When applying an Exceptions Management approach to shipment tracking, having aggregated views of containers which present risk is an easy way to quickly figure out exception situations, and act in a timely manner to mitigate risk and cost.

In order to help you flag risky shipments, Portcast includes an Exceptions dashboard section in our Web Application. You can use this dashboard to:

• View charts of container volumes presenting risk of Demurrage / Detention at the Port of Discharge (POD)
• Understand the POD locations (ports) where these cost risk situations are most common
• View container volumes by days sitting in port / out of the port
• Download lists of affected containers

What constitutes risk of Demurrage or Detention at POD?

The Portcast platform tracks container events at the Port of Discharge, even after the vessel has arrived at POD. The container milestones help us understand when a container might be at risk of these charges based on different parameters:

• Demurrage risk at POD: this means that the UNLOAD event has been observed for the container, but no GATE OUT event has been registered. Typically, this means that the container has been unloaded from the carrier vessel and is sitting at a port location. Depending on the port’s applicable policies, you might incur demurrage charges after a certain amount of time.
• Detention risk at POD: this means that the GATE OUT event has been observed for the container, but no RETURN event has been registered. This typically means that the container has been picked up from the port, but hasn’t been returned yet. Depending on the shipping line’s Free Time policy (which dictates how much time the container can be kept before being returned without extra charges), you might incur detention charges after a certain amount of time.

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Different carriers use different terminologies to describe container event milestones. Portcast conveniently uniformizes container events for clearer tracking. For more information on how container events inside the Portcast platform, head to our API documentation’s handy article on this specific topic.

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How can I use the Exceptions dashboard to monitor containers at risk of D&D charges?

The Exceptions dashboard automatically regroups all the containers in your Org that are at risk of Demurrage and Detention charges. This is done automatically, based on your previously uploaded BL/Bookings and Containers.

When you access the dashboard, you can use the filters on the left of the screen to:

• Filter the type of exception (Risk of Demurrage at POD or Risk of Detention at POD)
• Filter the port(s) to display where the exceptions have been flagged (amongst ports that have been flagged with any exceptions)
• Filter by the customer that is associated with one or multiple containers (requires the “Customer” default custom field to be filled)
• Filter by the date in which the container was uploaded to the Portcast platform