and reporting: [20 to 30 minutes a container](/blog/how-much-desk-time-a-container-really-takes). Add payment tracking and you are at 30 to 45 minutes per box on work whose entire output is a cell containing a word.

Five hundred containers a month is roughly 1,100 hours of desk work in total. A seven-person desk provides 1,232 hours at 176 hours a head. About ninety percent of the team goes to grunt work before anyone buys or sells anything.

Priya's hour between 9 and 10 is not one hour. Multiplied across the desk and the month, tracking alone runs into the low hundreds of hours.

And the work inside that hour is worse than it looks. It is opening four carrier sites because you use four carriers. It is checking a terminal page that renders badly on a phone. It is a message to the CHA asking whether the Bill of Entry went in. It is three internal people asking the same status question in three channels before lunch.

## Why does replacing the spreadsheet not fix it?

Because most replacements replace the file.

| What you buy | What it fixes | What it leaves |
|---|---|---|
| A trade ERP | Contracts, inventory, landed cost, accounting-ready records | Somebody still emails the supplier |
| Documentation software | Drafting invoices, packing lists, certificates from masters | Somebody still chases the missing input |
| A tracking portal | Milestones and free-time countdowns in one screen | Somebody still asks the CHA what is happening |
| Position and risk tools | Open positions, payment calendar, commissions | Somebody still confirms the payment landed |
| A shared spreadsheet, done properly | Version conflicts | Everything above |

Every row in that table is a genuine improvement over a spreadsheet, and every row leaves the same sentence in the right-hand column. Somebody still has to go and ask.

That sentence is the job. Trade runs on chasing, not on recording. [Six parties touch one container](/blog/six-parties-one-container-who-owns-the-follow-up). The supplier, the customs broker, the bank, the forwarder, the insurer and you. Every tool in that table sits inside your four walls and waits for the other five parties to send something in.

So the desk keeps the spreadsheet. Not out of nostalgia. Because the spreadsheet is where the chasing gets planned, and the new system has nowhere to put that.

## What should the replacement do?

Four things, in this order of importance.

1/ Derive status instead of storing it. If a milestone is typed by a person, it is an opinion with a timestamp. If it is derived from a carrier feed, a document arriving or a payment clearing, it is a fact. Anything typed should be the exception, and the exception should be visible as one.

2/ [Own the follow-up, with a timer](/blog/exporter-not-sending-shipping-documents). Not a reminder that pings a human. The system sends the ask itself: email, then WhatsApp at 24 hours, then SMS at 48, then a call. A reminder just moves the work from the spreadsheet to a notification.

3/ Count the [free time](/glossary/free-time) backwards from discharge. The date that matters is not vessel arrival. It is discharge, minus free time, minus a margin. If your tool cannot compute that date, it is a calendar with a logo. This is the whole of [detention and demurrage management](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) that a spreadsheet cannot do: a cell holds the date, it does not act on it.

4/ Keep the audit trail attached to the shipment. Every email, every amendment, every expense, on the shipment. The single most useful thing a good spreadsheet does is put everything about one box in one row. Do not lose that.

Now the thing to keep. **Keep the columns.** A tracker a desk has evolved over five years is the best written specification of that desk you will ever get. When we map a new SOP, the spreadsheet is the first artefact we ask for, ahead of any process document, because the process document says what the desk intends and the spreadsheet says what it does.

## What if I am keeping the spreadsheet this year?

Fair. Budgets exist and a migration in peak season is a bad trade. Five changes cost nothing and recover a real share of Priya's hour.

1/ Split the one status column into two: what happened, and what we are waiting for. A single status column collapses a fact and a plan into one word, and the plan is the part that runs out of time.

2/ Add an owner column with a person's name in every populated row. Not a team. Blank owners are the shipments that [go to demurrage](/blog/why-am-i-paying-demurrage).

3/ Add a next-chase-date column and sort the file by it. That one column turns a register into a work queue, which is what the desk needs at 9am.

4/ Compute the deadline, do not type it. Discharge date minus free time minus two days, as a formula. A typed date is a memory. A formula is a rule.

5/ Move the file to a place with version history and stop emailing copies. Every emailed copy is a second truth with a timestamp.

Do these five and you will still have a spreadsheet that cannot go and ask anyone anything. You will have one that tells you, in sorted order, who to ask. That is most of the value of the first upgrade, for the price of an afternoon.

## How do I move without breaking the month?

Run both for one cycle. That is it. That is the migration plan.

Pick the twenty shipments in flight. Put them in the new system and keep updating the spreadsheet exactly as before. At the end of the cycle, compare the two on three questions. Which one was right more often. Which one was updated without a human. Which one told you about a problem before someone escalated it.

