Marine

1 What is the Marine module?

Marine is for the ship agency business — attending a vessel while it is in port on behalf of its principal. One record follows the whole call: the estimate of costs (the Disbursement Account), the events during the visit, the notifications you send, and the final settlement.

• Estimate first — a Proforma DA quotes the principal the expected port costs.
• One record, two names — “Proforma DA” and “Appointment” are the same call at different stages.
• Work the stages — pre-arrival, arrival, berthing, cargo operation, sailing, then close.
• See everything — a status whiteboard and per-voyage cost/profit analysis.

2 Proforma DA → Appointment → Close

Every call moves through a fixed sequence of flow statuses. A new call starts as a Proforma DA; promoting it to an Appointment unlocks the operational stages.

Proforma DA Appointment Pre-Arrival Arrival Berthing Cargo Operation Sailing Close Estimate Final DA Close

The stage controls what you can do: the schedule (ETA/ATA…), the draft & bunker figures and the cost and final prices appear once it is an Appointment; the invoice and the Close Estimate print unlock at Close Estimate; the Voyage DA and Final DA prints at Final DA.

Moving between stages

On a saved Appointment (not while you are editing it) the toolbar shows the flow bar: the current stage’s name in a bar that fills up as the call moves from Appointment to Close, with an arrow either side.

• ▶ (right arrow) moves the call one stage on. Moving past Close Estimate before the invoice is generated warns “Invoice is not generated for this job” and asks you to confirm.
• ◀ (left arrow) moves it one stage back, after you confirm. It stops at Appointment — an Appointment never goes back to Proforma DA.

Hover over an arrow to see which stage it goes to. A Closed call can no longer be edited; step it back with the left arrow to reopen it. A cancelled Proforma DA can’t be promoted or moved to any stage.

3 Raising a Proforma DA

Open the Marine group → Proforma DA → New.

1. Choose the Principal, Purpose, Vessel and Port. All four are required.
2. On the Estimate tab, list the expected charges — each with an estimated price and tax code. A new Proforma DA opens with every charge marked Auto-load already on the tab, each with the charge’s narration and default amount — change or remove them as needed (if you save with no lines at all, the Auto-load charges are put back). Add Charge adds a line; picking a charge on an empty line also fills in its default amount. The tab shows the estimate, its tax and the total with tax.
3. Click Save, then print the Port Cost Estimate for the principal.
4. When the principal confirms, Promote to Appointment turns the same record into an Appointment: it gets its appointment number (port code and a per-port counter, e.g. JEA-00001) and a Marine job number from the company’s Marine job series (e.g. AA/000321/26; the first job of a new financial year carries on the same prefix and department, with the year moved on), and the job is registered in the department job register so vouchers and job reports can pick it.

4 Working the Appointment

Once promoted, the Appointment screen carries the call through the port visit. As the vessel arrives, berths, works cargo and sails, you:

• record the arrival & departure figures (drafts, bunkers, fresh water) at the right stages;
• log activities at each stage;
• refine the billing figures — cost and final prices diverge from the estimate once the real costs are known;
• generate the invoice, finish with the Close Estimate and Final DA, then close the call.

The page title shows the appointment number and the job number (e.g. Appointment — JEA-00001 · Job AA/000321/26). On the Header tab, the Appointment panel shows the Appointment No with its date, the Job No and, once the invoice is generated, the Invoice No — all set by the system and read-only.

The port cannot be changed once the call has its appointment number. A charge line that carries an estimate cannot be removed or switched to another charge; add a new line instead.

The Billing tab

On an Appointment the Proforma’s Estimate / Charges tab becomes Billing. Each line shows:

Below the grid are the estimate, tax and estimate-with-tax totals, then the cost, final, final tax and final-with-tax totals, and the billed total in USD.

