eCargo

Yet another major release with lots of new and exciting features. In this release we've significantly improved the rates search feature, improved the process of resolving rating errors and expanded the activities eCargo can calculate costs for.

New features  

• Enhanced Rates Search: The process of finding rates has become much easier and faster with the new improved rates search feature. The search facility has been optimized to function more intelligently, automatically narrowing down the zone, product and supplier criteria as you make your search selections. It also now enables multiple selections.

• Improved rating errors: When a consignment or order fails to calculate a revenue or cost charge eCargo now provides more informative messages, assisting you in identifying what caused the error. There is now also a short cut button from the consignment page to the rates page, showing you exactly what rates the consignment used, or tried to use in it's calculations.

• Many types of charges on one consigments: Previously a consignment could only have one type of charge attached to it, such as road freight or sea freight. Now a consignment can have many different types of charges attached to it, such as port marshalling, documentation, fumigation or any custom charged added. These charges can then be invoiced as per the standard process. We now also provide the ability to edit existing charges, to cater for situations where an ad-hoc or spot rate has been used which differs from the base rates.

Bug Fixes

• Credit charges on invoice lines in Excel: When exported to Excel invoice line charges for credits were showing as a positive value. This has now been fixed and displays as a negative value.
• Credit charges on Accruals Report: The handling of credit line charges in the Accruals has been improved. There was the potential for an over accrual of freight costs where consignments had been credited and re-issued in the same month.

We've been looking forward to getting this latest version of eCargo Premium out the door for some time now. Version 2.8.0 includes a number of new features and bug fixes that will have a large impact on some of our customers. 

The biggest change is providing 'super admin' users with the ability to edit and update consignments after they have been finalised. Now selected users can correct data entry errors such as incorrect pallet counts or actual delivery dates without logging a call with the eCargo helpdesk (just quietly Julia is also quite excited about empowering her users).

New features  

• Edit confirmed consignments and improved history: Admin users can now update details on consignments that have bene confirmed as dispatched and delivered. We've also enhanced the History feature to provide a more detailed audit trail and changes
• New Quick Searches: You can now perform a quick search on two new commonly searched on fields, Booking Reference and Container Number.
• Pallet label printing: If you have a Zebra label printer you can print pallet labels for a consignment. A label will be printed for each pallet, containing quantity, carrier, customer and barcode details.

Bug Fixes

• Issues with sub-contractors: Fixed a problem where the sub-contractor and vehicle data sometimes got 'messed up' after a series of changes.
• Actual delivery quantities not captured when comments entered: When a user entered comments at the same time as modifying the delivered quantities these values were not being recorded in the database. This bug has now been fixed.

Other changes

• Updated order change reason codes: A new reason code 'Manufacturing Tolerence'  has been added. These reason codes are used by export shipping customers when orders are rolled to another vessel or cancelled.

As with any provider of software we receive a large number of requests from our customers for new features and system improvements. We try very hard to implement many of these requests, and tend to focus on the ones that provide benefits to all our customers.

There are challenges in providing customised solutions to a customer when everyone uses the same software, such as keeping the user interface clean and simple without cluttering the screen with a plethora of options.

In the interests of keeping an open dialogue with our customer base I thought it would be useful to share a little bit about what we are working on for the coming year. This is certainly not a roadmap, and we'll still keep a few little surprises to ourselves, however this will give you an idea of the core areas we are planning to deliver on this year.

We can summarise our key areas as follows:

• Enabling you to better manage the exceptions that occur in freight movements
• Streamlining the process of managing your freight rates
• Administration of your master data

Exception management

I dream of a world where a consignment always has the correct volume and address, the carrier always delivers in full on time and there are never any invoicing errors. This of course is a pipe dream, systems such as eCargo most definitely reduce errors through system integration (reducing manual data entry) and process automation (reconciliation of freight invoices) however the process will always start with someone keying data into a system.

Your freight management system needs to provide you with the means to identify, manage and correct the exceptions that will always occur. We'll be delivering a number of improvements in this area to help you better manage these exceptions while still leaving an audit trail of actions and changes.

Some examples are changing a consignment's details after it has been confirmed as delivered, the ability to void an invoice or being able to delete an invoice line prior to its approval.

