1. Control Tower
The Control Tower screen (/crossdock/overview) provides a daily snapshot for business owners: number of inbound shipments, sub-shipments, average dwell time, vehicles waiting at docks, pending appointments, fee revenue; along with integrity alerts, dock queues, shipments being processed, and outbound waves. From here, you can quickly navigate to specific operations below.
2. Dock scheduling & appointments
Dock schedule (/crossdock/appointment): assign vehicles by dock door + time slot so that 140+ vehicles/day don't create bottlenecks at the gate. Staff create appointments directly (effective immediately). Each door per time slot accepts only one vehicle — the system blocks duplicate bookings.
Self-service scheduling (/crossdock/appointment/self-service): shippers/forwarders self-register time slots for vehicle arrival; requests are in pending approval status → internal approval/rejection before becoming effective.
3. Inbound shipments & processing
Inbound shipments (/crossdock/shipment): each inbound/China truck is a shipment, carrying goods for multiple customers (sub-shipments). Lifecycle: receiving (pre-alert) → customs clearance (only record declaration number, if cross-border goods) → gate-in (record timestamp for dwell calculation) → docked → unload & verify against packing list → sort → ship out. Discrepancies during verification (short/over/damaged/wrong) are recorded and can open incident cases.
Outbound via 3 channels: (a) in-house fleet trips — generate truck orders for dispatch/delivery; (b) handover to domestic courier (CPN) — create signed handover receipt; (c) third-party trucks — also create receipt. Full container/transit cargo handled accordingly.
4. Dock queue & integrity
Dock queue (/crossdock/queue): service order enforced fairly by system (by appointment time/arrival time), displays each vehicle's position — prevents "cutting in line" for personal gain. Priority (urgent cargo/VIP customers) requires dispatcher approval + reason entry; each override is logged in immutable audit trail (no edit/delete).
Calling vehicles out of order automatically generates integrity alerts (wrong sequence); repeated abuse of queue jumping is also flagged. Alerts appear on dispatch screen and reports, pushed to central monitoring.
5. Sorting & staging
Sorting (/crossdock/sorting): configure rules by conditions (customer group, outbound channel, weight, piece count) → system auto-suggests lane/outbound door for each sub-shipment, with explanation of which rule matched. No matching rule defaults to manual handling. Wave groups sub-shipments by lane for batch outbound, streamlining the cross-docking process.
6. Pricing & reconciliation
Cross-dock pricing (Settings › Pricing & Rates › Cross-docking): businesses configure fees by customer group (shipper/forwarder/CPN) and calculation method (per kg, per piece, per container, flat rate, or storage fee per day). System calculates fees per sub-shipment and reconciles total per inbound shipment → into accounts receivable.
7. Cross-docking reports
Reports (Reports › Cross-docking Reports): volume by shipment/sub-shipment/pieces, average dwell, fee revenue by customer group, shipments by status, and integrity alert summary. These are dedicated reports for cross-docking operations; other business type reports are hidden based on company service configuration. The TMS integrates these insights with broader logistics operations.