Demurrage & Free Time

Goal #

Know how many free days each container has left before demurrage or detention starts, and hear about it while there is still time to collect the box.

Before you start #

• Ocean shipments with tracking. The clocks run on the carrier’s reported discharge, gate-out and empty-return events. Air and road shipments have no free-time clock.
• Your free days. Trackberry has no built-in “typical” allowance, because free time is set by your contract with each line. Until you enter terms for a carrier, or an arrival notice states them, the clock can count days but can’t tell you how many are left. See Setting your free days.
• Any member can set free days, on one shipment or for a whole carrier.
• Notification preferences, if you want the warning by push or email as well as in-app. See Notifications.

The Two Clocks #

Every container on an ocean shipment gets two clocks:

Only events the carrier reports as having actually happened count. An estimated discharge never starts a clock, so a clock can’t start on a prediction and then jump when the prediction turns out wrong.

The start day is day 1. With 3 free days, a container discharged on Monday has Wednesday as its last free day. Days are counted in the port’s local time.

Calendar days or working days #

Each set of terms is counted one of two ways:

• Calendar days count every day, weekends and holidays included.
• Working days skip Saturdays, Sundays and the national public holidays of the country where that clock started (the discharge port for demurrage). Regional holidays that apply to only part of a country are not skipped. If the country isn’t known, only weekends are skipped.

On working days, a container discharged on a Saturday has Monday as day 1.

When the end event never arrives #

Carriers don’t always report the gate-out or the empty return. Rather than count forever, a clock stops showing a number when:

• it started more than 30 days ago with no end event reported,
• the shipment is archived, or
• for demurrage only, the shipment is marked In Warehouse. Goods in your warehouse mean the container left the terminal, even if the gate-out never came through. Detention keeps running, because the empty may still be out.

The card then says so (“Discharged on … with no gate-out reported since”) instead of showing a count.

Where the Free Days Come From #

For each clock separately, Trackberry uses the first of these that has a value:

Demurrage and detention can come from different sources on the same shipment, each with its own calendar or working-day basis. A notice might give the demurrage days while detention falls back to your carrier terms.

Terms are looked up when the page is shown, not copied onto shipments. Save or change a carrier’s terms and every shipment of that carrier without its own values follows immediately.

Carrier names are matched loosely, so common spellings of the same line count as one carrier: “MSC” and “Mediterranean Shipping Company” share the same terms.

When no terms are known #

The clock still runs, because a container sitting at the terminal is worth seeing. It shows the days elapsed in a grey badge (“Day 4 at terminal”, “Day 2 since gate-out”). A clock with unknown terms is never coloured, never appears in At risk, and never sends an alert, because there is no allowance to measure it against.

On the Shipments List #

The “Free time” column #

The Free time column is on by default. Hide or move it from the Columns picker, like any other column — see Customizing Columns.

On working-day terms the badge says “working days left”. The column shows demurrage while the container is still in the terminal, then detention once it has gated out. A shipment with several containers shows the most urgent one.

Click the Free time header to sort the list most urgent first: overdue and nearly-out containers at the top, then clocks with unknown terms (longest running first), then everything else. Click it again to remove the sort.

When a shipment in transit, arrived or in warehouse has no known terms, a Set free time link appears next to the badge.

The “At risk” tab #

An At risk tab appears next to Needs attention whenever at least one shipment qualifies, with a red count badge. It is hidden when nothing is at risk. A shipment is at risk when its demurrage clock:

• has known free days,
• has 2 or fewer days left, or has run out, and
• is still running, meaning the container has not gated out.

Only ocean shipments that aren’t archived, aren’t in warehouse, and were discharged in the last 45 days are considered. The tab is always sorted most urgent first. Detention never puts a shipment in this tab.

In the Excel download #

The Free time column exports under the header Free time left (days), as a plain number of days left. It is negative once free time has run out, and blank when there is no running clock with known terms. Download from the At risk tab to get just those shipments. See Exporting Data.

Setting Your Free Days #

On one shipment #

1. Click Set free time in the Free time column, or Set free time (or Edit) on the shipment’s Free time card.
2. Enter the Demurrage free days and Detention free days (0–90). A value already coming from a notice or your carrier terms shows as grey placeholder text.
3. Choose Counted in: Calendar days or Working days.
4. Leave Apply to all unticked, and click Save.

Result: this shipment uses your numbers for those clocks, whatever a notice or your carrier terms say. A field left blank has no value of its own on the shipment, so that clock keeps using the notice or the carrier’s terms.

For every shipment of a carrier #

From a shipment. In the same window, tick Apply to all, which names the shipment’s carrier, before saving. Your numbers become your organization’s terms for that carrier, and this shipment’s own values are cleared so it follows them too. A blank field keeps the carrier’s existing value; to remove one, tick Clear demurrage from the carrier’s terms (or detention). The checkbox only appears once the shipment’s carrier is known.