If the new system loses on all three, keep the spreadsheet and you have lost a month. If it wins on the second question alone, you have your answer, because that is the question that gives Priya her hour back.

Do not migrate history in the first pass. Historical shipments are done. Their value is reporting, and reporting can wait a quarter.

## The gap in this post

The timings here are an operational baseline, not a survey. Twenty to thirty minutes of status tracking a container is what the work costs on a desk of this shape; yours will sit either side of it depending on how many carrier portals you are checking and how much your forwarder pushes to you unasked.

The tipping point is the part worth arguing with. It is not a container count, it is the number of open shipments one person can hold in their head, and that varies by person.

The tool categories in the table above are described by what they do, not by vendor. Judge any specific product by the right-hand column and check it yourself before you sign.

One column in that tracker deserves its own argument, because the tariff behind it is not a number: what a [demurrage spreadsheet](/blog/what-a-demurrage-spreadsheet-cannot-hold) cannot hold, read out of five published terminal tariffs.

## Where Docket fits

Docket is built the other way round from the table above. It starts at the chase and works back to the record. Contracts go in, deadlines come out, and the system goes and gets the answer on email, WhatsApp, SMS and an AI voice call, on channels your counterparties already use, with no portal for anyone to sign up for. The tracking falls out of the chasing. Not the other way round. Docket is built to handle about 85% of tracking and reporting without a person.

Priya keeps her judgement. What leaves her is the hour between 9 and 10.

Open your tracker and look at the status column. Ask how many of those cells a human typed this week. That number is the size of the problem, and no spreadsheet ever told anyone where a container was. Priya did.

Source: https://dodocket.com/blog/replacing-excel-for-import-tracking

---

# Six parties, one container. Who owns the follow-up?

Six parties touch one container and each owns a task. Nobody owns the handover between tasks, so the coordination falls on the importer's documentation desk by default. That unowned work is about 2.2 hours per container, or roughly 1,100 hours a month on a 500-container desk against 1,232 hours of capacity.

Count the parties on one container of metal scrap moving into Singapore.

The supplier, who has to produce the goods and the documents. The [customs broker](/glossary/cha), who files the declaration. The bank, which handles the documentary credit or the remittance. The freight forwarder, who books and moves the box. The insurer, who covers it. And you, who paid for all of it.

Six parties. Every one has a defined job and a contract that says what it is.

Now name the party responsible for the handover between the supplier producing the packing list and the broker filing the declaration.

There isn't one.

## Who is contractually responsible for following up?

Nobody, and this is not an oversight in the rules. It is what the rules are for.

The ICC's [Incoterms 2020](/glossary/incoterms) allocate cost, risk and obligation between seller and buyer with real precision. They say who arranges carriage, who bears risk from which point, who pays for what. Every party's engagement letter does the same within its own scope. A broker's mandate covers what happens once documents reach the broker. A forwarder's booking covers cargo that has been booked.

None of those documents contains the sentence "and if it is late, this party goes and asks." Contracts allocate obligations. They do not allocate chasing, because chasing is a response to an obligation not being met, and no contract is drafted around its own failure.

So the chasing goes to whoever feels the pain first. Which is you.

## Why does it land on the importer?

Because the importer pays.

Free time runs against your box. [The demurrage invoice has your name on it](/blog/why-am-i-paying-demurrage). The margin erodes on your book. One week of demurrage on one container comes to about US$12,000, and none of the other five parties sees a cent of that number.

There is a version of this table worth printing.

| Party | Owns | Feels a late document | Paid per |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supplier | Producing goods and documents | No | Shipment sold |
| Freight forwarder | Booking and moving the box | No | Booking |
| Customs broker | Filing the declaration | No | Entry |
| Bank | Payment against documents | No | Transaction |
| Insurer | Cover | No | Policy |
| **Importer** | **Buying and selling** | **Yes, in demurrage and margin** | **Margin on the trade** |

Five parties are paid per transaction and are indifferent to your calendar. They are not villains. A broker serving two hundred importers is behaving correctly by acting on the documents in front of them. Your urgency is not information they have.

The one party with the consequence is also the only party with the full picture: the contract, the payment terms, the free time, the margin. That is why coordination lands on the importer, and it is why it will keep landing there no matter how good your service providers are.

## What does the unowned work cost?

Timed container by container, it breaks down like this.

| Task | Time per container |
|---|---|
| Supplier follow-ups | 30–45 min |
| Export doc-pack prep and checking | 45–90 min |
| Status tracking and reporting | 20–30 min |
| Payment tracking | 10–15 min |

[About 2.2 hours a container](/blog/how-much-desk-time-a-container-really-takes), in a real range of 2 to 2.5. Every line on that table is a handover between two of the six parties. Not one of them is the importer's own core work of buying and selling.

