All fast at 14:20. That is what the statement of facts (SOF) says, because the colleague standing on the quay wrote it down at the time. Three weeks later, at month-end, someone in the office opens the same document, finds the times, and types them into an invoice.
A lot of agency invoicing goes wrong at that point, and sloppiness has very little to do with it. It is a copying job, done weeks after the event, by someone who was not there.
Why the times get typed twice
The SOF is the agreed record of the port call: pilot on board, first line ashore, all fast, operations commenced and completed, gangway down, vessel sailed. It gets written while the call runs, by someone who is present, and the master signs it.
The invoice gets built later, in the office, out of whatever has reached the file by then. Between the two there is a person with the SOF open on one screen and the invoicing screen on the other, and often a spreadsheet in between.
Nobody chose that arrangement. It happens because the times are recorded in a document and charged from a system, and nothing joins the two.
What the second typing costs
The times drift. All fast at 14:20, service charged from 14:00. Each is defensible on its own. Put them in front of a principal together and you need the person who was on the quay to explain the gap.
The surcharge nobody applied. Whether a job running past 18:00 picks up the evening rate, whether Saturday is charged differently, whether there is a four-hour minimum. These are rules, and they are often only in somebody's head. They get applied when that person is in and missed when they are not.
The invoice waits for the paperwork. Nothing can be billed until the SOF is signed and filed. So the invoice sits, or it goes out on what people remember and gets corrected afterwards.
Month-end goes on assembling rather than checking. The account gets put together line by line from documents that each hold one part of it, and the checking happens at the end, if there is time.
The query arrives in November. A principal asks about one line on a call that sailed in August. You open the SOF, then the order, then the supplier's invoice, and spend twenty minutes rebuilding an answer that was obvious on the day.
What it takes to stop
Four conditions.
- The time is recorded once, on the call itself. Not in a document about the port call, but on the record of it, by the person who was there, while it is happening.
- The rate knows what to do with a time. Out-of-hours boundaries, weekend rates, minimum hours and rounding sit in the tariff, so the answer does not depend on who is invoicing this week.
- Each invoice line can be traced back. From the line to the time, the order and the supplier's invoice, without opening three systems.
- Late costs attach to the right call. The crane invoice arriving ten days after the vessel sailed lands on the file it belongs to.
By using SHIPM8, our process steps are more LEAN, allowing us to generate more quantity with the same requested quality. With SHIPM8 we communicate with our colleagues, customers and suppliers from one platform, allowing us to maintain an overview of our process.
Rory Balkema, Managing Director, Seamar
Where SHIPM8 fits
In SHIPM8 the port call file holds the whole call, from arrival through the berth to departure, with the activities, orders, messages and documents of that call hanging off it. Times are recorded there as the work happens, in the same system the invoice is calculated from. Evening rates, weekend rates and minimum charges sit in the tariff, including matrix tariffs and price lists, so they get applied rather than remembered. Invoices are drafted from those records. The cost calculator keeps a line's origin with it, and the Connected Data box on the invoice shows which records and sources an amount came from. VAT follows the tariff configuration, lines are rounded before the total is calculated, and purchase invoices are checked for duplicates when they are imported.
The SOF still gets written, and it still gets signed. It just stops being the thing your invoice is copied from.
If month-end goes on reading times out of documents, ask for a demo and we will take one of your own port calls from the SOF through to the invoice.