What does Ecrs in shipping mean?

ECRS means Emergency Cost Recovery Surcharge. ECRS stands for Emergency Cost Recovery Surcharge. There are many kinds of shipping surcharges in the sea. As of May 19, a total of 16 foreign shipping lines operating in the Philippines have. Delivery Order Fee (D/O Fee). But the CPG data also showed that a number of shipping firms are still imposing the “ECRS or its equivalent.

An expense and cost recovery system (ECRS) is a specialized subset of "extract, transform, load" (ETL) functioning as a powerful and flexible set of applications, including programs, scripts and databases designed to improve the cash flow of businesses and organizations by automating the movement of data between cost recovery systems, electronic billing from vendors, and accounting systems.

ECRS is an area of ETL most applicable to consulting businesses, accounting agencies, and law firms, companies that bill back clients for time and costs. As such, the terms "disbursement", "expense", "cost", and "charge" may be synonymous and can be industry-specific. Sometimes the terms refer to the state of a transaction as it is extracted from the vendor data, transformed in the ECRS and then loaded into the accounting system. The term "transaction", in an ECRS, is generally referring to a single record of a one-time business exchange incurring debt on the part of one company with a vendor. It is assumed that the company will pass on those individualized debts as line-item or summarized charges to its own clients or customers.

An ECRS reduces the amount of manual and administrative effort required to exchange data between those vendors and the clients' bills. An ECRS also minimizes delays between the capture of cost transactions and electronic billing for various expenses as well as processing automatically into accounting databases.

Once costs are appended to accounting or billing tables, the detailed transactions from an ECRS may be "rolled up" to higher-level totals for movement to invoices, statements and bills. However, the detailed transactions can remain in interim ECRS tables or files for subsequent reporting. Retaining the detail transactions minimizes the number of transactions that need to be loaded into the accounting system, but still allows access to the detail for auditing purposes, or for justifying certain types of expenses to clients, customers or bill recipients.

An ECRS usually includes a database, set of tables or flat files to retain detailed transactions received from cost recovery systems that control devices such as photocopiers, telephone switches, fax systems, and electronic billing for services such as courier services, postal services, credit cards, legal research, etc.

An ECRS normally receives and retains all transactions from the source system or electronic bills. This includes valid transactions where all data is correct and invalid transactions that have invalid or missing elements. (Note: an ECRS can accept transactions into its database that have all fields valid or a minimum number of valid data elements.) Interactive portions of some ECRS packages allow review, updating and correction of individual costs.

Transactions with invalid data in some columns are held for subsequent correction, transformed based on "business rules" or rejected, dictated by industry—and individual company—policy. Only transactions considered valid may be moved along to be loaded into a business' accounting application. The ECRS might include an on-line function to easily review and correct detailed cost transactions prior to passing them on. Reviewing and correcting transactions already in the system is much easier and faster than the traditional method used by non-ECRS practices such as printing out rejections and then manually entering them directly in the billing application.

Non-ECRS processes typically import valid transactions only and generate an exception list of the invalid transactions. The exception list is then printed and distributed to users who correct the invalid data elements by annotating the report. When the annotated reports are completed and returned to the billing or accounting department, the entire transaction must be manually input into the billing system. Using an ECRS eliminates this costly and time-consuming procedure.

Transactions received into an ECRS are identified with information about the source used to create the cost (i.e. telephone, photocopier, delivery service, outside reproduction, etc.) and the employee who created the transaction. An on-line correction feature can allow users to display the transactions for which they are responsible, and to easily correct invalid transactions (e.g. invalid dates, time of day, etc.) so they can be processed into billing. Security features are sometimes available to control access by the user to only those transactions they are directly or indirectly responsible for correcting (e.g. a secretary responsible for a department, supervisor managing sales reps, etc.).