Sitting on top, and belonging to the desk instead of the container, is 1 to 2 hours a day of price collection from suppliers.

Now scale it.

| Line | Value |
|---|---|
| Containers a month | 500 |
| Hours consumed at 2.2 h each | ~1,100 |
| Desk capacity: 7 people × 176 hours | 1,232 |
| Share of capacity on unowned coordination | ~90% |

Ninety percent of a seven-person desk goes on work that no contract assigns to anyone. Read the org chart of any importer at that volume and you will find people whose job title says documentation and whose actual job is being the connective tissue between five companies that do not talk to each other.

## Why do the usual fixes not hold?

A RACI chart names an owner. Naming an owner does not change what happens on a Tuesday when that owner is holding forty other shipments and has to decide which supplier gets a nudge. Under load, people chase the loud shipment. The quiet one goes to demurrage. That is not a discipline failure, it is what attention does when it is oversubscribed.

A weekly status call surfaces problems that are already a week old. Free time does not run weekly.

A shared portal asks the other five parties to log in and maintain your data. They will not. They have their own systems, their own customers and no reason to work inside yours. Portal adoption is the graveyard of trade software, and the reason is not usability. It is that you are asking five companies to do unpaid work.

More people works, in the sense that hiring always works. It scales the cost with the volume, which is the definition of a business that does not compound.

## What does hold?

Three properties. Any solution, software or not, needs all three.

1/ A schedule, not a reminder. [The follow-up goes out on a timer](/blog/exporter-not-sending-shipping-documents) whether or not a human remembers. A reminder moves the work from a spreadsheet into a notification and leaves the decision with the same tired person.

2/ Their channel, not yours. Email today. WhatsApp at 24 hours. SMS at 48. A phone call at 72. Counterparties in this trade already live on WhatsApp. Meeting them there costs nothing and it is the difference between a message read and a message queued.

3/ One ask, repeated. Same document, same field, same date, every time. A supplier who receives four different phrasings believes four different people are confused. A supplier who receives the same sentence four times understands the request is not going away.

Underneath all three sits a fourth thing, and it is where every chase should begin: the contract. The purchase contract carries the delivery window, the document set, the payment terms and the specification. Every deadline you should be chasing is derivable from it on the day it is signed. Most desks derive them later, from an email, under pressure.

## Can I put the follow-up into the contract?

Partly, and it is the cheapest thing on this list to try, because it costs one clause in the next purchase contract you sign.

Name the document set. Not "usual shipping documents". The list, by document, with the issuing party against each one.

Name the date each is due, anchored to an event, not a calendar day. Draft documents within so many days of completion of loading. The final pack before the vessel discharges. Anchoring to an event survives a schedule change; anchoring to a date does not.

Name the notification duty. The supplier tells you when a document will be late, before it is late. This is the clause that changes behaviour most, because it converts silence from a neutral act into a breach.

Name a remedy that is small and real. A retention against the invoice beats a penalty nobody will invoke. Remedies that are too large get negotiated out or ignored, and a remedy nobody uses trains everyone that the clause is decoration.

Then accept the limit. A clause makes the ask legitimate. It does not send the ask. On the Tuesday when the packing list is late, someone still has to open a mailbox and type a message, and the clause you negotiated in March is not going to do it.

## The gap in this post

The 2.2 hours, the 1,100 hours and the US$12,000 are an operational baseline, not an industry survey. They describe a desk of a particular shape: physical commodity, six parties, documents on the critical path. A desk buying on DDP with a forwarder absorbing the coordination has a different number, and a smaller problem.

The six-party structure is the part that generalises. The hours are the part to re-measure on your own desk.

## Where Docket fits

Docket takes the seventh seat, the one nobody was sitting in. Contracts go in. Deadlines come out. It chases the supplier on email, then WhatsApp, then SMS, then an AI voice call, checks the document pack against the contract, tracks the box, and keeps the audit trail on the shipment. No portal for the other five parties to sign up for, because that was never going to happen.

Across all desk work the blended automation rate is about 70%. On the 500-container desk that is 770 hours a month back, which is capacity for 1,000 to 1,200 containers with the same seven people, or two or three of them moving to buying and selling. Same team, more trade. That is the version of this that gets forwarded internally.

Do one thing this week. Take your last five late shipments and write down, for each, the name of the person who chased it. If it is the same name five times, you have found the seventh party, and you are paying them to do a job that six contracts forgot to assign.

