Shipchandling

1 What is the Shipchandling module?

Shipchandling is a pure buy-and-supply module: you supply goods — provisions, deck and engine stores, bonded items — to a vessel, for the customer (its agent or principal). It does not draw from the warehouse; each order stands on its own.

• Catalogue the items you supply, with their buy and sell prices.
• Raise a supply order against a vessel and port for a customer.
• Progress it through the workflow — enquiry → quoted → supplied.
• Buy the goods: ask suppliers for prices, send them purchase orders and post their bills.
• Invoice it in one click, and report on value, vessels and margin.

Shipchandling sits in its own Shipchandling section of the menu bar, with a Dashboard, Quick View, the Supply Order and Supplier RFQ screens, the Provisions Catalogue, Charge, Port and Vessel masters, a Sales menu listing the invoices the module has posted, and Reports.

Shipchandling does not need the Cargo module: a company can have it on its own. The Port and Vessel masters it picks from are in its own Masters menu.

Supply Order numbering

Supply Orders have their own number series (SC/000001…), set in Tools › Preferences › Shipchandling Settings: description, prefix, next number, suffix, department and the income, cost-of-sales and job control accounts, for the financial year selected in the top bar. It is not in Cargo Settings’ Job Numbering. A new company’s series uses department SC, which is created with it.

The series’ accounts come first wherever Shipchandling posts: the income account is what Post to Invoice opens on, and the job control and cost-of-sales accounts take the cost of the goods and charges you buy. Leave one blank and the common account below is used.

Cost posting

The same screen’s Cost Posting card holds the accrued expense / cost-of-sales switch and the common Cost of Sales and Accrued Expense accounts that purchases and invoices fall back on when the series leaves its own blank. They are shared with Cargo Settings, so a company with both modules sees one setting in two places.

2 The Provisions Catalogue

Shipchandling → Masters → Provisions Catalogue is the list of everything you supply. Each item carries a description, a category, a unit of measure, buy and sell prices and a tax code.

3 Raising a Supply Order

Open Shipchandling → Transactions → Supply Order and click New. A supply order has a header (who and where), provision lines (what) and, if needed, additional charges (§5).

1. Pick the customer: the Accounts customer being billed (the agent or principal). Use + to add a new one.
2. Set the order date, the customer’s reference, the vessel, the port and the delivery date and place.
3. Add the provision lines: pick each item and enter the quantity. Supplier, prices and tax fill in from the catalogue. Or click Import Enquiry to bring in the customer’s list (below).
4. Click Save. The order gets its own number and starts at Enquiry. It stays open, so you can go straight on to the RFQ, Purchasing or a print.

There is no currency on a supply order. It is always in your base currency, which its invoice and purchases post in.

The header

Provision lines

Each item is one row: Item, Qty, UOM, Supplier, Buy Price, Buy Tax, Sell Price, Tax, Amount and Profit. The totals under the grid show Selling, Tax, Total, Cost and Profit.

• Item — pick from the catalogue (search by name, code or IMPA code). It fills the UOM, the supplier, the buy and sell prices and both taxes.
• Type an item the catalogue doesn’t have and it is marked New. It is added to the catalogue when you save the order.
• Supplier — who you buy the item from. Purchasing makes one purchase order per supplier.
• Buy Tax — the tax on the supplier’s bill. It goes onto the purchase order and is posted with the Purchase.
• Tax — the tax you charge the customer. The rate comes from the Tax master.
• Profit — selling less cost, before tax.
• Enter the quantity you bill and the price you charge. There is no discount or delivered-quantity column: an older line that had one opens with the quantity it billed and its net price.

Import Enquiry

The vessel’s requisition usually comes as an email, a PDF or a spreadsheet. Click Import Enquiry above the items and either paste the text, or upload the sheet saved as CSV.

• From pasted text, the header is filled too: customer, vessel, port, dates, delivery place, reference and remarks.
• Each item is matched to the catalogue by name, code or IMPA code. Items it doesn’t have come in as New and are added to the catalogue on save.
• The imported items go after the lines already on the order.

Sell-price calculator

Above the Sell Price column, set a Markup % and the decimals to round to (Dec, starting at your base currency’s), then click Calculate. After you confirm, every line with a buy price gets Sell Price = Buy Price + markup. Locked lines are left alone. The markup itself is not saved with the order.

Save first

Purchasing, Supplier RFQ, Print, the status buttons, Post to Invoice and Repeat Order all work on the saved order. On a new order, or while there are unsaved changes, they are greyed out and say Save the order first.

When the lines lock

A note above the grid says when this applies.

Repeat Order

A vessel on a regular run orders much the same stores each call. Repeat Order (on the list row or the order form) copies the order into a new Enquiry dated today: the same customer, vessel, port, delivery place, supplier, lines and charges, at the catalogue’s current prices. Dates and the invoice are not copied.