Freight rates management

Maintaining freight rates can be a considerably complex task. Rating models can have such things as multiple tiers, carriers, minimums and maximums, full loads, management fees and different product types, add onto this fuel surcharges and you have room for a lot of error when making changes to these rates.

The current process of maintaining your rates in eCargo via a master spreadsheet and bulk upload can become problematic when making many small changes. We mistakenly believed rates were changed once or twice a year, how wrong were we !

In light of this we'll be bringing to you more features to make small and large changes to your rates directly in eCargo, whether it be deleting a single freight rate, or updating the entire rate table with a CPI change.

Master data administration

We are really taking a push approach this year when it comes to developing new features for managing master data. It's your data to manage, therefore we aim to give you the means to better manage data relating to your users, customers, carriers, products and rates.

Of course all of these new features would be pointless if we couldn't provide a system that was available when you needed it, and ran as fast as required. So we'll also be delivering a number of performance and reliability improvements through upgrades to our servers.

This morning we released a number of changes and enhancements to the invoicing screens. The release includes major changes to the way invoices are managed within eCargo.

The result is a much simpler and more effective process to create, view and manage your freight invoices. New features include:

• New Invoice Summary screen displaying Receivable and Payable invoices by status
• Improved Invoice Search, allowing you to search on customer or supplier and date range
• Bulk invoice functions, allowing you to approve, pay or export invoices in bulk rather than one at a time
• Quick links to PDF and CSV invoice formats
• Consignment search, giving you visibility over individual consignment details, freight costs and invoice history
• Simplified buyer created invoice process; purchasers of freight can now generate buyer created invoices against their suppliers with a click of a button
• Invoice integration with SAP
• Auto-emailing of invoices to customers and suppliers

The team have been working hard over the last few weeks to make sure the release went smoothly. If you have any queries or issues please don’t hesitate to contact us.

While the Quick Search boxes in the Summary screen are great for bringing up a specific job or manifest, often more general criteria is required, such as a date range or a common delivery point. This is where the 'Advanced Search' box comes in handy. 

Delivery Number
If you know the actual delivery number of the job then enter this directly into the Delivery No. field (A). NOTE: It’s often advisable to click the Clear button (D) before entering delivery number in case existing criteria excludes your job.

Pickup or Deliver To sites
You can define which sites the job(s) you are looking for came from or were being delivered to. Click on the Business Search button (E) to find the particular site or customer you’re looking for.

Action (Status)
The Action options (B) represent the next action to be performed on the job. This is in fact the job status. Narrow your search down by selecting the specific status(es) the job is expected to be in.

Additional Options
To search for other items such as Purchase Order No, Sales Order No or Container No then select the ‘More’ button (H) to show these extra search fields.

Date Ranges
Narrow down your search criteria by selecting the dates the job was planned to be picked up and/or delivered (C). You can further refine your search by looking for the dates the jobs were actually pickup and/or delivered by specifying them as Actual dates (F).

Vehicle
Enter the name of the vehicle on the jobs you are searching for (G). You do not need to enter the full vehicle name, it will find partial matches. If you wish to narrow this down to the particular vessel for an export job, enter this here too.

Performance Search
You can quickly search for jobs that are either late for pickup or late for delivery by selecting either option in the Performance criteria (I).

Carrier or Sub-contractor
To view a list of jobs assigned to a particular carrier or sub-contractor. Click on the business search button and enter their name (J).

eCargo's hosting services partner, Intergen, was named the 'Partner of the Year 'at Microsoft New Zealand’s annual Partner Awards in 2008.

Although this is now last year's news, we felt it important that eCargo's customers know the level of excellence our partners have achieved.

You can read more about Intergen's award here.

Electronic buyer created invoicing enables buyers to gain greater control over their accounts payable processes; saving on invoice processing costs, eliminating overpayments and providing real time access to invoices and cost accruals.

Using eCargo to generate buyer created invoices for freight and logistics costs buyers can achieve the following benefits:

• No manual data entry: Buyer created invoices are created instantly, generating the invoice in PDF format and integrating with buyer and supplier finance systems. There is no need for manual keying of data.

• Single point invoice access: Both buyers and suppliers can search for and view current and archived invoice documentation and status.

• Real time cost accruals: All non-invoiced freight and logistics costs are available for real time accrual reports, providing finance teams with accurate end of month information. A measurable reduction in accruals is also achieved through more regular invoicing.

