Dispatch: Colour coding for Next-Milestone

Those of you who use the Bulk or Container iCOS LIVE modules will already be familiar with the colour coding which shows on dates in the 'Next Milestone' column in the iCOS LIVE dispatch workbench.

As of today, Freight jobs also have this feature enabled, which we hope will help you easily identify which jobs are not due for delivery for a while, which ones are due today, and which are overdue.

What do the colours mean?

Here's a table showing what the colours mean, and at which point they change from one colour to another.

Dispatchers: Quick access to job details

We have had a lot of feedback about the number of clicks required to view information which you need at your finger-tips quickly as a dispatcher, without losing your place on the dispatch screen.

We listened to that feedback and have been preparing the plumbing of parts of the system for some time now, to enable a new feature we are happy to announce to you today.

The job 'quick access' dispatch column

If you scroll across your dispatch screen looking at the various columns available to you, you will now find a new column with no name, full of 'plus' symbols.

This new column likely has appeared to the far right so as not to alter your existing custom layouts.

We suggest you drag this column to the far left of your dispatch layout, perhaps next to the tick-box column, for easy access

Familiar job detail tabs - all in a single click!

Clicking on the plus symbol in the quick access column for a row expands out an extended details view, where you can click through the same tabs you would see if you open a job the normal way - including adding notes, or adding/changing costs & charges!

With quick-access open, the plus symbol changes to a minus symbol, which you can click again when done to hide the quick access panel for that job.

You can even open quick access for more than one job at once!

Manually Supplying Cost, Revenue, and Charges

We are happy to announce a new feature for managing costs, revenue, or charges - accessible in the Cost & Charge viewer (seen as a tab when viewing a booking, or as a sub-item in the utilisation or financial screens)

The new update allows you to better manage costs, revenue, or charges - especially in cases where the system was unable to rate automatically, or you want to use a specific rate.



Manually supplying values

Manually type in dollar amounts to bypass automatic rates. You must have permission to be able to do this.

'Pin' values to prevent the system from automatically recalculating them

If the system has calculated an automatic rate, but you know the rates are going to change, and you want to prevent the system applying the new rates to this job, you can 'pin' individual items at their current value.

When you supply a value manually, your value is automatically pinned. You can un-pin it by right-clicking.

For revenue allocation, pinning a single item will keep it at it's set value, but revenue allocate the remaining charge to the rest of the un-pinned items.

System 'locked' values

Values become 'locked' when they have reached a point in the system where changes are no longer allowed.

For charge and revenue, this is once a job has been verified. For costs, at this stage values are never locked.

History

As with any part of the system where a user can manipulate financial values, it is wise to be able to see who made changes.

iCOS LIVE writes an audit history of any changes made via this new feature, which can be seen in the 'History' tab in a booking.