In a typical installation that incorporates cost recovery systems and electronic billing, there is a dedicated server to support the billing system (Host); a Local Area Network (LAN) to support user applications such as word processing, graphics, document management, spreadsheets; and cost recovery devices used to input data such as employee ID, client names, account numbers, etc. The accounting server and the cost recovery systems are usually connected to the LAN, and data must be transferred on a regular basis between each of the accounting server and the cost recovery systems.

An ECRS can provide the ability to schedule tasks on both the accounting system server and the LAN. Individual tasks may be run at timed intervals separately, or grouped into task lists and run together. Scheduled tasks may include processes on the accounting server to extract validation information, transferring validation information to the LAN, updating a vendor's validation tables on the cost recovery system (such as employee IDs, accounting codes and cost-types), transferring cost transactions from the LAN to the accounting server and processing cost transactions into the billing system. Transaction processes can then be automated to minimize administrative overhead and reduce delays updating transactions into the billing system.

An advanced ECRS includes a number of features that permit a business to control how users are set up in the system.

Multiple user identifiers – Employees can be recorded in an ECRS so that they may have an unlimited number of identifiers that are used with third-party systems to associate them with transactions and/or types of transactions. Identifiers may include telephone extensions, photocopy IDs, cell phone numbers, calling card codes, service account codes, login IDs, and credit card numbers.

User default accounts – Personal accounts should be established for each employee. These accounts will receive invalid transactions (i.e. incorrect or missing data elements) that are not corrected and loaded within a company-defined grace period. In addition, employee IDs are sometimes mapped to a general ledger account number.

User activation status – Better, or higher-level, ECRS applications will retain employee records forever and honor hire and fire dates. This permits a business to enable or disable users based on these dates, which is particular useful for temporary and recurring employees (summer replacements, temporary help, etc.).

User security access – Access rights (viewing or editing) may be established by user and cost type. This permits a company to control who may have access to users' transactions. For example, a paralegal may be able to correct only his or her transactions, while a secretary may be allowed to correct transactions for more than one attorney. A sales supervisor might be able to see all of the phone calls his/her reps make, but only be able to write off reproduction (copy, print, scan) costs for those same subordinates.

Employers may set variable rates or costs for their employees. The criteria for these rates are often count-based (pages, copies, duration, etc.) and they are applied before charges are loaded into the billing system. Rates may be established by cost type, or may allow multiple rates based on count volumes within a single transaction. For example, a business may charge its clients $.20 for each copied page for the first 10 copies, and then $.15 per copy for each additional copy.

Phone Number Criteria – A company may set various levels of acceptance and rejection of telephone numbers found in long distance, local and fax calls. This feature, along with the ability to associate descriptions for these numbers using self-built or purchased telephone geographical tables, provides the ability to identify calls by the full number, area code and prefix, or area code alone, making it easier to identify the location called. The better ECRS will allow for custom input of business names at the exchange (XXX-XXX) and number levels (XXX-XXX-XXXX).

Number Default Accounts – If a phone number or range of phone numbers can often be related to a specific account among a firm's clients, some ECRS programs can automatically identify that account with the call to be then charged during the processing of call transactions into the billing system.

Account Validation Levels – The firm may establish different criteria for exporting validation data, importing cost transactions, and modifying or correcting client account numbers. Allowing different criteria at different points in the processing and exchange of data provides a greater degree of flexibility. For example, new or pending accounts may be extracted from the billing system and sent to external cost recovery system(s) so that costs incurred for those accounts may be pre-identified. However, cost transactions for the new or pending accounts may not be able to get loaded into accounts receivable until they are formally added to the accounting database (i.e. after a contract is signed).

Account Posting Criteria – A firm may set specific clients, or groups of accounts, to be processed into the billing system in separate batches. Accounts might be selected by client, by location, by sales rep, or by transaction type (i.e. telephone, fax, etc.).

Moving data between the application server and the Local Area Network (LAN) is simplified with an ECRS through support for a broad variety of file transfer methods, including serial communications, modem, diskette, or tape for devices not directly connected to the LAN, or for processing electronic bills from vendors.

