In Visco you can track the status and shipping dates on all containers manually or through the integration that we offer with Marine Traffic. Using the Marine Traffic integration means that you can turn on tracking per container and the status and container information will be updated. This is extremely beneficial to our customers because it offers greater efficiency and more accurate information because it is coming directly from the Carriers. This service is offered at an additional cost twenty cents per container per day. When using this integration there is the initial step of entering the vessel name for every container you would like to track and then the system takes over from there and uses the vessel name for all further updates.
Alternatively, one of our customers preferred to avoid the additional cost of Marine Traffic and instead asked us to integrate with their freight forwarder. Instead of tracking every order individually, they wanted a way to upload the document they receive every morning and have all of the container information update automatically. Although there is the manual step of the daily upload, all of the containers get updated at once and they are able to save the twenty cents per container.
To accomplish this, we created a tool where the user could download an excel document that is formatted exactly as the document they receive daily from the Freight Forwarder- the only difference is that it is programmed to update corresponding containers in the system once uploaded. The user downloads the data into excel, copies the information from the document they receive in the morning and paste it into the one that we formatted for them. The document saves when closed. Once the document is uploaded it updates items such as Container number, Vessel Name, ETD, ETA, Voyage, status, port and warehouse when received.