Source: https://dodocket.com/blog/six-parties-one-container-who-owns-the-follow-up

---

# UAE 12-digit HS codes: what a Dubai declaration now needs

From August 2026 to January 2027 Dubai Customs is mandating twelve-digit classification for all imports to the mainland from outside the GCC. In its correlation table, 7,911 eight-digit lines become 13,449: 1,942 split, and 305 change their eight-digit stem. No split changes the duty rate. What changes is the product detail the declaration needs, and somebody has to get that from the supplier.

Dubai is in the middle of changing how long a customs code is, and the phase
running right now is the one that reaches an importer outside the Gulf.

Dubai Customs publishes the roadmap as a one-page table. Four phases, each of
them a six-month window. From August 2025 to January 2026, "Implement 12-digit
classification for all GCC trade flows". From February to July 2026, "Extend
12-digit classification to imports from Free Zones & Customs Warehouses to
mainland". Then the one that matters here, August 2026 to January 2027:

> Mandate new classification system for all imports to mainland from RoW

RoW is the rest of the world. If you ship into Dubai mainland from India,
China, Turkey or anywhere else outside the GCC, you are inside that window
today. Temporary flows (import for re-export, temporary admission) come last,
from February 2027, and the roadmap gives the reason in its own rationale
column: "Immediate roll-out not required as final destination is outside
UAE/GCC". The same column explains why the sequence began where it did.
Phase one was chosen to "Initiate with low impact (~5% trade) to avoid
disruption". Dubai started with the smallest slice of its trade on purpose.
Phase three is not the small slice.

## What the twelve digits are

The [HS code structure](/glossary/hs-code) underneath has not moved. The first
six digits are still the World Customs Organization's, and they still mean the
same thing to your supplier and to the officer reading the declaration. What
changes is the national extension on the end. Dubai Customs states the change
in one sentence: "The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has adopted a unified
12-digit customs structure, designed to enhance economic coordination among
member states and ensure greater precision and efficiency in customs
classification and tariff application."

Precision is the operative word, and it has a cost attached that none of the
announcements mention. So rather than paraphrase the announcements, we pulled
the file.

## Reading Dubai Customs' own correlation table

Dubai Customs publishes the mapping itself, as a spreadsheet called the
Correlation Table (8-digit to 12-digit Tariff Code). Version 3.3, the customer
copy, has 13,449 rows. Each row carries the old eight-digit code, the new
twelve-digit code, the English and Arabic descriptions, the statistical
quantity unit and the duty percentage. Counting through it:

| What the file shows | Count |
|---|---|
| Old eight-digit lines | 7,911 |
| New twelve-digit lines | 13,449 |
| Old lines mapping to exactly one new line | 5,969 (75.5%) |
| Old lines splitting into two or more | 1,942 (24.5%) |
| Old lines whose eight-digit stem also changes | 305 |
| Old lines where a split changes the duty rate | 0 |

Three quarters of the tariff is a rename. For 5,959 of the 5,969 one-to-one
lines the new code is the old one with `0000` on the end, and a desk importing
only those has a data-entry change and nothing else. Ferrous scrap is one of
them: [HS 7204.49](/hs-code/7204-49) becomes `720449000000` and stops there.
All four plastic waste lines under heading 3915 behave the same way, which is
the cargo our [plastic waste import documents](/industries/plastics) page
covers. So does worn clothing under 6309.

The other quarter is where the work is.

## Trap one: the 305 lines that move their stem

The assumption everybody makes first, and the one a spreadsheet macro
encodes in about four seconds, is that the new code is the old code plus four
digits. For 305 old lines that is false. Their replacement does not begin with
the eight digits you have been filing.

Live bovine animals are the cleanest example. The old line `01029000` does not
survive as `010290000000`. It becomes four lines, and the change starts at the
seventh digit:

| New code | Description |
|---|---|
| `010290110000` | Live arabian oryx |
| `010290120000` | Live african oryx |
| `010290190000` | Other live oryx |
| `010290900000` | Other live bovine |

Those 305 old lines account for 996 of the new ones. Dubai Customs flags them
in the file itself, in a column that reads `non existing` against 306 old
codes; the two sets are one line apart, so the flag is a good guide and not
a perfect one. What it means in practice is that a find-and-replace across a
product master will return a code for every line and be wrong on these, with
no error to notice.

## Trap two: the split, and what it splits on

1,942 old lines become two or more. The distribution has a long tail: 786 split
in two, 368 in three, 327 in four, and it keeps going. The largest single
split is `30024990`, one old line that becomes 64, one per named virus, from
Andes and Chapare through Chikungunya and Choclo to Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic
fever.

Now look at what the sub-lines are distinguished by. Not price. Not origin.
Not quantity. In the oryx example above, species. In `01012110`, pure-bred
Arabian breeding horses, the two new lines are "Of Arab breed males" and "Of
Arab breed females". In the line that becomes 64, the name of the virus.

