Storage and demurrage billing from the container record

Ask a depot billing clerk how a storage invoice is prepared and you will usually hear the same sequence: find the gate-in date in the yard register, count the days, check which tariff the customer is on, look up the free period, work out the slab, add handling, and type the invoice. Multiply that by a few hundred containers a month and two things happen. Some invoices go out late, and some go out wrong.

Where the revenue leaks

Depots rarely lose money on the big items. They lose it in the gaps between registers:

• Free days counted from the wrong date. Gate-in, customs release, and the date the customer was informed are three different dates. If the register only has one of them, the free period starts wherever the clerk thinks it should.
• Slabs applied by memory. Storage tariffs step up after a number of days. When the steps are applied by hand, the higher slab is missed more often than it is over-applied, because nobody wants an argument.
• Special handling that was done but not billed. Out-of-gauge lifts, reefer plug-ins, and dangerous-goods handling happen in the yard and are recorded on a slip that may or may not reach billing.
• Customer-specific tariffs applied to the wrong customer. A shipping line, a clearing agent, and an importer can all have different rates for the same container.

Each of these is small. Together they are typically the difference between a depot that argues with customers every month and one that does not.

What changes when the container is the record

The alternative is to stop treating billing as a separate task and make it a consequence of what happened to the container. In ICD Management, LITPL's SAP Business One add-on, every container has one record from manifest to gate-out. Gate-in date, customs status, yard location, handling events, and release date are written to that record by the people doing the work, not re-typed later.

Billing rules are then configured once:

• Free days by customer group and container type, counted from the date you define, for example customs release rather than gate-in.
• Storage slabs with their day ranges and rates, in the currency your company invoices in.
• Handling charges attached to the handling events themselves, so an OOG lift recorded in the yard appears on the invoice without a slip changing hands.
• Customer-group pricing so the same container is priced correctly whether the payer is the line, the agent, or the importer.

When the customer asks for release, the charges are calculated from the record and shown for verification before the invoice is raised. The invoice posts to SAP Business One, so receivables, VAT, and the ledger are updated in the same step.

Empty depots follow the same rule

Empty container operations look different on the ground but bill the same way: receipt, storage days, repair or survey references, and dispatch. Running empties on the same container record with the same tariff logic means the depot has one set of rules, one invoice format, and one receivables ledger for both sides of the business.

The questions to answer before configuring anything

1. From which event do free days count for each customer group?
2. What are the storage slabs, and do they differ by container type or customer?
3. Which handling events must always be billed, and who records them today?
4. Which currency do you invoice in, and how do customers who pay in another currency settle?
5. Which customs statuses block release, and who can override them?

These are the questions LITPL asks in discovery, using your tariff sheet and a handful of real invoices. The answers become configuration, and the test before go-live is simple: pick twenty containers from last month and check that the system produces the same invoices your team would have raised, or better ones.

What to bring to a first conversation

A sample manifest, your tariff sheet, one storage calculation you are confident in, one invoice that was disputed, and a note of which SAP Business One version you run, if any. With those five things a demo can be built on your own numbers rather than a generic example.