Tracking Shipments
Notifications
How Trackberry tells you when something happens to a shipment — in-app, on your phone, and by email.
10 min readLast updated
Goal
Choose how Trackberry reaches you when something happens to a shipment (in-app, on your phone, by email) and understand why you get one notification instead of twelve.
Before you start
- Any role. Notification settings are personal; each member chooses their own.
- The mobile app installed and signed in, if you want push notifications. The iOS and Android apps aren’t available yet.
- A timezone set in Settings → Profile & language, so dates in emails render in your local time rather than UTC.
How Notifications Work
Every shipment event reaches you through the notification center first. Push and email are optional extras layered on top — you choose which of them you want, per category.
Shipment event
│
├──► Notification center (always)
├──► Push to your phone (if enabled)
└──► Email (if enabled)
The Notification Center
Click the bell in the top navigation bar. A badge shows how many unread notifications you have, and it updates live — no refresh needed.
The dropdown shows your five most recent notifications with the shipment reference, what happened, and how long ago. Click one to jump to the shipment. View all opens the full notification history.
- Reading a shipment marks it read. Opening a shipment clears its notification automatically.
- Mark all read clears the badge in one click.
Notifications are coalesced
Rather than stacking up one row per event, Trackberry keeps one unread notification per shipment. If a shipment changes status, then its ETA moves, then a document arrives, all of that accumulates into a single entry until you read it.
This is why a busy shipment never fills your bell with notifications, and why the notification you open shows everything that happened, not just the latest event.
Notification Categories
Events fall into two categories, and you choose channels per category. The lists below show where each event starts out; you can override any of them.
Urgent
Things that need action now. Some events are always urgent; others are urgent only when the details call for it, as the table shows.
| Event | When it triggers |
|---|---|
| ETA Changed | The tracking service reports a revised ETA — shows old and new dates. Urgent when the shipment arrives within your ETA urgency window (see ETA changes); otherwise informational |
| Shipment Error | An error occurs during shipment processing |
| Email Update | An inbound email is classified as Critical urgency. A Warning email is informational |
| Shipment Stalled | A monitoring alert opened, escalated, or has gone unfixed for a week, and at least one of the alerts is critical. Warning-only alerts are informational — see Shipment Monitoring and the morning digest |
| Rolled Over | A container has been moved to a later ship that departs 5+ days after the one it was booked on. See Rolled over below |
| Free Time Running Out | A container’s demurrage free time is down to 2 days, and again on its last free day. Each is sent once per shipment — see Demurrage & Free Time |
| Customs Hold | A port terminal reports that customs has notified an inspection (a scan or a physical inspection) on one of your containers. Sent when the hold is placed; a later inspection on the same container is announced again |
The morning digest
Monitoring checks your shipments once a day. Each shipment with something new gets its own entry in your notification list, and its own email if you have email on. Your phone hears about it differently: you get one push per organization, such as “8 shipments need attention”, instead of one per shipment.
The push is sent only for alerts that are new or have escalated. A reminder for an alert that is still open keeps its notification and email but doesn’t push. Tapping the push opens the shipment when only one is involved, and the Issues page when there are several.
ETA changes
An ETA change is urgent when the cargo is about to arrive. In Settings → Notifications, pick Treat an ETA change as urgent when the shipment arrives within 3 days, 1 week (the default), 2 weeks, or Always. Trackberry compares the earlier of the old and new ETA with that window, so a slip from 5 days out to 20 days out still counts as urgent. A change on cargo still further out arrives as informational.
Separately, Notify me when an ETA moves by at least (1 hour to 2 days, 12 hours by default) sets the smallest move that reaches your phone or inbox. Further out, the bar rises with the time left: a move has to be about 15% of the time until arrival, so a day’s slip ten days out stays quiet while a day’s slip tomorrow gets through. The move is measured from the ETA you were last alerted about, so four 6-hour slips still add up to an alert. A move of three days or more always gets through, so a missed vessel is never held back. Smaller moves only appear in your notification list, and so does any ETA change once the cargo has arrived.
More than two days from arrival, a new ETA from the tracking feed is only sent once a reading at least six hours later still shows it. Feeds sometimes jump to a date weeks out and back within hours; held like this, that jump sends nothing. Inside the last two days, a change goes out straight away.
A shipment you have just added sends one New shipment notification. Its first ETA, and its move to Departed if it was already at sea when you added it, come with that notification rather than as news of their own, so neither is notified.
A push or email says how far the ETA moved and shows both times with your time zone, for example “ETA 2 days later: Oct 26, 20:00 → Oct 28, 20:00 CET”.
Containers on the same ship usually get the same new ETA at the same time. Your phone gets one push for all of them, such as “ETA 2 days later for 5 containers”, sent about ten minutes after the change. The notification list and email still show each container on its own.
Rolled over
The tracking feed can show that a container missed the ship it was booked on and was moved to one sailing at least 5 days later. Trackberry then sends a Rolled over alert as soon as it sees the change. Containers that roll together get one alert, not one each. A ship swap that moves the departure by less than 5 days isn’t a rollover and doesn’t send a Rolled over alert.
