Master shipments, containers and voyages

Not every movement is one shipment for one customer. Consolidation — many customers' cargo in one container, many containers on one voyage — is the core of groupage forwarding, and the system models each layer separately so each can be tracked on its own.

Voyage      (a vessel sailing a route)
  └── Master shipment   (a consolidation you are responsible for)
        └── Container   (a physical box)
              └── Shipment   (one customer's cargo)

Each of these four is a record in its own right, with its own workflow and its own transitions.

Master shipments

A master shipment is a consolidation: the master-level movement under which several house shipments travel. It carries the master bill of lading or master air waybill, and the parties at master level — which are the carrier's counterparties, not your customer.

This is why FCL and air shipments hold both master-level and house-level parties. The master bill names the consolidator; the house bill names the actual shipper and consignee. Confusing the two produces documents that will be rejected.

Direct or master. Both FCL and air shipments carry a flag distinguishing a direct movement — one customer, straight through, no consolidation — from a master movement that sits under a consolidation. Set it correctly at creation: it determines which documents are produced and which numbers are required.

Master shipments have their own transition screen, so the consolidation progresses independently of the individual shipments inside it.

Containers

A container is a physical box, tracked as its own record with its own workflow. It holds the container number, type, seal, weight, reefer settings, and the warehouse and storage date where it is being held — see Cargo, packages and containers.

Containers have their own transitions, which is what lets a container be tracked through gate-in, stuffing, gate-out and return on its own timeline. A container's progress is not the same as the progress of the cargo inside it, and modelling them separately is deliberate.

Vessels and voyages

A vessel is a ship. A voyage is a specific sailing of that vessel — a particular departure on a particular route.

Shipments reference a vessel and a voyage so that "which shipments are on this sailing?" is answerable, and so that a delay to the voyage is visible against every shipment riding on it rather than being updated one by one.

Voyages have their own transitions, tracking the sailing itself: departed, in transit, arrived.

Air equivalents

Air freight follows the same shape with different names: a flight rather than a voyage, an airline rather than a shipping line, an air waybill and master air waybill rather than bills of lading. The direct-or-master distinction works identically.

Pending pickup

Shipments → Pending pickup is a working list of shipments awaiting collection. It exists because pickup is where jobs stall silently — the booking is done, the customer thinks it is moving, and nothing has physically happened.

Work this list daily. It is the cheapest way to catch a problem while it is still a phone call rather than a claim.

Which record do I update?

A common source of confusion. As a rule:

Updating the wrong level is why some shipments show an arrival date that contradicts their vessel's. When in doubt: if it is true of every shipment on the sailing, it belongs on the voyage.

Last updated 9 September 2026