Exciting developments are on the horizon at Voyager as we welcome in June! Our team is consistently working to enhance our platform with new updates and fresh features, closely aligned with the demands of our customers.
Our latest updates include not only improving our Demurrage module, but also working on strategic Voyage Management features that help charterers improve predictability and efficiency at scale.
Here’s a look of what’s new in Voyager, and a quick preview of the new features that are coming to the portal:
NEW MODULES
Demand Planning
With increasing variability in the freight market, matching your customer’s cargo requirements with open vessel positions (Spot, COA or TC) can be complicated. Many teams still manage this process with email and XLS which limits a team’s ability to optimize their cargo requirements around their freight positions.
With the global release planned for July, Voyager’s new Demand Planning module is a smart solution to this issue, allowing users to easily assign, bundle, and optimize their shipments based on the current freight market. This makes it easier to optimally allocate cargo across a portfolio of freight positions, maximizing the vessel’s capacity usage with smarter vessel to route bundling.
- Easily find ships with available spaces and bundle cargo demands with open trade lanes;
- Manage spot voyage quotes whenever your open trade lanes don’t match the actual cargo requirements;
- FIlter out suitable ships based on trade lane, available space, laycans and arrival windows;
- Centralize communication with brokers, reducing the need for long email threads;
- And integrate cargo demands and vessel positions from your CTRM or ERP easily via API.
Barging
A recurrent request from our Oil & Gas customers, calculating demurrage for barges is inherently complex, as the calculation often involves dealing with barge, tow and surveyor rates, besides multiple stops at berths along the voyage.
Now you can easily manage Demurrage for Barges within Voyager. Users have the option to create either a common Voyage or a Barge, where it’s possible to configure two demurrage rates for a voyage, one for the tow and one for the barge.
Our SOF parser was also updated to deal with Barge SOF events, as they are differently structured than normal wet and dry bulk SOFs, allowing for the user to quickly highlight on the SOF which events should be accounted for the Barge, which events should be accounted for the vessel, or for both.
PLATFORM UPDATES
Voyage Management & Demurrage
Now it’s easier to create demurrage claims directly from Voyages through a seamless flow, transferring all the specifications related to a voyage to the claims manager.
This includes the vessel name, contract information, charter party date, laycan, cargo quantities and port calls, ensuring all the data related to a voyage can be connected to the demurrage claim in a streamlined flow.
Cost Tracking Upgrade
Soon users will be able to configure different voyage costs in various currencies through the standard voyage tab, with the added benefit of being able to convert them to US Dollars within the platform.
Now, costs are broken down by three main tabs:
- Freight, which hosts all the basic freight related costs, such as Bunker Adjustment Factor, Freight Rate and Deadfreight.
- Additional, which condensates the operational costs that a voyage can entail, alongside with Demurrage Costs.
- P&L, which is a summary of the total voyage costs.
This upgrade also allows for the automatic Freight and Bunker Adjustment calculation, based on the BL quantity and the BAF/FR. The module is also based on cargo demands instead of voyages, allowing for higher flexibility when breaking down costs between different ports, customers, or other variables.
Tracking all voyage-related costs is fundamental to accurately understanding your Voyage P&L, one of the motivations behind this update and another big customer requirement.
Multiple SoFs per Port Call
Users now have the option to upload one or more SoFs per port call, tagging events to reflect different trade lanes, transhipments, barges, or any type of operation that involves multiple SoFs.
The SoFs will then be identified through colors on the Port Call screen, highlighting which events belong to different SoFs. The new update also allows users to expand, filter, or validate several SoFs at once, increasing the efficiency of demurrage teams that need to manage complex demurrage calculations.