Invoicing the principal

From Close Estimate on, Generate Invoice bills the final prices to the principal’s account (the A/C Code on the Principal master) as an accounts Invoice dated today. Each charge’s final price goes to its Sales A/C with its tax; a charge’s cost is moved from the job control account to its Cost A/C; an advance already received on the job control account against the job is deducted. The button then reads Refresh Invoice: it rewrites the invoice from the current figures under the same number and date. The Costs tab lists the purchases, payments and journals posted against the job number. The invoices Marine has posted are listed under Sales → Sales Invoice in the Marine menu.

Marine Settings — Tools › Preferences › Marine Settings holds the Marine job series (prefix, next number, department and accounts) and, above it, a Cost Posting card: the Accrued expense / cost-of-sales posting switch, the Cost of Sales Account and the Accrued Expense Account. These accounts are fallbacks: a charge’s own account comes first, then the job series’, and the card’s only where both are blank. The card is the same setting Cargo Settings shows, so in a company with both modules a change shows on both screens; a company without Cargo sets it here.

Printing the DA documents

Click Print on the call and pick a document. Each prints the saved record, so save your changes first (you are reminded if you haven’t). The menu offers only what the stage allows:

The DA documents group the charges by charge type (Port Charges, Vessel Expenses, Agency Charges, Miscellaneous Charges) with a sub-total per group, and show each line’s tax at its tax code and its USD equivalent at the USD rate. They also show the receipts taken against the job, the balance due (in our favour or in yours), the USD balance in words, and the company’s bank accounts from Company Setup. The Voyage DA adds a summary by charge type; the Final DA gives each line the invoice number with a letter (e.g. 2161A, 2161B…). A call with no charges has nothing to print.

5 Dashboard & Quick View

The Marine Dashboard summarises appointments by stage, top principals and ports, vessels currently in port and upcoming arrivals.

Quick View is the operational whiteboard — two tabs, both date-range filtered:

• Status Board — every call ordered by stage, with a DA-days turnaround figure.
• Cost Analysis — per-voyage selling price, cost and profit for invoiced calls.

6 Masters & documents

Set up under Masters: Charge, Port, Vessel, Principal, Purpose, Flow Status and Activity Type. The shared Milestone and Milestone Template screens are under Others. Flow Status is the fixed workflow taxonomy — leave the standard stages as they are unless your operation genuinely differs.

Marine’s Charge master is Marine’s own list of port-call charges; it is separate from the Charge master used by Cargo, Liner, Transport and Shipchandling.

What is checked when you save a master

• Charge — the Type is required: Port Charges, Vessel Expenses, Agency Charges or Miscellaneous Charges (it decides the group the charge prints under). Tax Code, Sales A/C and Cost A/C are picked from lists; a tax code that doesn’t exist, or an account that is not in the chart of accounts, is refused. These are what the invoice posts to.
• Port — the Port Code is required: every appointment number at the port starts with it.
• Principal — the A/C Code is picked from the chart of accounts; it is the account the principal is invoiced on.

Each of these lists can be loaded from a spreadsheet with Import CSV on its screen, or from Tools → Import (CSV) — see Importing Masters from CSV.

From the call you can print the Port Cost Estimate, Close Estimate, Voyage DA, Final DA, the Marine Invoice and the Port Activity Log — each from its own customisable template (see Printing the DA documents).

The Sales group in the Marine menu has Sales Invoice: the accounts invoices posted from Marine appointments, and only those. Access to it is granted per user group in User Manager, like any other menu item.

7 Tips & FAQ

Milestones

New Marine jobs get their milestones from the job type’s template (Others → Milestone Template; the milestones themselves are under Others → Milestone), and the Milestones button on the job shows them. Saving the job or raising an invoice keeps them up to date, and you can share a tracking link with the customer. See the Milestone manual.

“Proforma DA” and “Appointment” are one record

They are the same call at different flow statuses — promoting doesn’t create a second job, it advances the one you have.

Why can’t I edit some figures yet?

Fields unlock by stage — schedule, draft figures and the cost and final prices once it is an Appointment; the invoice at Close Estimate. Move the call to that stage to reach them. The estimate is fixed once the call is an Appointment. A closed or cancelled call is read-only.

Appointment numbering

The human appointment number is a per-port counter, so each port keeps its own running sequence.