FLOATS-Feeder Liner's Operation Analysis & Tracking System

The FLOATS is a very comprehensive web based software solution for the containerized vessel operation like MLO or Feeder Operation. This covers the planning, commerce, account receivable, tariff management, joint venture management, automatic expense calculation, fuel inventory management, CRM, etc. This application is comprehensively covers two different areas of the container business. First area is of vessel operators or principals. The other area is of agents. The important modules of the software application are:   Vessel Management Charter Hire Management Bunker Inventory Management Vessel Allocation Budgets Voyage Planning Voyage Management Voyage Expense Generation Voyage Termination Sales Load Management Discharge Management Transshipment Management TDR Amendments Tariff Management Invoicing Client Quotations Joint Venture Management Analysis CRM Reports MIS Administration Utilities     Vessel Management   This module is used manage the vessel operator details and vessel information including the commercial technical details of the vessels.     Charter Hire Management   This module is used to manage the charter hire of the vessels. This has been maintained using the with effect date of the rate. The module keeps a history of charter hire rates of various periods.     Bunker Inventory Management   The first part of the this module is the bunker opening balances where the user can input the opening balance quantities of HO and/or DO of bunkers against a selected vessel. Then as a part of voyage management, the user will input the fresh in-takes which will be immediately added to these quantities. Again the user will be inputing the ROB quantities at the arrival and departure of each port. When the system generates the vessel expenditure using the voyage expense module the consumption calculated from the ROB differences will be deducted from the fuel bunker quantities. This process will be done in a FIFO (first in/first out) method and the cost also will be derived accordingly.     Vessel Allocation   This module is used to allocate each and every active vessels in the system to a specific service and demographical sector. This module will also ask for the type of operation. The possible types of operation are Own Voyage, Joint Venture Voyage, Slot Swap, Slot Purchase. The last two voyage types are for third party vessels and the complete TEU capacity can not be utilized in sales. In case of Joint Venture Voyage, the user has to specify the venture partners. The system supports up to five venture partners besides the online organization.     Budgets   This module enables the managerial user to prepare voyage half yearly budgets for all the vessels mapped against various services and sectors. The vessel port rotation has to be entered by the user. Then all the costs will be automatically calculated and loading has to be mentioned manually along with miscellaneous expenses. The expenses like HO and DO are calculate using the port rotation timings, transit time between the ports, service speed of the vessel, oil cost, etc. Then finally the system will derive the profit/loss per TEU. Once the budget is saved, it can be printed. The user can create various budgets for the same vessel, but only one out of these budgets can be made the final one. This budget will be used for comparison with the actual performance.     Voyage Planning   Further to the voyage budget, every voyage comes in the financial year can be planed before they are actually been commencing. In this module, the user can call a budget up on the screen and modify various parameters like port rotation, port stay timings, remove or add more ports to existing port rotation, change fuel rates, etc. Every voyage can be compared against such voyage plans.     Voyage Management   This module is used to create new voyages from voyage plans and maintain them. This also provides provision to enter vessel position book information against the defined port rotation. The user can enter various voyage related dates and times like date of arrival, date of sail, etc. The bunker ROB and new intakes will be entered against each port. Another information to be entered is port operations which includes chain lashing, restawing, etc. The system has port tariff for each of these operations and they will be applied against these entered values to calculate such expenses. The various events like crane breakdown, dry dock and these periods will be excluded from the charter hire. Also other messages sent by the vessel masters will be also entered, they are forward draft, ETA, remarks, etc.     Voyage Expense Generation   This module is used to generate expenditure incurred in a selected voyage automatically by the system. When user clicks on the generate button after selecting a vessel/voyage, all the expenditure including charter hire, fuel expenditure, port cost, port operation cost, agency commission, etc. Other miscellaneous charges have to be entered manually. This will be used in profit and loss report.     Voyage Termination   As the system is being used for a long period, so many voyages will be entered in the system and they will be annoyance for the agent users. So all the completed voyages can be terminated and they will disappear from the sales options. But they will be available for the reports.     Sales   This module is an agency specific module which used to book container for voyages passing through their ports. They can book THRU and transshipment bookings for all the container types and size, either laden or empty. To accept a booking for a client, the system should have a valid tariff for that client. The booking under a voyage can also be rollover to another voyage. Then there is a booking confirmation screen by which the system assumes that the booking ready for loading.     