Saturday, 20 April 2013

A "new and improved" Finance Module

TrakIT build 80 has been released today with the re-designed finance module among other changes. It is recommended that users try and familiarize themselves with the functionality before using it for any live data. As this is the first release of the new finance module, we expect some changes, adjustments and optimizations over the next few weeks.

Shipment Financials

The Corridor Definitions includes a section called "Shipment Financials" (previously called Corridor Estimates) where users can declare finance transactions expected for a shipment belonging to the corridor.

Shown below is the window where financials are declared - Admin > Corridor Definitions > Corridor > Shipment Financials:



For each transaction, the following parameters apply:

  • Basic Transaction - The basic type of transaction (from the master transaction types)
  • Specific Information - Free text that is appended to the Basic Transaction
  • Transaction Type - Income, Expense or Pass-Thru
  • Applies To - Whether the transaction applies to each work order or to the shipment as a whole.
  • Default Estimate - A default value to be applied when transaction is created in a work order or shipment.
  • VAT - The VAT rate (in percent) applicable on the transaction.

When creating a transaction, you can choose to apply the transaction to all active work orders where the transaction is missing. This, however, does not update work orders where this transaction already exists.

A corridor transaction definition cannot be modified (except for Default USD or VAT rate).This is to prevent accidental or inadvertent change of transaction types.

Once transactions are declared, they are automatically added to new work orders. The new work order finance page displays the header information of the shipment, a summary of the estimates and actual transactions, as well as detailed tables where users can update the transactions. Users with 'Finance' profile will be taken straight to this page when opening a work order or shipment. Other users can click on the 'Fin' button at the top right of the work order. A sample is displayed below:


Transactions can be updated by users of Financial profile or above. Once estimates are final, they can be approved by a user after which they are locked. Estimates can be "un-approved" again if they need to be changed.

Estimates and Actuals can be included in Custom reports as well.

At this stage, we're looking for feedback and suggestions to improve the finance module in TrakIT. There will be several more finance related features coming up in TrakIT.

Other Changes in this Release

1) The "Total Free Days" field has been removed from the Work Order Header as it is now redundant. When a container is added to the Container Tracking section, it obtains the Free days from the Demurrage Definitions defined for the corridor.

2) Subscription Title and Email fields have been added to the Advanced Report filters to help you locate subscriptions and recipients easily for Advanced Reports.

3) Excel Export of Interactive Reports - KPI Report, DQ Report & Active WO Report are now "un-grouped" and flat to enable better analysis in Excel.

4) The Work Order Status filter has been added to the Data Quality report.

Several other changes and fixes have been included in this release.

For any questions or concerns, please contact TrakIT Support.

Saturday, 30 March 2013

Demurrage Container Type, Update Delay and other changes

With the latest TrakIT release today (build 79), the following changes were released:


Container Type Added to Demurrage Definitions

The demurrage definitions for a corridor now contains the container type. The rates are applied only when the container type matches. As a consequence, the Container Type field is now a mandatory field and can be selected when creating new work orders. The default container type is now 'General/Dry'. All work orders that did not have a container type selected are now set to the default container type.

Please note that the container type of the work order must match the container type in the definitions exactly along with the other parameters. There is no definition that covers all container types. So therefore, rates for each Container Type must be explicitly defined for each combination of Carrier and/or Shipment Type.


Update Delay added to Data Quality report

A new column 'Update Delay' has been added to the events table. This measures the average number of days between the event itself and the time it is updated. The actual delay is measured in days: A figure of zero means the event was updated the same day itself. A figure of one means it was updated the next. The Update Delay is the average of the delay in days.

'Info Only' columns such as ETA are not included in the grouped average for the corridor.


 Entity Group filter added to Dashboard

The Entity Group filter has been added to the dashboard to enable users to see statistics of Entity Groups.


Event/Data Remarks export

In Custom or Advanced reports, users can now choose to export the remarks of the Event of Data item in a work order instead of the date or value of the Event or Data.



Earliest or Latest Date

For Custom or Advanced reports that are 'By Shipment', you can now select the earliest or latest event of all the work orders in the shipment.



KPI in Hours or Days

KPI fields in Custom or Advanced reports can be exported in days instead of hours. However, please note that the days will be either running days or business days depending on the KPI definition.



UI Re-design

The user interface has been tweaked and re-designed to provide simpler layouts, a more consistent and cleaner look. Further changes to the layout may be made over the next few builds.



For any questions of clarifications, please contact TrakIT Support.

