Best Practices

These Tips and Suggestions may save you time and improve your experience with using the Shipment Management Centre:

1    Checking Your Preference Settings for Optimized Configuration

Setting your preferences helps alleviate data-entry and reinforces processes in the system.  There are Organization and User preferences.  Set your preferences to automatically fill in values that rarely change, like Transportation Mode, Shipper name or the Send Booking To party.  If you find you need to frequently remove field values that have been automatically filled you should take a look at your preference settings.  For more information about setting preferences, please collaborate with your organizational system administrator or contact your Expeditors representative for assistance.

2    Clicking Save vs. Details & Documents on a Booking

After filling out the Create Bookings page, if you need to access the advanced entry pages in Details & Documents, you can save a step in the process by clicking Details & Documents instead of Save.  Clicking Details & Documents saves your work and takes you to the next set of screens.

3    Using Templates to Speed up the Booking Process

If you have repetitive booking requests, creating a template might be an effective way to speed up the booking process.  Templates are easy to create - fill in the data on-screen that normally repeats, then in the booking actions area, save the booking as a template with a distinctive name.  Not all required data-entry fields need to be filled in to create a template.  One way to identify repetitive shipments is to review a shipment report to look for patterns.  Tip: If you have similar shipping patterns but different customers, leave the consignee field blank in your template.

See Templates for more information.

4    Using Meaningful Naming Conventions for Templates

Templates are a great way to manage repetitive booking requests.  If you have a long list of templates because you have many types of repetitive shipments you'll save yourself a headache by naming them something meaningful so they are easy to find.  For naming conventions, consider the discriminating features such as destination port codes and consignee names that can be combined into a template name.  Template names can be changed in the Maintenance area on the left navigational bar. See Templates for more information.

5    Pre-Loading the Address Book

Stopping in the middle of a booking to add an address into the system lengthens the booking process.  Sometimes it is unavoidable if it is a new party you are working with.  However, there are a few things you can do to smooth the process.  First, if you have access to the logistics address book data your company uses, it can be uploaded into the system.  If this information changes periodically, arrange to do a batch upload of the updated or new information periodically (weekly or monthly). For more information how to upload your address book into the system, please see the Trade Partner Centre's Upload Trade Partner Data topic or contact your Expeditors representative.

6    Pre-Loading Expeditors' Offices (Public Orgs)

Make sure to download ahead of time any and all branches your company might want to book with so you do not have to stop and add them while you are making a booking.  For more information how to pre-load Public Orgs into the system, please see the Trade Partner Centre's Public Org topic or contact your Expeditors representative.

7    Having Different Units and Measures for Domestic vs. International Bookings

If you are shipping both internationally and domestically, you may want to have the international bookings in metric and the domestic bookings in imperial measures (pounds, inches and feet).  You can set your company profile to default to the most common types and then set specific templates to overwrite that preference for the other type of shipments.  See Preferences and Units and Measures Section for more information.

8    Clicking Apply When the Trade Partner Doesn't Exist

If you are certain that the Trade Partner does not exist in your address book, you can save a step by clicking Apply and leaving the Trade Partner field blank.  You will be taken directly to add a new partner to your address book.  See Assign Trade Partner Data for more information.

9     Using Apply to Filter Addresses

The Search function for address book entries is useful if you need to browse or filter the data to find the correct party for your booking.  The Apply feature however is a quick way to filter if you already know a partial code or name.  Enter as many beginning characters of the code or name that you know, click Apply, and the system will return your selection or give you a pop-up list to choose from if there are multiple possibilities.  Tip: If your Trade Partner doesn't exist you will be able to create a new one from here. See #8 above.

10     Using Multiple Send Booking To Parties

No need to always apply a Send Booking To party, you can let the system choose for you based on postal code.  If you don't put a value in this field, when you enter your shipper and click Apply, it will be automatically filled in based on the Shipper's address postal code.

11     Booking House Shipments with Forwarders

In the Preference Settings for the Organization tab, for the When send Booking To Party is Expeditors... options, make sure House Bill/Direct Bill is set as default (click here to view an image).  

Now, when you create bookings, select House Shipment in the Shipment Type field and the booking request will be received by the Send Booking To party. This provides information to the forwarder when one booking translates to one Bill of Lading/Airway Bill.

12     Optimizing Your Searches for Successful Extractions

Here are some guidelines that will help when you are trying to do an extraction:

• Excel has limitations on what it can handle. Hence, MS-Excel (XLSX) files have an upper limit of 1,000,000 records or rows.

• If you want to go up to that limit, we recommend no more than 10 columns.

• Larger fields can cause more problems.  Notes and descriptions are the largest fields. Even if individual descriptions are short, the field length is still identified in the database and may cause challenges.

• If you want to have 20 columns, we recommend limiting the number of records to 30,000.

• You can also filter by a column without extracting it. In the Search Fields section, deselect the Display checkbox next to the column you want to remove. Then click Search.  The search results will continue to be filtered by all of the search criteria, even if the column is not being displayed but when you extract the search results, the column will not appear.

• Extractions with more than 20 columns (especially with notes or descriptions) will likely be too complex and will not extract successfully.

Please see Extract Booking Data for more information on extractions.