These are product attributes, and the commercial invoice your supplier wrote
for an eight-digit world does not carry them. It names the goods the way the
old tariff line asked, and stops, because the old line did not ask a further
question. Now it does, and the answer is with the supplier, in another time
zone, who considers the paperwork finished.

Six old lines go further and split into sub-lines carrying an *identical*
English description. One of them is `84158320`, central air conditioners
without a refrigerating unit, and not an exotic cargo in Dubai. It becomes
`841583200001` and `841583209999`, and the English text against the two is
the same string. On those, the file cannot tell you which to pick; the
distinction sits in the Arabic text or in the underlying nomenclature, and
resolving it is a question for your
[clearing agent in Dubai](/glossary/clearing-agent) rather than for a
spreadsheet.

## The part nobody is selling: the duty does not change

Here is the finding that reframes the whole exercise. In all 7,911 old lines,
there is not one case where the sub-lines under a split carry different duty
percentages. The statistical quantity unit never differs either.

So this is not a duty event. Nothing about the twelve-digit tariff makes a
cargo more expensive to import, and anyone selling you a classification review
on the grounds that you might be overpaying duty is selling the wrong reason.
Dubai Customs' own stated objectives are about statistics, about
distinguishing restricted and prohibited goods clearly, and about goods
classification accuracy: a control and data exercise, exactly as described.

What it costs you is a rejected or amended declaration, and what a rejected
declaration costs is time at a port where the [free time](/glossary/free-time)
clock is already running. That is the whole exposure, and it lands entirely on
the desk.

## What the desk has to collect, and when

The work this creates is not classification work. It is collection work, and
it happens before the goods ship rather than after they arrive.

1. **Pull the correlation table for your own lines.** Not all 13,449; the
   fifty or so you actually import. Mark which are one-to-one, which split,
   and which are among the 305 that move their stem.
2. **For every line that splits, write down the question it asks.** Male or
   female. Which species. Which virus. Which polymer. One sentence per line,
   and it is the same sentence every shipment.
3. **Get the answer from the supplier in writing, before shipment.** This is
   the only step that involves another company, which makes it the only step
   that slips. A purchase order that already carries the attribute is worth
   more than a classification project.
4. **Keep the answer attached to the shipment**, so the person filing the
   declaration is not re-deriving it from a photograph of a packing list.

Steps one and two are a morning's work with the file open. Step three is the
one that runs into the same wall everything else on an import desk runs into:
the supplier answers when they answer. That is a
[supplier follow-up](/solutions/supplier-follow-up-automation) problem wearing
a tariff costume, and it is the reason a classification change shows up as a
clearance delay three months later.

## Before January 2027

Two things are worth doing this month rather than in December. Pull the file
and mark your own lines, because the answer is different for every desk and
takes an hour to find out. And put the attribute question into the purchase
order template, because every contract signed from now until January is a
contract whose goods will be declared under the new codes.

The eight-digit code on your supplier's invoice used to complete the filing.
For a quarter of the tariff it no longer does, and nobody at the other end of
the trade knows that yet.

Source: https://dodocket.com/blog/uae-12-digit-hs-codes-dubai-import-declaration

---

# What a demurrage spreadsheet cannot hold

A free-time spreadsheet stores one number per lane. The published tariffs at Nhava Sheva and Jebel Ali charge by terminal, by day band, by container size, by cargo class, in a currency converted on the vessel's arrival date, under an edition that re-indexes every year. Six variables, one cell. A tool that stores one number per lane has only moved the spreadsheet.

Ask an import desk where its free time lives and you will usually be shown a spreadsheet. A
row per shipment, a column headed *free days*, a formula that adds it to the discharge date,
and conditional formatting that turns the cell amber near the end. It is a reasonable piece
of work. Somebody built it because nothing else on the desk held the date at all.

The problem is not that the arithmetic is fragile. It is that the tariff the arithmetic is
standing in for is not a number. It is a function, and the published documents say so in
detail.

Here is what a single cell has to swallow, taken from five current terminal tariffs at
Nhava Sheva and one at Jebel Ali.

## One: which terminal worked the vessel

Nhava Sheva has five container terminals and each files its own Scale of Rates with the port
authority. An import loaded container gets **three** free days at NSICT and NSFT and **two**
at NSIGT, GTI and BMCT. Jebel Ali gives an ordinary import box **ten**.

The importer does not choose. Berthing does. So the free-days figure is not a property of
the lane, the carrier or the port, and cannot be filled in when the booking is made, which
is exactly when a spreadsheet row gets created. The per-terminal detail is on the
[Nhava Sheva port page](/port/nhava-sheva).

