Skip to content

Consolidation for forwarders, consolidators, shipping agents and carriers

One load, several shippers, one set of documents

Consolidation manifest with the house consignments of two shippers, created with DGAssistant

DGAssistant lets a freight forwarder, a consolidator, a shipping agent and a carrier work on the same load without asking anyone to declare the goods twice. Each shipper presents its consignment once, and from that moment the load is grouped, checked and documented as a single operation while every package keeps the shipper that declared it.

The module rests on three objects that mirror what happens in the terminal. The master consignment groups the house consignments of a booking. The transport unit is what physically carries them: a container, a vehicle or a trailer. The trip moves those units, whether it is the voyage of a vessel with its port calls, a road journey or a flight.

Because the three are linked, a change in one consignment reaches the manifest, the packing certificate and the segregation check without anyone reissuing anything by hand.

What each role does

The four roles share the same data and each one sees the part that concerns it:

Nobody works on a copy: the shipper who corrects a quantity corrects it for everyone, and the audit trail records who changed what and when.

  • Freight forwarder: receives the consignments of several shippers, groups them into a master consignment and answers for the documentation of the whole booking.
  • Consolidator: fills the transport units, records how many packages of each house consignment go into each unit and signs the packing certificate.
  • Shipping agent: prepares the call, declares the dangerous goods on board to the port and to the master of the vessel, and distributes the manifests.
  • Carrier: takes the units on the trip, receives the restrictions that apply to the journey and carries the documents the driver has to show.

The documents you can issue

Data sheet of the master document of a consolidation, with the boxes of the bill of lading

Every document is produced from the data already declared, so the information is never typed again at any step of the chain.

The consignment note travels with them: DGAssistant issues the CMR, the electronic consignment note and the Spanish administrative control document from the same consignment.

  • From the master consignment: consolidation manifest, container list, packing list by unit, load sheet and the data sheet of the master document, whether it is a bill of lading or a master air waybill.
  • From the transport unit: container or vehicle packing certificate of IMDG 5.4.2, multimodal dangerous goods form, segregation report of the unit, checklist before signing and the labels of the unit.
  • From the trip: dangerous goods manifest on the IMO FAL Form 7 of IMDG 5.4.3, segregation report between units on board, exemption report of ADR 1.1.3.6, trip restriction sheet with the tunnel restriction codes, load sheet, notification to the pilot in command of IATA DGR 9.5.1 and the consolidated transport document for road.

Where to continue

Each figure has its own page, and the manual explains step by step how to produce every document:

To see how quick and easy it is, you can have a two week trial without any obligation

Free TRIAL