Blog · Board and management reporting · Shipping and logistics
The ten questions the managing director of a freight forwarder puts to the branch and trade lane managers, what is lane share per customer and per mode, are TEU and kilograms ever added, which customer lanes lost reliability before the tender, what detention and demurrage did we absorb and for whom, how long does delivered freight wait for an invoice, which customs holds are the customer's own data, which customers are concentrated on one carrier, what is margin per file by branch, which customers went quiet by lane, and what changed, each with the table from the bookings, milestones and billing exports, and the answer to send back.
A forwarding managing director asks the branches about their customers and hears volumes that mix modes. The bookings, the milestones, the billing ledger and the customs entries hold the customers per mode, per lane and per file as tables. This guide is the ten questions, the tables, and the answer to send back.
| # | The question | The table | Identity | Send back |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Are the modes reconciled? | Booked vs invoiced per mode in the mode's unit; revenue across modes | Per-mode identities; revenue sums | A blended volume |
| 2 | What is lane share per customer? | Share per customer per lane per mode against stated or norm volume | Bookings sum per customer | Customer revenue |
| 3 | Which customer lanes lost reliability? | Reliability and variability per customer lane; delay split | Milestones in sequence | Lane-level on-time |
| 4 | What did we absorb in detention and demurrage? | Incurred vs recovered per customer; free time exceedance | Incurred = recovered + absorbed | Incurred alone |
| 5 | How long does delivered freight wait for an invoice? | Delivery-to-invoice cycle by branch, mode, customer; unbilled by cause | Delivered = invoiced + unbilled | Company-wide cycle |
| 6 | Which customs holds are the customer's data? | Hold rate vs norm; cause split; the fields | Entries in one state | Holds firefought |
| 7 | Which customers sit on one carrier? | Carrier concentration per customer and lane | Bookings sum across carriers | Carrier count |
| 8 | What is margin per file by branch? | File margin with accessorials both sides, by branch and customer | File margins sum to ledger | Branch revenue |
| 9 | Which customers went quiet by lane? | Bookings against own baseline per lane | Same as 2 | Customer total |
| 10 | What changed? | The movements page | Every line cites | Narrative |
MD: How much does customer 2207 do with us? Response: 1,740 TEU ocean, 212 tonnes air, 480 pallets road, $1.9m revenue. Not one number. Table 1 reconciled per mode. MD: Is anything wrong there? Response: Asia to North Europe reliability fell from 92 to 74 percent, variability tripled, the delay at destination. And we absorbed $230,000 of their detention and demurrage last year. Tables 3 and 4. MD: And their invoices? Response: Branch B's ocean files for 2207 wait 44 days for an invoice, mostly carrier costs pending; $380,000 unbilled. Table 5.
Three tables, one customer, three branches' worth of conversations.
TEU added to kilograms. A number that describes nothing.
Reliability at lane level. The customer's own experience of the lane unseen.
Detention absorbed silently. The recovery gap unknown.
Unbilled freight by nobody. Working capital nobody owns.
Covirage produces the ten tables from the bookings, the milestones, the billing ledger and the customs entries, with the per-mode reconciliation first. The shipping and logistics page describes the setup, and the TEU and chargeable weight guide covers the first table.
The per-mode reconciliation, because a report that has added TEU to kilograms somewhere has produced a number that describes nothing, and every customer view built on it inherits the error. Booked equals invoiced per mode in the mode's unit is the first table.
Reliability, detention and demurrage, the billing cycle and customs holds do; they are the milestones and entries joined to bookings and billing. Lane share, concentration and margin per file come from bookings and the billing ledger. All exports, on customer and shipment identifiers.
Invoiced TEU equals booked TEU; invoiced chargeable weight equals booked; revenue sums across modes; charges incurred equal recovered plus absorbed; delivered shipments equal invoiced plus unbilled; entries filed equal cleared plus held. A customer view with one blended volume column is sent back.