It follows your Urgent preferences:
- In-app and push name the new ship and its departure date, for example “Rolled over to MSC BELLA, now departing Oct 8, 2026”.
- Email shows the planned vessel and the new vessel, each with its departure date in your timezone, and suggests telling your customer and confirming the new booking with your forwarder.
Rollover alerts cover ocean shipments. Trackberry spots a roll by comparing the booking with what it read before, so a roll that happened before the shipment was first tracked isn’t alerted. The shipment page also shows a Rolled over banner; see Shipment Monitoring.
Informational
Good to know, no rush.
| Event | When it triggers |
|---|---|
| Shipment Created | A new shipment is created (via email or manual upload) |
| Status Changed | The shipment transitions to a new status (e.g. In Transit → Arrived) |
| Validated With Warnings | A draft validated itself while a document check still had a warning open. The notification names the checks; a warning means the figures could not be verified, not that they are wrong. See Document Checks |
| Auto-Archived | Trackberry archived a validated or in-transit shipment because its ETA passed weeks ago, or it never had one, and no arrival was recorded. Only shipments auto-archived in the last week trigger it. See Shipments List & Archiving |
| ETA Changed (far out) | The ETA moved on cargo arriving later than your ETA urgency window |
| Email Update (Warning) | An inbound email is classified as Warning urgency |
| Shipment Stalled (warnings only) | Every open monitoring alert on the shipment is a warning |
| Customs Hold Released | The terminal reports that a hold you were told about has been released. It follows the Customs hold setting, as an update by default; a release of a hold you were never told about sends nothing |
Overriding an Event
The defaults suit most people, but not everyone. Some want to hear when a shipment arrives as urgently as a free-time warning; others never want a “new shipment” buzz.
In Settings → Notifications, under What counts as urgent, each event has its own menu:
- Default keeps the behavior described above. The menu shows what Default means for that event, for example “Default (urgent if arriving soon)”.
- Urgent always treats the event as urgent, so it follows your Urgent channels.
- Informational always treats it as informational, so it follows your Informational channels.
- Off (in app only) keeps the event in your notification center and sends no push and no email.
The events you can tune are New shipment, Validated, Departed, Arrived, Received at warehouse, ETA change, Rollover, Free time running out, Customs hold, Shipment stalled, Carrier email, Validation warnings, Can’t track and Auto-archived. Other status changes follow their default.
Two things to know:
- An event set to Urgent still has to get past the other settings. An ETA change smaller than your Notify me when an ETA moves by at least threshold only appears in your notification list, whatever you pick here.
- Treat an ETA change as urgent when the shipment arrives within only applies while ETA change is on Default.
Choosing Your Channels
Go to Settings → Notifications. Below the per-event menus, you’ll find two rows of toggles:
| Push notifications | ||
|---|---|---|
| Urgent | Send urgent notifications to your mobile devices | Also email urgent notifications to your address |
| Informational | Send informational notifications to your mobile devices | Also email informational notifications to your address |
Changes save as soon as you toggle them. The rows are independent, so a common setup is push for Urgent only and email for both.
In-app notifications always appear in your notification center. These toggles only control the additional channels.
Push notifications
Push works through the Trackberry mobile apps on iOS and Android. Sign in on the app and allow notifications when prompted — your device registers itself automatically. Push notifications go to every device you’re signed in on, and tapping one opens the shipment. For an alert about an inbound email, it opens the shipment with that email already showing in the full-screen viewer, and the in-app notification and the email link there too.
The iOS and Android apps aren’t available yet.
Turning push off in Trackberry’s settings stops the messages without you having to change anything at the OS level.
Email is opt-in. If you’d rather have a written record of notifications in your inbox, tick the Email box for that category.
Emails respect your timezone: set it under Settings → Profile & language and every date and time in your emails is rendered in your local time. Without a timezone set, dates default to UTC.
Trackberry also suppresses email to addresses that have hard-bounced or bounced repeatedly, so an out-of-date address can’t damage our sending reputation without anyone noticing. The in-app notification still appears.
Public Tracking & Subscribers
Everything above is for members of your organization. People outside your organization follow a shipment a different way: through its public tracking page.
Anyone with the link can enter their email address to subscribe to that shipment, confirm via a double opt-in email, and unsubscribe from any message they receive. Subscribers only ever see and hear about the shipment they subscribed to.
See Public Tracking Pages for how to enable public pages and control exactly what they show.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why am I not receiving notification emails?
Email is opt-in, and it’s off by default — notifications go to your in-app notification center unless you ask for a copy in your inbox. Tick the Email box for Urgent, Informational, or both in Settings → Notifications.
If email is already on and messages still aren’t arriving, your address may have been suppressed after repeated bounces. Check your spam folder first, then contact support.
Can I get notifications for one shipment only?
Member notifications cover every shipment in your organization. To follow a single shipment, subscribe to its public tracking page with your email address.
Why is my bell badge not clearing?
The badge counts unread notifications for the organization you’re currently viewing. Switching organizations shows a different count. Use Mark all read in the dropdown to clear the current one.
Do notifications work when the app is closed?
Yes — push notifications are delivered by Apple and Google, so your device receives them whether or not Trackberry is running.