i-SeaportsTM Financial Control Center

i-Seaports is a full ERP sales, electronic billing and collections, payroll, vendor, tariff management, property and tenant leasing management, accounting, and an audit ready system with customizable interfaces for every user and service with the latest accounting techniques such as advanced revenue recognition. i-Seaports communications, traffic management, and security tracking processes provide financial management with data needed for a seamless billing and collections processes.

Clients of the seaport experience a real ROI since they can now manage 24/7 their own vessels reservations, monitor the movement and activity while in the port. For instance if the port has web-cams they can click on the berth where loading and unloading is in progress and view the activity. Clients can also view estimates of expense before they enter the port and pay their deposits and fees due on-line to the port.

Your Seaport ROI is greatly increased with no hardware or software to install or maintain and happy satisfied, informed customers. The seaports real-time reporting system keeps them totally on top of their financial condition and audit ready at all times. Setting up the chart of accounts, fiscal year, tariff schedule, bank reconciliation interface, and reporting services essential to a clean internal and external auditing process are easy in i-Seaports.

Real IT ROI

Satisfied Clients Online 24/7
The competition among ports for business is all about the clients - where they can get the best ROI. ROI is all about time, cost and quality of service—how quickly the client can do their business with a port, what it will cost, how well-informed they are about each step in the process, how accurate is the information associated with their billing and how safe and secure are their products and their transactions. i-Seaports provides this ROI to your clients 24/7 in its Software Oriented Architecture.

Seaport Reduced IT Costs and Worry
Building your annual Seaport IT budget just became simple - just leave off upgrade costs, web-servers, backup service, and website hosting. These are all integral to i-Seaports. One budget line gets them all. You only have to determine the number of "employee" users. Furthermore, i-Seaports charges your customers nothing so if you have 1000 clients you want to charge for using this service you can recover your own costs or even profit from this IT investment.

Strong Support & IT Security
i-Seaports is an Oracle database engine hosted by Level 3 Communications (L3) behind a secure fire-wall with an unprecedented performance record.

Streamlined Billing & Collections Processes

The Quoting Process
After reservations are made through the traffic center, the quoting process can give a customer an estimate of costs long before they enter the port. A single click of the reservation request turns it into an estimate where more detailed calculations can be applied. Each vessel call is treated like a project in itself. Based on the services requested and accurate information on the vessel, cargo and activity involved, i-Seaports can generate and send by email, fax, or just leave available on line an estimate of costs that the client may expect

The Billing Process
When a vessel arrives in a port, a single click by the port operations manager turns their estimate (or their reservation request if they did not request an estimate) into a Sales Order. Every item of billable service can be recorded using the tariff schedule built into the inventory manager, and customized calculations for discounts, mark-ups, and rates based on all types of units of measure this port uses to do business.
As items in the sales order are complete, invoices can be issued on the completed items long before the vessel departs the port. Harbour fees, berthage, and utilities services may be billed in advance of completing the processing of wharfage of manifests billing.

The Collections Process
The invoices may be delivered as email, PDF attached files, faxes (using built in telephony), or traditional mail invoices. Customers can pay by credit card on-line, wire transfer, ACH or check and i-Seaports handles all of these transactions.

Full ERP & Accounting

Property and Tenant Management
Landlord services for managing property and tenants are other robust feature of i-Seaports. Leasing schedules can be built in an instant using advanced revenue collections features that invoices monthly for rent and utilities generated in a batch process.

Employee Payroll and Taxes Management
Maintaining accurate and detailed employee records, commission and salary structure, consultants and other personnel is another benefit of i-Seaports. Tracking payroll taxes are built in for each employee making monthly tax deposits a no-brainer.

Purchasing, Project Costing and Vendor Management
i-Seaports is a complete and robust accounting system where purchasing, vendor relations, inventory, and all the assets and liabilities of the port are managed in infinite detail. Set up projects like berth repair or a construction effort, and track every detail of purchases and costs for project implementation in near real-time.

Reporting & Audit Ready

Quarterly, Annual Accounting and Tax Audits
Most seaports go through several audits every year. Internal, external, tax, federal, state and others may all collide or happen in a continuous stream. i-Seaports is a continuous audit ready system. It provides for auditors to be online for continuous monitoring as well.

Graphical, Standard and ad hoc Forms & Reporting
i-Seaports reporting system has built in all the reports you would expect - P&L, Payables, Receivables, 30/60/90 past due, etc. A complete standard set of forms for invoices, statement, POs, and many other reports are an implicit part of the system. Attaching graphics - bar charts, pie charts, and comparative analyses charts on sales, performance against budget, revenue, and projections -- are all standard features.

Customizable for Users and Administrators
Finally, users can customize the appearance of their standard reports and create ad hoc reports with a minimal amount of effort. Their reports are saved for future use. The data can be exported to spreadsheet or XML, faxed, or emailed to a recipient. Users can create their own dashboards of the charts and graphs they want to see on their home page and hotlinks to the things they use most.