• Streamlined dispute process: Users can log a dispute against an invoice line online, requesting a credit or POD. An integrated credit and re-issue process then follows, providing single standard and visible process, replacing lengthy email and telephone conversations.

• Reduced processing costs: Forrester Research reports that by automating their accounts payable processes companies can save up to 75% of their per invoice processing costs.

• Eliminating overpayments and invoice errors: Not all businesses have the resources to reconcile supplier invoices line by line, particularly with complicated freight cost rate tables. eCargo gives the buyer control and ownership over their freight data and rate tables, and the necessary tools to attain 100% certainly in the calculation of their freight costs.

eCargo’s customers recognise the benefits electronic invoicing provides:

“The reality of reverse billing has hugely reduced effort required by the finance team, freight costs are more accurate and the freight supplier relationship has strengthened markedly. Costs are largely accepted as there’s nothing to question and invoice negotiation is a thing of the past”, says Peter Levett, Sanitarium’s NZ Distribution Manager.

Woodproducts’ Assistant Accountant, Tania Teddy, explains “eCargo now does the hard work of checking invoices for us. Where processing weekly invoices from a single supplier used to take around a day and half effort, we’re now completing that in an hour and we trust the results”.

See our earlier post on eCargo's new Buyer Created Invoicing Dashboard, with screenshots.

Please contact us to discuss how we can assist with your electronic invoicing requirements.

eCargo now provides users with a simple and intuitive real time dashboard for creating buyer created invoices and managing exceptions. As freight movements are executed within eCargo, the freight costs are calculated based on freight rates and business rules configured in the system.

Using the Invoice Dashboard a user can view all freight costs that are ready to be invoiced, or have errored during calculation - due to missing freight rates or incomplete consignment data.

From the dashboard the user can drill down to resolve the calculation errors or create an invoice for all calculated costs in a one-step process. The user has control over cutoff dates for invoicing and the invoice date itself.

eCargo caters for multiple suppliers and multiple logistics activities, such as Roadfreight, Rail, Sea Freight, Port Logistics - any activity that incurs costs and can be measured.

Once created eCargo will generate the legal invoice document as a PDF file, immediately sending the invoice electronically to all integrated buyer and supplier finance systems. Users can optionally manually export the invoice into their finance system.

If you have logged onto eCargo Online this week, you would have noticed the new colour scheme and user interface, which has been re-designed to incorporate the look and feel of the relaunched website. It also includes a number of layout changes to improve user functionality and ease navigation.

With this comes a rearrangement or rewording of menus and their items:

Menu re-design

• The new design has moved away from the old ‘drill-down’ style on the left of the page, to a more simplified ‘tabbed’ approach along the top. The amount of menus that appear will now be dependant on the features you subscribe to.
  
• The sub-menus from the old design are now grouped via section headings under each active tab.

Menu item changes (Invoices Menu)

A number of menu items have either been moved or consolidated into existing sections to simplify navigation. This includes a number of items that have been reworded and/or relocated from obsolete menus in the old version. 

Under Common Tasks:

• ‘Import Invoice’ is now ‘Import an Invoice or Pre-Invoice’
• ‘Extra Charges’, ‘Variances’ and ‘Location Mappings’ have all been re-named with ‘Manage…’ in front of them.
•  ‘Maintain Invoice’ is now accessed via ‘Change the Status of an Invoice’.

Under Invoicing:

• ‘Maintain Report’ is now accessed via ‘Invoice Details’ under the new Invoicing heading. Search for the invoice and then click the ‘Invoice Report’ button.

Breadcrumbs

• This new feature sits below the main menu tabs, giving the user an at-a-glance browsing history of the last 3 pages visited – very useful if juggling between a small number of common pages, eg. for invoicing purposes.
  

We're doing some upgrades to eCargo this weekend, 29-30 November. During the upgrade eCargo will be unavailable for approximately 2 hours beginning at 4:00pm NZT Sunday afternoon.

The upgrade includes a major redesign of the eCargo web user interface. This will affect all invoicing, shipping and reporting users. It also lays the foundation for many upcoming features, such as new financial and KPI reports, as well as the migration of the dispatch function into the web application.

For a sneak preview have a look at the screenshots below: