Know every container's last free day
A reefer gets two to four days of free time at destination, and the clock starts at discharge, not at the ETA. A vessel that berths a day early takes a day off that allowance, and nobody tells you. Most importers find out how many days they really had when the demurrage invoice arrives.
Trackberry now counts those days down on every ocean container, from the discharge date the carrier reported.
What you get
- Two clocks per container. Demurrage runs from discharge to gate-out, detention from gate-out to the empty return. The day of discharge is day 1, and working-day terms skip weekends and the port country’s national public holidays.
- A “Free time” column on the shipments list: green with 3 or more days left, amber at 1 or 2, red on the last free day and after it. Sort by it to put the most urgent containers at the top. It is in the Excel download too.
- An “At risk” tab next to Needs attention, listing every shipment whose container is still in the terminal with 2 days or fewer left, or already over.
- A Free time card on the shipment page with both clocks, the last free day, and where the free days came from.
- A warning at 2 days left and again on the last free day, once each per shipment. It arrives in the notification centre, and by push or email if you have those turned on for Alerts.
Setting it up
There are no built-in “typical” numbers, because free time is whatever your contract with the line says. There are two ways to give Trackberry your terms:
- Enter your terms per carrier. Click Set free time on any shipment, enter the demurrage and detention days, choose calendar or working days, and tick Apply to all to save them for every shipment of that carrier. Any member can do this, and a change applies to those shipments straight away.
- Forward your arrival notices. Send arrival notices, delivery orders and release orders to your inbound address. Trackberry reads the free time printed on them. If your organisation has no terms for that carrier yet, the card offers to save the notice’s numbers as its terms in one click.
A number typed on a shipment always takes priority over a notice, and a notice takes priority over your carrier terms. Until either exists, the clock still counts the days a container has sat at the terminal, in grey, without colours or alerts.
What it doesn’t do
Most notices print a window, such as “free 02 Aug to 04 Aug”, estimated from the expected arrival. Trackberry turns that into a number of days and counts it from the real discharge, so an early vessel doesn’t break the count. A deadline with no start (“empty return by 13 Aug”) and a combined demurrage and detention allowance are shown on the card but not applied, because neither gives a count for a single clock. A notice whose B/L or container numbers belong to another shipment is ignored. Regional holidays are not skipped, and warnings are sent for demurrage only.
The full detail is in Demurrage & Free Time. If you want the background on why these charges escalate, read how importers lose money on free time.
FAQ
Do I need to enter free days for every shipment?
No. Enter them once per carrier with Apply to all and every shipment of that carrier uses them. Set a number on a single shipment only when it has its own terms.
Why don’t I get a warning on a shipment that is already well past its last free day?
A shipment first seen more than 2 days over, usually because the terms were only just entered, gets no warning. The days have already been lost, and a first email about them would not help. The red badge still shows it.
How is this different from the “Sitting at the terminal” alert?
Shipment monitoring flags a container 5 days after discharge with no gate-out, whatever your terms are. The free-time clock measures the same wait against your own free days, so on a three-day reefer allowance it warns you before the charges start.