Built for the broker in the middle

A broker owns neither the cargo nor the ship. You work between the owner and the charterer. One of them pays you, and only when the deal is done. Your main tools are your mailbox and what you know about the market. Ship broker software that forgets this ends up tracking an owner's fleet or a charterer's cargo plan, and asks the broker to keep it up to date.

So this software holds what a desk really keeps: a cargo enquiry, an open ship, the fixture (the agreed deal) between them, and the company you write to. You do not manage a fleet unless you have one, or a cargo plan unless you own the cargo.

It starts with your mailbox, because the market is in e-mail

Owners, charterers and other brokers send position lists (ships that are free soon) and cargo enquiries by e-mail, and no vendor or data subscription sells them. The product is built on that fact: a broking desk's information arrives by e-mail and leaves by e-mail.

Connect the mailbox you already use, and each circular (tonnage or cargo e-mail) is read when it arrives: the ship, the open dates, the port or trading area. The owner's own words are kept next to the dates, because OPEN SPORE 11/14 AUG DELY DOP carries terms that no field records. A mailbox is private to the person who connected it. Nobody else at the desk can read it, not even the owner or an administrator.

Nothing goes on the board until a broker confirms it. A circular gives a ship name without an IMO number (the ship's permanent ID), and thousands of ships share a name. So the reading is automatic, but a person chooses the ship. A wrong guess would link one company's ship to another company's deal.

Matching cargo to ships, and the numbers behind a quote

Tonnage search, on two bases

Desk and above

When a ship is free next, from the positions on your own desk, and where it is now, from shared AIS (ship tracking) data. The screen never mixes the two. It also shows what it could not answer: a ship with no position at all is not the same as a ship that is not free.

Cargo enquiries, sized to tonnage

Desk and above

Find tonnage takes the deadweight range (carrying capacity) from the cargo enquiry and shows the range it searched. If you know a suitable ship, you can see why it did or did not appear.

Sea distance and passage time

Desk and above

Between any two of 11,425 ports. The route follows the sea, not a line over land, and takes canals, draught and war-risk areas into account. The route is drawn on a map so you can check the distance.

Voyage estimate and TCE

Chartering and above

Start with the freight. Take away commissions, fuel (bunkers) by grade and port costs, over the days the voyage really takes. The result is the TCE (time charter equivalent), the ship's earnings per day. It also shows the freight needed to meet the owner's asking rate, which is the key number in a rate negotiation. See the voyage estimator.

One cargo against several ships

Fleet and above

Run the same estimate for up to eight ships, sorted by TCE per day. Each ship sails empty (in ballast) from where it really is.

Fixtures and the recap

Desk and above

Track each deal from negotiating, to on subjects (agreed, with conditions still open), to fixed. The recap is kept exactly as it was sent, not rebuilt later from data that changed. The negotiation history stays in your own shorthand, because an offer that was refused often explains why the next one was accepted.

Laytime and demurrage

Chartering and above

Laytime is the time allowed to load or discharge, and demurrage is the money owed when it runs over. The statement of facts (the port log) becomes the time sheet. A period counts only if the event that starts it counts. So a stop for rain is excluded but still recorded, and a claim is argued from that record. See laytime and demurrage.

For a worked example of how a cargo is matched to open tonnage, see matching a cargo to a ship.

Who to write to, across the whole fleet

There are four ownership roles, and they are often four different companies: registered owner, group owner, technical manager, commercial manager. The registered owner is usually a company that owns one ship and has no chartering team. You send a cargo to the commercial manager, because that is the one who replies. See the vessel register.

45,386 ships have a commercial contact you can e-mail about a fixture. The rest are shown as having no contact. That is the real state of ownership data, and we do not fill the gap with a guess. A shared address like chartering@ is marked as shared, not shown as a person.

Shipbroking software is the narrower phrase

A broking desk owns neither the cargo nor the ship, so shipbroking software is a tool for the party in the middle: a list of ships and a list of cargoes that nobody publishes, the match between them, and the record of what was agreed. Chartering software is wider. It also covers the owner pricing their own ship and the charterer moving their own cargo.

Neptune Atlas is one product that does both. Each account says which party it is, so the software opens on the right screen for that party. This page covers the broker's side. ship chartering software covers everything.

Broking desks come in several types, and each has its own page: a small desk of two to ten brokers, a dry cargo desk and a project and heavy lift desk, where the cargo is measured by size, not only by weight.

What it does not do

It does not track your commission. Brokerage is one line in the voyage estimate, where it helps decide if a cargo is worth taking. It is not a record of what the desk is owed.

It does not sell you a full list of registered owners, because nobody can. The registries that hold this data do not publish it as a file. A product that seems to have it has filled the gaps with guesses.

Choosing between products? See the best ship chartering software for small desks, or the comparisons with Veson, Netpas, AXSMarine and ShipNext.

What it costs, or read what a ship broker does across 101,900 ships.