## Two: which band the day falls in

A spreadsheet stores a rate per day. Tariffs are written in escalating slabs.

At NSICT an import container costs US$9.33 a day for a 20ft box in days 4 to 15, then
US$18.64 in days 16 to 30, then US$37.28 beyond 30, doubling and doubling again. BMCT
steps through nine bands, from ₹799.59 a day at days 3 to 6 up to ₹3,196.14 thereafter.
NSFT uses seven.

The consequence is not academic. A four-day overstay doubled is not an eight-day overstay,
and a desk that models the cost of delay as days × rate will forecast the cheap end of a
curve that bends upward precisely when things are going badly.

## Three: the size band, and there are three of them

Most desks carry 20ft and 40ft. Every tariff quoted here carries a third column for
containers **above** 40ft, charged higher again: US$27.99 a day against US$18.66 at NSICT in
the first paid band. A 45ft box priced off the 40ft column is under-accrued on every day it
sits.

## Four: what is inside the box

Hazardous cargo is charged more at all five Nhava Sheva terminals and by a different factor
at nearly each one: 25% more at NSICT, 1.25 times at NSIGT and BMCT, 1.5 times at GTI, and
2 times at NSFT. Over-high and over-dimensional containers attract three times the normal
charge across all five.

At Jebel Ali the same idea is expressed even harder: IMDG class 5 gets no free time at all.
Cargo class is not a note on the shipment. It is a term in the formula.

## Five: the currency, fixed on a date that has passed

Three of the five Nhava Sheva terminals denominate storage in dollars and collect rupees.
NSFT's tariff spells out the mechanism: the dollar charge is reconverted at a public sector
bank's market buying rate "prevalent on the date of entry of the vessel into the port
limits" for import containers. NSICT applies the same rule.

So the conversion rate is fixed on a date in the past, and it is not the invoice date. A
spreadsheet that holds a rupee figure holds an estimate of an amount that was decided when
the ship arrived.

## Six: the edition

NSICT's and NSIGT's current Scales of Rates both carry an indexation of 0.39%, effective
1 May and 1 April 2026, granted under the same letter. GTI's document states the standing
rule rather than this year's result: the tariff "is subject to automatic annual indexation
at 60% of the WPI", from 1 May every year.

Rates typed into a system therefore have a decay date, and nothing in the spreadsheet knows
it. This is the variable that goes wrong quietly, because the formula keeps working.

## What this argues, and what it does not

It does not argue that the desk needs a better calculator. Run the numbers above through
anything you like: a container that clears inside its free days costs none of it.

The reason a box goes past its
[last free day](/glossary/last-free-day) is almost never that the arithmetic was wrong. It
is that a certificate of origin had not arrived, an invoice disagreed with the packing list,
or the customs broker was waiting on a delivery order nobody had settled, and the days ran
out while three people each believed somebody else was chasing. Document packs routinely
run about eight days late. Against two free days at BMCT, the allowance is spent before the
pack is complete.

So the honest test to put to any
[demurrage and detention software](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) you are being
sold is two questions, in this order. Does it hold all six variables above per shipment,
rather than one free-days field per carrier? And when the pack is not ready on day three,
does it chase the party who owes the document, or does it show you a coloured chip?

The first question decides whether the tool is more accurate than your spreadsheet. Only the
second decides whether it prevents anything. If you are replacing a spreadsheet across the
whole desk rather than only the clock, we wrote about
[what actually breaks when import tracking lives in Excel](/blog/replacing-excel-for-import-tracking)
separately; and if the number you want today is what an overstay would cost, the
[demurrage calculator](/demurrage-calculator) takes the free days and the per-diem tiers off
your own contract.

Source: https://dodocket.com/blog/what-a-demurrage-spreadsheet-cannot-hold

---

# Why am I paying demurrage when the ship arrived on time?

You pay demurrage because two clocks run against every container and neither one is the ship. Port free time starts the hour the box is discharged. Your document pack starts when the supplier answers. Paperwork routinely runs about 8 days behind, and one week of demurrage on one container costs about US$12,000.

US$12,000, for one week of [demurrage](/glossary/demurrage) on one container. The vessel was on schedule. The berth was on schedule. The container was discharged on the day the carrier said it would be. Nobody at the port did anything wrong.

The [Bill of Lading](/glossary/bill-of-lading) was late by five days because a supplier in a different time zone had not confirmed a weight.

That is the whole story of demurrage on an import desk, and it is why the question in the title has a frustrating answer. You are not paying for the ship. You are paying for the paperwork.

## Why does demurrage happen when the vessel arrived on time?

Because two clocks start at different moments and only one of them is visible on a tracking portal.