Load Management   This module is used to manage the container loading onboard the vessel. At this option, each and every container number under the booking has to be entered into the system. Then only the system will accept a confirmed booking for loading. Once a container got loaded onboard, it will be automatically removed from the pending booking information. Also system will trigger automatic email messages to the client about the loading confirmation. Then it will send automatic email to the discharge port agent about the upcoming TDR of the selected vessel/voyage. Once the loading has been done, the agent user will update the sail date in the position book in voyage management module. This will trigger the automatic billing of loadings from that port. All the invoices will be dispatched to their corresponding client as email attachments along with the load list and service bill of lading.     Discharge Management   This module manages the discharging of container onboard the selected voyage. As the user selects a vessel/voyage, all the containers that are to be discharge at that port will be displayed on the screen. The user can select only either all the containers or only a selected group of containers for discharge and discharge them at that port. Then the system will select an automatic arrival message to the client's agents through emails.     Transshipment Management   This module is used to manage the transshipment activities at a port. The agent can select a voyage and can view all the containers that are to be transshipped to various destinations. Then the user can select appropriate on-carriage vessels against these containers according to the next destination port. In case of shut outs, there is a transshipment rollback which will bring the containers to their previous status.     TDR Amendments   Usually, once the containers are loaded onboard the vessel, no one can modify the TDR details thru any of the modules explained above. So there is a special module called TDR amendments which is used by some special users. Anybody unavoidable modifications are requires, these users can do that. They can modify various TDR information like destinations, clients, quantities, etc.     Tariff Management   This is a module managed by the principal users to maintain the ocean freights and related surcharges for each and every client. None of the agent user has any access to this module and as such they could never know about the rates given to various clients by the principal.     Invoicing   Once the automatic bills are generated, there is module for invoices for further modifications. If there is any problem with the invoices, they can be cancelled and regenerated. Then they can be resent to the client. Also the users can issue credit notes and debit notes against these invoices and dispatch to the client via emails.     Client Quotations   This module is used to request user special rates to the principal by the agent. If the request is approved by the principal, agent can send this as a new quotation to the client.     Joint Venture Management   This module is a comprehensive module to manage the joint venture information of the organization and its partners. First of all the system accepts the type of understanding between the parties which would be fundamental parameter for the profit share. Then the system will generate joint venture TDR according to the loadings of all the partners. And then the joint venture tariff which is already been entered in the system will be applied on this TDR. The expenses will be taken from the voyage expenses and calculates the total retention out of a specific voyage. Then the expenses and the revenues will be shared across the partners according to the join venture understanding and the common profit and loss report will be generated. There are additional options for disputes over loading quantities, costs and rates which will be amicably settled on a later point of time. Then the retained profits will be posted in to the respective cash of the partners.     Analysis   There are several analysis available in this module. One out of them is break even analysis. This will tell the user about the break even of expenditure and revenue according to percentage loading which can be used defined. So the user can find out vessels having optimum breakeven to run for a specific service. Another important analysis is vessel feasibility analysis. This will tell the user whether a vessel a feasible of purchase or keep in the fleet. There are many more analysis in this module.     CRM   This is a mini customer relations manager module for the agent's and principle's marketing executive and the competitor analysis. The executives can maintain their appointments and follow ups through this module. In competitor analysis, the agent user can enter the competitor loadings and rates. Then this can be used to generated various reports.     Reports   The system has a very comprehensive set of reports which are attached to each of the above narrated modules as well as a single module altogether. This has reports from simple master listing to very complex drilldown reports. The outputs can be exported into various contemporary file formats like pdf, xls, doc, rtf, xml, etc.    MIS   Besides a detailed list of reports provided as a part of each module, the system provides a very advanced list of information grouped as MIS. This has a lot of analytical reports and statistical graphs that can tell the trend of various parameters of the business. In short, the module provides you some limited business intelligence.     Administration   The administration module is one of the most important modules in this system. This module helps you manage various functional roles, users, login audit, data audit, etc. There is an IP tracking also available to track the location of user access.     Utility   This module provides the user some flexibility in the usage of the system. This has modules like copy setup, advanced search, user password management, application skin management, imail management, flash message, etc.