4 The supply workflow

Every order moves through a simple lifecycle. The status colour on the list tells you where each order stands.

Enquiry → Quoted → Supplied → Invoiced

Use the Mark Quoted and Mark Supplied buttons on the order to move it along. Reaching Invoiced is done through Post to Invoice (next section), not by hand.

Buying from suppliers: RFQ, Purchase Order, Purchase

The buying side runs from the customer’s order: Supply Order (Enquiry) → RFQ to suppliers → quotation to the customer → Purchase Order → Purchase (the supplier’s bill) → invoice to the customer. The RFQ is optional: if you already know who you buy from, set the Supplier on the items or in the header and go straight to Purchasing. Save the order first; both buttons below work on the saved order.

1. Supplier RFQ

1. Click Supplier RFQ on the order. Pick one or more suppliers. Choose whether each is asked for all lines, or only the lines set to buy from them. Then click Create Enquiries.
2. For each enquiry, click Email. The supplier gets the lines in the email, with a price sheet (CSV, opens in Excel) attached. Without email set up, click Sheet to download it, send it yourself, then click Mark Sent.
3. When the supplier returns the filled sheet, click Import Reply and pick the file. Lines are matched by the sheet’s Ref column, else by IMPA code or description. A price given by phone can be typed straight into the comparison grid. Set the enquiry’s currency and rate if the supplier quoted in another currency.
4. The comparison grid shows every supplier’s price per line. The cheapest, in your base currency, is ticked and picked; change the Buy from pick where you prefer another supplier. Set the Markup % and click Apply to Order. Each line takes that supplier, the buy price and buy + markup as its sell price, and an order at Enquiry moves to Quoted. Print the Quotation for the customer.

In the enquiries grid, the Sent column shows a green tick once an enquiry has gone out; hover over it for the date and address. An enquiry can’t be deleted once the order is supplied or invoiced, and Apply to Order is refused once a Purchase is posted for the order.

Shipchandling → Transactions → Supplier RFQ lists every enquiry across all orders, with how many lines each supplier has priced. Filter by Not sent, Sent or Replied; open a row to go to its order’s RFQ.

2. Purchase Orders

Once the customer accepts, click Purchasing (the first button on the order), then Create Purchase Orders. You get one PO (numbered PO/000001…) per supplier, at the buy prices and buy taxes, for:

• the items, by their Supplier, and
• the additional charges that have a Creditor and a buy price, by their creditor (§5),

that are not on a PO yet. Each PO can be printed, emailed or, while open, cancelled.

A PO is not edited in Purchasing. Change the Supply Order and save it, and its open POs follow:

• quantity, unit, buy price and buy tax are brought up to date;
• an item you removed, set to quantity 0 or moved to another supplier leaves its PO;
• a new item joins its supplier’s open PO (if that supplier has none, click Create Purchase Orders again);
• an open PO left with no lines is cancelled.

A billed PO is the supplier’s bill as posted and is never changed.

3. Purchase

When the supplier’s invoice arrives, click Purchase on its PO. Enter their invoice number and date, check the lines, then click Post Purchase. The lines are posted as they stand on the PO, each with its own tax; they can’t be changed here. If a quantity, price or tax is wrong, close the dialog, correct it on the Supply Order and save: the PO follows.

• It posts an Accounts purchase voucher crediting the supplier, with the order number on each line, so the cost shows on the order in Job Control.
• With cost posting on (Shipchandling Settings), the cost goes to the job series’ Job Control account, else the common accrued expense account, and the order’s invoice moves it to cost of sales. Otherwise it goes straight to cost of sales: a charge’s own cost account from the Charge master if it has one, else the series’ account, else the common one.
• A charge billed on the Purchase is marked as posted, so Cost Allocation neither lists it nor posts it a second time.
• Once a Purchase is posted, the order’s saved items and charges lock (§3), and the order can’t be cancelled.
• A billed PO can’t be cancelled. Cancel Purchase cancels the purchase voucher in Accounts: it stays there, marked cancelled, with its balances reversed. It is refused if the voucher is dated in a closed period. The PO reopens for a new bill, its charges are free again, and the order’s lines unlock unless another Purchase is still posted.

5 Charges & tax

The provision lines are the goods you supply. For extra costs that aren’t catalogue items — launch hire, delivery, port charges — use the Additional Charges grid on the order. These come from the Charge master, filtered to the Shipchandling module. Each charge takes its narration from the Charge master (up to 250 characters, editable), and shows its name when the order is reopened.

Keep these charges in Shipchandling → Masters → Charge: name, narration, sell and buy amounts, unit, tax code, and sales and cost accounts. It lists only the charges marked Applicable To → Shipchandling, and a charge added there starts with Shipchandling ticked. A charge Cargo or another module already uses can serve Shipchandling too: tick Shipchandling under Applicable To on it.