Clock one is port [free time](/glossary/free-time). It starts when the container hits the ground, and it does not care what you know about your own shipment. It runs on the terminal's calendar, through weekends and public holidays, in a country where you are not standing.

Clock two is your document pack. It starts when your supplier answers an email. Which is to say it starts whenever your supplier feels like it.

Everyone watches clock one. It has a website. It sends alerts. The carrier will happily tell you where your box is. Nobody watches clock two, because clock two lives in a mailbox, and a mailbox does not raise an alarm when a message goes unanswered.

| | Free-time clock | Document clock |
|---|---|---|
| Starts | Discharge from the vessel | When the supplier replies |
| Runs through | Weekends, holidays, your time zone | Nothing. It stops when people stop |
| Visible on | The carrier portal, a tracking page | An inbox, a WhatsApp group, someone's memory |
| Who owns it | The terminal | Nobody |
| What it costs when it slips | Per diem, per container, compounding | Nothing, until clock one catches it |

Read that last row twice. The document clock has no cost of its own. It borrows its cost from the free-time clock. That is exactly why a desk under pressure lets it slip: slipping is free until the day it is very expensive.

## How far behind does the paperwork run?

Container by container, here is where it goes.

Typical paperwork lateness against port free time: **about 8 days.**

Eight days is not a disaster story. It is the ordinary state of an ordinary desk that is doing its job. The team is not lazy. Look at where their hours go and the eight days stop being mysterious.

One container consumes [about 2.2 hours of desk work](/blog/how-much-desk-time-a-container-really-takes), and it splits like this:

| Task | Time per container |
|---|---|
| Supplier follow-ups | 30–45 min |
| Export doc-pack prep and checking | 45–90 min |
| Status tracking and reporting | 20–30 min |
| Payment tracking | 10–15 min |

Two point two hours per box. Five hundred boxes a month is roughly 1,100 hours. A seven-person desk gives you 1,232 hours in a month at 176 hours a head. Ninety percent of the desk is consumed before anyone has bought or sold a tonne of anything.

A desk at ninety percent utilisation has no slack. And demurrage is a slack problem. The box that goes wrong is never the box you were watching.

## What does a week of demurrage cost on one container?

US$12,000, for one container, for one week.

That number moves with port, carrier, contract and equipment type, and I am not going to publish a per-diem table I cannot stand behind. Per-diem tariffs change, they differ by carrier, and half the numbers circulating on the internet are three years old. What I can stand behind is this incident, on this desk, in this currency.

Then there is the quieter version, which costs more over a year because nobody escalates it. One missed document pack a month, at US$1,000 to US$2,000 an event, is **US$12,000 to US$24,000 a year**. No single incident is big enough to trigger a meeting. The annual total is a salary.

Here is the part traders feel in their teeth. If your trading margin is five percent, every dollar of avoidable fees needs twenty dollars of fresh sales to earn it back. Six hundred dollars of charges is twelve thousand dollars of new business you now have to go and win. Your ops mistake became your sales target.

## Which document is the one that is late?

The chain breaks upstream almost every time. Not at the bank. Not at the [CHA](/glossary/cha). At the supplier.

The pattern goes like this. The commercial invoice arrives with a figure that does not match the contract. Someone emails about it. The supplier replies two days later with a corrected invoice and a packing list whose gross weight now disagrees with the invoice. Someone emails about that. By the time the certificate of origin is issued against corrected numbers, the vessel has sailed and the Bill of Lading is being amended, which is its own week.

None of those steps is hard. Each is a two-minute decision waiting three days for a human to make it.

Under the ICC's Incoterms 2020 rules, who pays for carriage and who bears risk is settled the moment you agree the term. Who chases the supplier for a corrected packing list on a Tuesday is settled by nobody, in any rulebook, anywhere. That job has no owner. It has a volunteer.

## Is this demurrage or is it detention?

Worth separating, because they run on different clocks and a desk that conflates them fixes the wrong thing.

Demurrage is the box sitting inside the terminal past its free time. It is a storage charge and it is the terminal's clock. [Detention](/glossary/detention) is the box outside the terminal, unloaded or waiting to be unloaded, not yet returned empty. It is an equipment charge and it is the carrier's clock.

One late document produces both. The pack is late, so the box sits inside the gate and accrues demurrage. The pack clears, the box goes out to your yard on a Friday, the empty comes back on Tuesday, and detention covers the weekend. Two charges, two invoices, often two different teams arguing about them, from one packing list with a wrong weight on it.

The fix is the same in both cases and it happens weeks earlier, at the supplier.

## Can I just ask the carrier for more free time?

You can, and the answer depends entirely on when you ask.