From the carrier list. Click Manage carrier free time at the foot of any shipment’s Free time card. Admins can also reach it from Settings → Carrier Free Time. The list shows each carrier’s demurrage days, detention days and basis:

1. Click Add carrier.
2. Enter the carrier name (as it appears on your shipments), the free days for at least one of the two clocks, and Counted in.
3. Save.

Each carrier has one row. Edit it to change the terms, or Delete it: shipments of that carrier then fall back to unknown terms unless they have their own values or a notice.

From an Arrival Notice #

Carriers and their agents often print free time on the arrival notice, delivery order or release order. Forward those documents to your organization’s inbound address and Trackberry reads the free time off them — see Receiving Documents by Email. Free time the carrier or agent writes in the body of the email is read too.

What happens to what the notice says:

A window is converted rather than used as printed because the notice’s days are usually estimated from the expected arrival. Counting from the real discharge keeps the clock right when the vessel is early or late.

Some things to know:

• The notice has to match the shipment. If it names a B/L or container numbers and none of them belong to the shipment, it is ignored rather than applied to the wrong cargo.
• Newer notices win. A notice attached as a document ranks ahead of free time written in an email body, then the most recent one counts.
• Your own numbers always win. A notice never overwrites free days set on the shipment.

Saving a notice’s terms for the carrier #

When a notice’s days are driving a clock and your organization has no terms for that carrier yet, the Free time card asks whether to save them as your organization’s terms for every shipment of that carrier. Click Save terms to accept. Nothing is saved without that click. If the notice’s figures were for one cargo type, the card says so: the saved terms apply to every shipment of that carrier, whatever the cargo.

The Free Time Card #

Every ocean shipment page has a Free time card with both clocks:

• Demurrage: port time, from discharge to gate-out.
• Detention: container time, from gate-out to empty return.

Each row shows the badge, the day the clock started, the free days (or “Not set”) and the last free day. Once a clock stops, the row says how it ended: “Within free time”, “Gated out on day 6 of 4 — 2 days over”, or, when no free days were known, “Gated out after 4 days”. Detention rows say “Returned empty” instead of “Gated out”.

Under each row, a line says where the free days came from: “From MSC arrival notice · received …” or “MSC terms set for your organization”. Days set on the shipment itself have no source line. When the notice gave a window or a deadline, the card repeats it as the notice printed it, marked “estimated” where the carrier said so.

Also on the notice lists everything else the notice said about free time that wasn’t applied, with the reason: a combined allowance, a deadline without a start, a figure for a different cargo type, and so on. Nothing on the notice is silently dropped.

Alerts #

Trackberry checks demurrage clocks once a day and sends a free-time alert twice at most per shipment:

1. when 2 days or fewer are left, and
2. on the last free day (or the first check after it, if it was missed).

Each goes out once per shipment, and changing the free days afterwards doesn’t send it again. The alert lands in the notification center for every member, and follows each member’s push and email choices for Alerts — see Notifications. The email names the discharge day, the free days and where they came from, and the last free day.

No alert is sent:

• for detention. Only demurrage alerts; detention shows on the card and in the column.
• when the terms are unknown.
• when a shipment is first seen more than 2 days past its last free day. That usually means the terms were only just entered, or the carrier reported the discharge late. The overdue days have already happened, so there is no first email about them. The badge still shows red.
• for shipments still waiting for approval.

Frequently Asked Questions #

Why does a shipment show “Day 4 at terminal” in grey instead of days left?

Trackberry doesn’t know the free days for that carrier yet. Click Set free time, tick Apply to all if the terms are your standard ones for that line, and every shipment of the carrier starts counting down.

How is this different from the “Sitting at the terminal” alert?

Shipment Monitoring raises “Sitting at the terminal” when a container has gone 5 days after discharge with no gate-out, whatever your terms are. The free-time clock measures the same wait against your free days, so with 3 free days a shipment is At risk well before monitoring would flag it.

I changed the free days. Will the alert be sent again?

No. Each alert is sent once per shipment. The badge, the At risk tab and the card all update straight away.

The notice says “empty return by 13 Aug”. Why isn’t the clock using it?

A deadline with no start day can’t be turned into a number of free days, and the day on the notice is usually an estimate. It is shown on the card for reference. Enter the detention free days yourself if you know them.

Do working days skip regional holidays?

No, only national public holidays and weekends. If your contract also excludes a regional holiday, add a day to that shipment’s free days by hand.

Does free time count for air or road shipments?

No. Demurrage and detention are ocean container charges, so only ocean shipments have the clocks.