Saturday, 23 February 2013

Changes released with Build 76


Item List for Work Order Data

You can now define a semi-colon separated list of items that a can be used to fill in work order data in Corridor Definitions > Corridor > Work Order Data > Edit Data. The list can contain any number of items as long as the total size is within 200 characters.




When a user clicks on the data text box in the work order page, the list of items pops up and the user can select any item from the list. Although the user can also type in as usual, the text will be accepted only if it belongs to the list of items.




Open KPI Report

The Active Work Order Report has not been changed to Open KPI Report. This report lists the statistics of all KPIs that are in an open condition, irrespective of the status of the work order. 

The original Active Work Order report can now be generated through the KPI Performance Report by selecting Active and Abandoned work orders in the filter.

Primary Service Selection

Users can now select two or more primary services in work orders. In the next update of TrakIT, we will be removing the concept of primary and secondary services and leaving only services.

T/D (or S/I) field size changed

The Bill of Lading number (T/D or S/I) can not hold 40 characters instead of 20.


For any questions or clarifications, please contact TrakIT Support.

Saturday, 2 February 2013

New Features & Changes

The latest release brings you these new features and changes:

Demurrage Slabs -  You can now specify demurrage rate slabs or tiers. For example, if a shipper charges 10 $/Day for the first 7 days, 15 $/day for the next 14 days and then 20 $/day thereafter, this can be specified in the TrakIT Corridor Definition > Free Days section.

The above rates would be added to the Free Days section as shown below:




When modifying rates or free days in the Corridor Definitions - Free Days section, you now have the option to apply the rates to all active containers in the Container Tracking List that were added via a work order with the matching corridor, carrier and container size. However, when using this option, be aware that the rates will overwrite any custom rates specified in the Container Tracking list for any specific containers.

All Services - A new field called 'All Services' has been added to the list of available basic fields in Custom Reports and Advanced Reports. The field simply list all the services in use on a particular work order. The list includes both primary and secondary services.



The new field is currently available only for 'By Work Order' report types.

Data Quality Report - The Data Quality report now includes Work Order Data. The table displays the quantity of Empty, TBA or NA data specified. As with the Event table, the figures can be clicked upon to reveal the work orders behind the data.

Entity Groups - A new master table called Entity Groups have been added. Admins can define new entity groups. Customers can then be assigned to Entity Groups to group "large" customers together.

For example: You can create a Entity Group called "UN" and then assign all the various UN customers in Entity Management to this group.

Correspondingly, two fields have been added to the list of available fields in Custom and Advanced reports: Shipper/Receiver Group and Contractual Customer Group.

Furthermore, a new Entity Group filter has been added in the Advanced reports as well as Entity Management. The filter will match either the Shipper/Receiver Group or the Contractual Customer Group.


For any questions or clarifications, please contact TrakIT Support.




Saturday, 19 January 2013

New Changes

With the latest build of TrakIT, the following changes have been implemented:

Advanced Reports - WO Status Filter

Advanced Reports can now include closed work orders for which the last event occurred less than three months ago. A new filter called Status has been introduced in the Advanced Reports' available filters using which you can choose to include Active, Abandoned, Cancelled or Closed work orders in the report.

In order to avoid including closed work orders for existing advanced reports, the Status filter has been added to all advanced reports to include only Active and Abandoned work orders. If you wish to change this, remove the Status filter and then add it again as per your requirements.



Primary Services and KPI Filters Refresh

The Primary Services and KPI filters can now be refreshed after the corridor filter has been set, so that only the Primary Services or KPIs that are included in the selected corridors are displayed. After selecting the corridors, just click on the icon to refresh the KPIs and Primary Services list.



Container Tracking -  Demurrage Calculation

The Container Tracking module can now calculate the demurrage of containers that have exceeded the allocated free days. The Demurrage rate can be specified in the Corridor Definitions > Corridor Free Days section. It is set as per the Carrier and size of the container.


When an 'Entry' event is populated in a work order, the container is added to the Tracking list and the demurrage is obtained as per the corridor free days settings for the carrier.

The Demurrage Rate and Free days can be modified in the Container Tracking module.

The Demurrage Rate, Total Demurrage, Exit Work Order number as well as the Exit Date columns have been added to the Container Tracking Export function.

'Created On' option added to Event Filter in Ops Page

The Event filter in the operations page can now search for Work Orders created during a selected period.


Both 'From' and 'To' days are inclusive. Additionally, if only 'From' or 'To' is populated, the system will return the results where the dates are after the 'From' date or before the 'To' date respectively.

Another change in the Events filter is that 'NA' events are now not included in date searches.



For any questions of clarifications, please contact TrakIT Support.