Ask before the clock runs out, with a commercial reason and a named date, and you are negotiating. Ask after the charge is raised and you are requesting a waiver, which is a favour. Favours are finite, and you will want to spend yours on the container that goes properly wrong, not the one that went slowly wrong while everyone watched.

The better move is to change what the deadline is anchored to. Most desks set the document deadline against vessel arrival. Set it against **estimated discharge minus your free time minus two days** and the whole team is suddenly working to a date that means something.

## How do I stop paying it?

Five things, in the order that pays back fastest. None of them need software.

1/ Write the discharge-minus-free-time date on the shipment the day the contract is signed. Not the arrival date. The deadline date.

2/ Give every open document one named owner. Not a team, not a group chat. A person. "The supplier is chasing it" is not an owner.

3/ [Escalate on a timer, not on a feeling](/blog/exporter-not-sending-shipping-documents). Email today. If there is no answer in 24 hours, WhatsApp. In 48, SMS. At 72, pick up the phone. The timer matters more than the channel, because the timer is what removes the judgement call from a person who has forty other boxes.

4/ [Check the pack against the contract](/blog/import-document-checklist-that-actually-holds), not against last month's pack. Copy-paste is how a wrong weight survives four documents.

5/ Count your misses for one month. Just count them. Most desks have never seen the number, and the number is what gets the meeting.

## The gap in this post

The 2.2 hours, the 8 days and the US$12,000 are an operational baseline, not an industry survey. They describe a desk running physical commodity imports where documents sit on the critical path. Buy DDP with a forwarder absorbing the coordination and your numbers are smaller, because the problem is smaller.

The per-diem itself moves with port, carrier, contract and equipment type, which is why there is no tariff table on this page. I am not going to publish one I cannot stand behind.

## Where Docket fits

Docket runs the second clock. It reads the purchase contract, derives the document deadline from the discharge date, chases the supplier daily on email and then WhatsApp and then SMS and then an AI voice call, and checks each document against the contract before it goes anywhere near a bank. The chase is where the 85% cut in operations cost per shipment comes from, taking 2.2 hours of desk work down to about 20 minutes.

Most [demurrage software](/solutions/demurrage-prevention-software) sold to importers counts the free days down and tells a person the last free day is close. That is the first clock again, in a nicer colour. The one worth paying for is the one that moves the second clock forward.

We deliberately leave demurrage out of the return case we publish. It is episodic, it is easy for a CFO to argue away, and the ops-cost number is the one a trader can check against their own payroll this afternoon.

If you have paid demurrage because a document was late, I want to talk to you. Send me the shipment. Not the invoice, not a summary. The actual email thread, with the dates on it. Two of them told us more than a quarter of reading did.

The ship was never the problem. The mailbox was.

Source: https://dodocket.com/blog/why-am-i-paying-demurrage

---

# HS 7204.49 — Ferrous waste and scrap, other

HS 7204.49 sits under heading 7204, ferrous waste and scrap and remelting scrap ingots of iron or steel. It is the residual subheading for ferrous scrap not classified as turnings, shavings, chips, milling waste, filings, trimmings or stampings. Most importing jurisdictions treat scrap as a controlled waste stream, so pre-shipment inspection is commonly required.

**7204.49** is the residual subheading for ferrous waste and scrap: the material that
falls under heading 7204 but is not turnings, shavings, chips, milling waste, filings,
trimmings or stampings (which go to 7204.41).

## Why classification matters here

Scrap is one of the commodities where the [HS code](/glossary/hs-code) drives the *document*
requirement, not just the duty rate. Because most jurisdictions regulate scrap as a waste stream, a
consignment under 7204.49 typically travels with more paperwork than its value would
suggest: inspection certificates, radiation clearance, and origin documentation that a
finished-goods shipment of the same value would never need.

That is precisely the shipment profile where a missing certificate turns into demurrage:
the container arrives fine, and then sits. The
[metal scrap import documents](/industries/metals-and-scrap) page sets out what an Indian
scrap consignment has to carry, port by port.

## Verify before you file

Subheadings below the six-digit level are national. The 4- and 6-digit codes are
harmonised under the WCO nomenclature, but the 8- and 10-digit extensions differ by
country, as do the licensing requirements attached to them. Confirm the national tariff
line and any import licence with your customs broker for the specific destination before
filing. In India that broker is the customs house agent, in Singapore your declaring agent,
in the UAE your clearing agent.

The rate you confirm is the one your costing has to carry, on every consignment under this
line rather than on the one you checked. That is the job
[landed cost calculation software](/solutions/landed-cost-tracking-software) does: it holds
the classification you and your broker agreed and builds the cost of each consignment
against it as the charges arrive.

Source: https://dodocket.com/hs-code/7204-49