Vendor Management & Billing

Did you know that you can ask your vendors to upload their bills directly in TrakIT? And you can approve or reject them? Let's take a look at how this can be done.

Vendor Expense Linking

A vendor is an entity that is providing services to your company. If you are using the finance module of TrakIT, then you register the expenses related to the shipment under the Job Finance page. These expenses (or disbursements) can then be linked to the billing party (vendor).

Below is an example of how income and expenses look.

The Entity column displays the billing party or vendor for the expenses registered. If a Bill has been received and/or validated, it is displayed under the Inv/Bill column.

Vendor Registration

If you would like to provide access to your vendor to be able to upload bills directly in TrakIT, you will first need to create a user profile and then link the user to the Entity that represents the vendor.

1) Go to Admin > User Management > External tab.

2) Create a new user. A welcome email with credentials will automatically be sent to the email address provided.

3) After creating the user, go to the Linked Entities tab and click 'Add Entity'.

4) Once the Entity is linked, you can switch to the Access Control tab to select which menus should be available to the user.

Vendor Portal

Once the vendor receives their credentials via email, they will be able to sign-in to TrakIT. On the Bills page, they will be able to add a new bill.

After creating the bill, the vendor has the option of adding more supporting documents or modifying the bill fields before finally submitting it.

The vendor can also see a list of all bills submitted and their approval status.

Approval & Rejection

Once the vendor uploads the bill, it appears under the Finance > Bills page as a Submitted Bill.

There are options to Accept, Reject or Delete the bill submitted by the vendor. On acceptance or rejection, an email is sent to the vendor notifying them of the same.

Once a bill is accepted, it can be used in the normal way by assigning expense accounts and then validating the bill.

For any questions or concerns, please contact the TrakIT Support team.

Container Yard Management

TrakIT allows you to place containers in a container yard according to the standard bay, row, and tier system. But before you can do this, you must set up the yard correctly.

Setting Up the Yard

As the first step, the yard can be created via Admin > Masters > Warehouses & Yards. Click on the 'Create' button and enter the details for the yard. Make sure 'Container Yard' is selected as the type.

Once the Yard is created, select it to create one or more "Areas" within the Yard.

If there are areas where containers are just placed ad-hoc without the need for numbering the location, just select 'No Positioning' for the area. E.g. Stuffing/Un-stuffing Areas, Maintenance/Repair Areas, etc.

Once an area is created and selected, you will be able to define the structure of the area in terms of the number of bays, rows and tiers available in the area.

You may also select specific slots and disable the slots where containers can't be placed. Each slot is a twenty-foot slot where a 20' container can be placed. A 40' container will cover 2 adjacent slots.

Once the configuration is completed for all zones, you can place containers in the yard.

Placing Containers

Placing a container in a yard is simply a matter of entering the position code of the container. The position of a container is designated as Zone-Bay-Row-Tier. 

In the Work Order page with the container, open the WO menu and select Yard Position.

When a container is placed at a location, TrakIT will ensure that the location is valid according to certain rules:

• A 20' container must be placed on the ground or on top of a 20' container only
• A 40' container must be placed on the ground, on a 40' container, or on two adjacent 20' containers

Similarly, when removing a container, TrakIT ensures the container can only be removed if it is permissible to do so.

When a Work Order has a container that is placed in a yard, it is not possible to change the container number.

Reports for the complete container positioning can be created via Workflow, Advanced or Query Reports.

For any questions or clarifications, please contact TrakIT Support.

Invoice Reversal and Credit Notes

It may be possible that an invoice has been issued wrongly or with incorrect amounts. Once the invoice is posted to the finance system, it is usually not possible to reverse this process. In such a case, a Credit Note must be issued for correcting the situation.

Invoice reversal basically involves creating Credit Notes of the reversal amount. There may be two possibilities:

Reversing the Whole Invoice

In case, the invoice was issued wrongly and the entire amount needs to be reversed, TrakIT offers a shortcut way to reverse the entire invoice. There is a button 'Reverse Invoice' available on the Invoice page.

Clicking this button brings up the following popup:

After selecting the Credit Note template and reason for reversal, TrakIT will perform the reversal as mentioned in the steps. The reversal cannot be undone.

Invoice Reversal is just a shortcut to automate the whole reversal process. The same steps can be performed manually as well.

Reversing Invoice Partially Only

In case only a part of the invoice needs to be reversed, the user must do the following:

1. Create one or more Income accounts on the shipment with negative values matching the amounts to be refunded.
2. Create a new Credit Note under the Invoices tab and add these accounts to the Credit Note.
3. Once satisfied with the Credit Note preview and amount, the Credit Note can be approved and finalized.

For any questions or clarification, please contact TrakIT Support.

Analyse your Job Profitability

With the latest update of TrakIT, a new "Analyse" tab has been added to the Job Finance page. This tab allows users to view the summary of the shipment finance based on preset views.

The following views are available, along with an example of each.

Account Master Summary - The information is grouped as per the Account Masters. Each account master present in the accounts tab is summarised.

Account Category Summary - The information is grouped as per the category of the Account Masters. Each category is presented per row.

Work Order Profitability - This view displays the profitability of each work order in the job seperately.

Each of the views can be exported to Excel if required. 

For any questions or clarifications, please contact TrakIT Support.

Upcoming Changes to Advanced, Query and Workflow Report Access

TrakIT has the capability to allow users to build a wide variety of reports and automate the delivery of these reports at their convenience. Currently, such reports are accessible to all users who have access to the relevant workflows or companies.

With data security becoming an ever-increasing factor in online systems, and to keep TrakIT up to date with security and compliance requirements, access to reports will be changed in a series of updates.

The main changes to be implemented are listed below:

1) Report Owner

Every report will now belong to a user called the "Report Owner". A report will be accessible and modifiable only by the Report Owner or a System Administrator. This user shall be the responsible person for the report - this includes creation, adding fields, modifying subscriptions, setting recipients, etc. No other user (except SysAdmins) shall be able to make any changes to the report.

The creator of a report shall automatically become the owner. The owner (or SysAdmin) may also transfer the ownership of a report to another user.

Changes requested by a user for a report shall have to be approved by the Report Owner or a SysAdmin.

2) User Access Control - Manual Reports

For reports that are generated manually, the Report Owner must provide access to other users to be able to download/preview the report. Such access can be granted or revoked as needed to specific users. Users with access can only generate/download the report. No changes can be made to the report itself.

Access will be granted to users at the subscription level.

3) Report Recipients - Scheduled Reports

For scheduled reports, the Report Owner may add any number of recipients that will receive the report. These could be internal users/emails or external email addresses. Permission to add external recipients shall be controlled through Role Management.

4) Responsibility

The Report Owner shall be responsible for the data generated by the report and its security - allowing users access to download the report or adding users as recipients.

Please note that the above changes will be implemented in the next one or two weeks. If you have any questions or concerns about accessing your reports in the future, please connect with TrakIT Support.