The superintendent's morning

The question is never where the ships are. It is which one is about to stop being allowed to trade. A Safety Management Certificate with the annual endorsement missed is as invalid as one that has expired, and both are found the same way: by a port state inspector, at a berth, with a laycan running.

So the fleet screen opens on the alerts, not on a map. Expired first, then expiring within ninety days, then an endorsement due within sixty, then a survey inside a hundred and eighty days, then a detention in the last twelve months. Every alert names the hull, the document and the date, and links to the folder where it is fixed.

The chartering manager's morning

The other question is which hull is about to be free, and where. Each hull on the fleet screen carries her last position on file, her current open position if the desk has logged one, and the fixture she is on if there is one, so the answer is read off one row rather than assembled from three systems.

A hull that is trading with no open position and no fixture is flagged, quietly, in the colour that means "somebody should look" rather than the colour that means "something is wrong". Open tonnage that is ready to be offered goes to the marketplace in one press, named or anonymous, and an enquiry from another desk arrives with a name and an address you can answer from your own mailbox.

What the fleet screen holds

Verified owners and managers only

Desk and above

The fleet is not open to everybody with a plan. Before the first hull goes on it, a person at Neptune Labs reads the paper that says your company runs ships: a certificate of registry, the ISM Document of Compliance, a management agreement or your incorporation papers, usually within one working day. A hull the register already links to your company is accepted at once; any other needs her own certificate. A broker offering somebody else's ship still posts to the marketplace as before, without the verified-owner mark.

Your hulls, claimed from the register

Desk and above

Pick each hull from 101,900 in the register by name or IMO number, say whether she is owned, managed, operated or chartered in, and give her the name your desk uses. Particulars, ownership and survey dates come with her; your own corrections sit in a private overlay that no other desk can read.

The certificate folder

Desk and above

Statutory, class and commercial certificates per hull: SMC, DOC, ISSC, MLC, class, load line, the SOLAS safety certificates, IOPP, IAPP, ISPP, ballast water, CLC, P&I and hull and machinery entry, and anything else you type. Issued, expires, endorsement due. Status is worked out from the dates every time the folder opens, never stored, so it cannot go stale.

The calendar, with two provenances

Desk and above

Drydock and special survey dates as the vendor reports them, labelled "From our records", beside the drydock, vetting, crew change and maintenance you have actually booked, labelled "Your own". They are shown together and never merged, so a stale vendor date cannot overwrite a booking your superintendent made last week.

Port state inspections and casualties

Desk and above

Every inspection on file for the hull with the authority, the port, the deficiency count and whether she was detained, and any casualty record, read from the same register the brokers on this platform read. A detention in the last twelve months is an alert on the fleet screen, because it is the first thing a charterer's vetting department will find.

Last position, open position, current fixture

Desk and above

The last AIS fix on file for each hull, with the destination and ETA the crew declared, plotted on the fleet map. Refreshing a position buys a live fix from the data vendor and says so before it spends anything. Beside it, the open position your desk has logged and the fixture she is on.

Open tonnage on the marketplace

Desk and above

Offer a hull to every desk on the platform from her own page. The listing carries the particulars you chose to publish and the open port and dates, nothing from your notes, and it can be withdrawn or marked fixed the moment she is.

How many hulls, and what it costs

The fleet is on every paid plan and the plans differ by size. Desk holds up to ten hulls, Chartering up to thirty, and Fleet has no ceiling. An owner of eight ships is a Desk customer; a manager of forty is a Fleet customer; the screens are the same. Prices are on the pricing page, per licence, and the second person on the desk costs less than the first.

The marketplace is on every plan including the free one, so a hull can be offered before any plan is chosen.

What this is not, said plainly

It is not a planned maintenance system. There is no spares inventory, no running hours, no work orders and no crew list. It is not an accounting package and it does not hold your noon reports. Owners who need those run them beside this, and the honest place for this product is the commercial and compliance picture that sits on top of them: the fleet, its paperwork, its inspection record, and the market for its open days.

Charterers and cargo owners have their own page, and the board both sides post to is described at the marketplace, across 11,425 ports.