Getting Started

Key Concepts

Understand the core concepts and data model behind Trackberry.

6 min read

Organizations

An Organization is the top-level entity in Trackberry. It represents a company, team, or trading operation. Everything — shipments, members, settings — belongs to an organization.

  • Each organization has a unique slug used in URLs (trackberry.ag/your-slug/...)
  • Users can belong to multiple organizations
  • Settings, checks, and approved senders are scoped per organization

Shipments

A Shipment represents a batch of fresh produce moving from origin to destination. Shipments have a lifecycle:

Status Description
pending Shipment created, awaiting documents
processing Documents uploaded, extraction in progress
ready_for_review Data extracted, checks completed
approved Reviewed and approved by team
rejected Issues found, shipment rejected

Documents

Documents are files attached to a shipment — typically packing lists, quality reports, or phytosanitary certificates. Trackberry supports:

  • PDF — Parsed via automated text and table extraction
  • Excel (.xlsx) — Direct structured table reading
  • Images (.jpg, .png) — Processed with OCR

Each document goes through an extraction pipeline that produces structured pallet data.

Pallets

A Pallet is a unit of produce within a shipment. Each pallet has attributes extracted from documents:

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Key pallet attributes:

pallet_number   — Unique identifier on the pallet
produce_name    — What's on the pallet (e.g., "Hass Avocado")
category        — Produce type classification
calibre         — Size grading (e.g., "12", "14", "16")
boxes           — Number of boxes on the pallet
box_weight_kg   — Weight per box in kilograms

Each pallet contains one or more Packing Lines — individual rows from the packing list that record produce details, box counts, and weights at a finer level of granularity (e.g., per calibre, variety, or pack format within the same pallet).

Organic & Conventional

Each packing line records whether the produce is Organic or Conventional. Trackberry displays this on shipments:

  • 🌿 — Every packing line is organic
  • 🌱 — The shipment contains a mix of organic and conventional produce

GGN (GLOBALG.A.P. Number)

A GGN is a 13-digit certification number from GLOBALG.A.P. identifying the producer or farm. When present in packing lists, Trackberry extracts it per packing line and displays a summary on the shipment:

  • A single GGN if the entire shipment comes from one certified producer
  • "Mixed (N GGNs)" if lines originate from multiple certified producers

Containers

A Container is the physical shipping unit that holds pallets during transport. Ocean shipments typically have one or more containers; air shipments do not use containers.

Cargo Type

Each shipment (or container) has a Cargo Type that describes the temperature regime:

Cargo Type Description Badge
Ambient No temperature control
Reefer Refrigerated container
Frozen Frozen cargo below 0°C ❄️

The cargo type is automatically detected from transport documents when available. Frozen shipments display a ❄️ badge with the set temperature across the dashboard, shipment list, and trading view.

Shipment Notes

You can attach free-text Notes to any shipment — internal comments, reminders, or instructions for your team. Notes auto-save as you type (no submit button needed) and appear as a 📝 icon on the shipment list, dashboard, and trading view.

Quality Checks

Checks are automated validation rules that run against extracted shipment data. Examples:

  • Weight check — Verify total weight matches expected range
  • Calibre check — Ensure calibre values are within product specs
  • Completeness check — Flag missing required fields

Checks produce results: pass, warning, or fail. A shipment must pass all required checks before approval.

Members & Roles

Users join organizations through Memberships, each with a role:

  • Member — Read access to shipments and data
  • Admin — Can manage settings, members, approved senders, and checks
  • Owner — Full access including organization-level settings

Approved Senders

Approved Senders are email addresses or domain wildcards authorized to send documents to your organization. You can approve a single address (e.g., sender@example.com) or an entire domain (e.g., *@example.com). Documents from unapproved senders are flagged for review.

Pre-allocations

A Pre-allocation assigns a number of boxes from a packing line to a specific customer (allocatee) before the shipment arrives. This lets you plan distribution in advance. Pre-allocations are tracked per packing line and cannot exceed the line's box count.

Public Tracking

Organizations can enable Public Tracking Pages to share a live, unauthenticated view of any shipment. External parties can view the tracking map, transport details, and selected documents — and subscribe to email updates when the status changes.

Shipment Messages

Every email sent to your organization about a shipment is stored as a Shipment Message. Trackberry uses AI to analyze each message and extract:

  • Category — Arrival notice, delay notice, inspection notice, customs update, etc.
  • Urgency — Info, warning, or critical
  • Summary — A one-line description of the key information
  • Dates — ETAs, delivery dates, and inspection dates mentioned in the email
  • Suggested status — Whether the email implies the shipment has arrived or departed

Messages appear on the shipment page and provide a complete conversation history alongside the structured shipment data.

Delay Predictions

For shipments with active tracking, Trackberry uses AI to monitor real-time disruptions (weather, strikes, congestion, infrastructure issues) at each location along the route. When elevated risk is detected, a Delay Predictions panel appears on the shipment page with risk factors and estimated delay impact.

Trading View (Stock Overview)

The Trading View aggregates all packing lines from active shipments into a pivot table grouped by calibre, variety, and/or pack format. It shows unallocated vs. allocated stock at a glance, with click-to-drill-down into individual packing lines and inline pre-allocation. See the Trading View guide for details.

Destination Filter

Both the Dashboard and Trading View offer a hierarchical destination filter that lets you narrow down shipments by country and port. Check a country to select all its ports, or expand to pick individual ports.

Audit Log

Every significant action is recorded in the Audit Log — document uploads, approval decisions, setting changes, member management, and inbound email updates. The audit log provides full traceability for compliance.

Tags: concepts data model architecture