Each charge is one row: Charge, Narration, Creditor, Buy Price, Buy Tax, Sell Price, Tax, Tax Amount and Total. There is no quantity: enter the whole price of the charge. Picking a charge brings its narration, prices and tax from the Charge master. The Creditor is who bills you for it (the launch owner, for example); use + to add a new supplier.

A charge’s cost reaches Accounts in one of two ways:

• On a purchase order — a charge with a creditor and a buy price goes on that creditor’s PO when you click Create Purchase Orders (§4), and its cost is posted with the Purchase.
• Through Cost Allocation — in Accounts → Transactions → Cost Allocation (job type Shipchandling), as for a Cargo job. It lists the order’s customer, and leaves out a charge that is on a live PO, so a cost is never posted twice. The cost goes to the job series’ accounts first, as for a Purchase.

Either way the voucher carries the order number, so the cost shows on the order in Job Control. When cost posting is on in Shipchandling Settings, the order’s invoice then moves the cost to cost of sales and clears it. Once a charge’s cost is posted through Cost Allocation, the order can’t be cancelled: that posting is final.

Saved charges lock with the items once a Purchase is posted (new ones can still be added), and all of them lock once the order is invoiced.

Every line, provision or charge, carries a Tax code and shows its Tax %; the amount and total update as you type. Set an item’s default tax on the catalogue so it fills in automatically.

6 Post to Invoice

When the goods are supplied, click Post to Invoice on the order (or from the list). This raises one sales invoice for the customer covering all the provision and charge sell amounts, with tax.

1. Check Bill to Account — it opens on the order’s customer. Pick another account to bill someone else.
2. Check the Income Account the provisions are credited to. It opens on the Shipchandling job series’ sales account from Shipchandling Settings. A charge that has its own sales account in the Charge master is always credited there; the income account is for the provisions and for charges without one.
3. Set the invoice date and (optionally) a due date.
4. Post. The customer is billed, the order is locked as Invoiced, and you are offered to print the invoice straight away.

What the invoice shows

• The provisions post as one line, “Provisions supplied — n items”, not a line per item. If the items carry different tax codes, there is one such line per tax code, so each takes its own rate.
• Each additional charge is a line of its own, with its narration.
• With cost posting on, the invoice also moves the cost of the items and charges from the accrued account to cost of sales.

The order’s value in the list, the Order Register and the Delivery Schedule includes the charges and tax, so it matches what the invoice bills.

Cancelling an invoice

An invoiced order shows a Cancel Invoice button. Confirm it and the invoice voucher is cancelled in Accounts: it stays there, marked cancelled, with its balances reversed. The order returns to Supplied so you can correct it and post again. An invoice dated in a closed period can’t be cancelled until the period is reopened.

The Sales menu

Shipchandling → Sales → Sales Invoice lists the Accounts invoices posted from supply orders, and only those, for the financial year in the top bar. Search by voucher number, account or narration, and open one to view or print it. There is no New button: Shipchandling invoices are raised from the order with Post to Invoice. In the Accounts invoice list, the Source column shows Shipchandling for these invoices. Give users this menu item in User Manager as for any other screen.

7 Printing & attachments

Click the printer icon on an order in the list, or Print on the order form, and choose:

• Quotation — the ordered quantities at your selling prices, with the terms, for the vessel or agent to accept.
• Supply Order — the order document with delivery details and lines.
• Delivery Note — the lines going on board, no prices, signed on board (name, rank, vessel stamp).
• Invoice — available once the order is invoiced.

Purchase orders are printed from Purchasing: click Print on the PO’s row.

All open in a print preview. Their layouts can be changed under Tools → Preferences → Report Templates (SC_QUOTE, SC_ORDER, SC_PO, SC_DN and SC_INV).

Use the Attachments button in the order form’s title to keep the vessel’s requisition, delivery notes or signed receipts with the order.

8 Dashboard, Quick View & Reports

All of them honour the financial year in the top bar and can be exported and printed.

9 Tips & FAQ

Catalogue first, orders fast

Keep the Provisions Catalogue current — order entry then becomes pick-and-quantity, with prices and tax filled in for you.

One-off items

You don’t have to catalogue everything first — type the item on the line and enter its own qty, price and tax. It is marked New and added to the catalogue when you save, ready for next time.

Margin at a glance

Because each line keeps both buy and sell, the Order Profitability report shows your margin without any extra work.

Vessels

Pick the vessel from the list. For a casual caller that isn’t there yet, add it with the + beside the field.

Buy before you bill

Post the suppliers’ bills in Purchasing before Post to Invoice. The cost is then in Accounts against the order, and Job Control shows it beside the sale.