For devices directly connected to the LAN, or available over the Internet, other transfer methods are available, including industry standard File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and Network File System (NFS), which is software that allows your LAN to recognize disk drives on the application server as if they were mounted on the LAN server. This permits the direct copying of files from one system to another.

Validation Table Creation - Rules may be established for creating validation tables that match each of the requirements of your respective third-party vendors (i.e. photocopies, fax, shipping charges, etc.). These rules control the data elements extracted, and the criteria for extraction, including all clients, customer locations, employee IDs, phone extensions, corporate offices, etc. The validation tables may be produced at any time on demand, or they be created using scheduled tasks or task lists.

Transaction Validation Checking - Various options may be established to monitor the movement of data from cost recovery systems and electronic bills. Transactions from unidentified users, accounts or pieces of equipment (i.e. those not defined in the ECRS) will normally be held for re-testing, rather than automatically stored in the ECRS tables. Notification of these transactions may be sent via E-mail or screen display to users that have the responsibility to manage these transactions. The reasoning behind such procedures is that vendors – even the largest national vendors – may include transactions not truly belonging to a certain company or may send an entire file or electronic bill to the wrong business. This sort of pre-validation will prevent purging of ECRS tables and, possibly, clean-up in the A/R or billing system.

Transactions with missing or invalid company account codes are typically written into an ECRS database while notifying appropriate users of their need to be corrected. These transactions are not loaded into accounting until they are corrected or altered. Finally, invalid formats and specific data may be excluded from loads into the billing system, and data received in unacceptable formats may be pre-processed or filtered to create files acceptable for passing through the ECRS.

Depending on the options selected for processing transactions, an ECRS can be used as a powerful application to centralize the recording and reporting of all costs. It eliminates the need to access different systems and applications in order to obtain cost reporting information by user, office, client or account. Since the detailed cost transactions are stored and retained in the ECRS, reporting on detail and summary level would always be available. Reports can be generated by user, by account, by client or even by type of cost transaction. Options can also include the ability to select un-loaded, loaded both statuses of transactions, as well as to select by one or more transaction types, such as photocopy, fax, postage, etc. Detailed lists of this nature are particularly useful when a business is required to submit cost justifications to clients or customers.

Companies have a need for notifications to occur based on certain levels of incoming transactions using ETL rules for cost recovery. The primary purpose is for notifying employees when certain minimum or maximum ceilings are approached, reached or passed.

The following Conditions need to be set in the ECRS to establish Notification Levels:

The Quantity is the actual number of transactions or the physical consideration. The Value is dollar amount or the financial consideration. For vendors which provide Quantities (or counts), such as photocopies or fax pages, the flat rate should be calculated first and then applied to the Value. The Source is the geographical consideration. This can be the entire vendor (by default), an office or a device. The Period is the chronological consideration. This can be monthly (by default), weekly or daily. There should also be two Levels for each Condition:

... so that actions can be set such as logging for Warnings and e-mail for Exceptions. And, in addition to setting Levels for Conditions, an Average needs to be allowed for where the more data that is run through the system, the more accurate an Average. Once Averages are established, then in addition to Conditions—or perhaps as an alternative to Conditions—a percentage or Variance should be set as an allowable or Notifiable range.

Below is an example chart, grid or table has been set up to show what cost recovery administrators would need to maintain for pertinent Notifications.

AT&T, "Copitrak"/Control Systems, Equitrac, "Fedex"/Federal Express, "UPS"/United Parcel Service, and Verizon all own their registered and/or respective trademarks.

Vendor – Vendor device-type

Example:

Equitrac Photocopy –

Generate a Warning message if…

Each vendor will require at least minimum and maximum levels at the Vendor ("V") source. Any vendor can further be broken down to Office ("O") and Device ("D") assuming that the vendor has multiple "devices" within an office.

Variance would be an option and, possibly, a non-zero in the "Var" columns would override the Min/Max settings. Also, a zero ("0") in any Max column would automatically shut that check off.

The Avg would be determined, and adjusted, by more data flowing through the system over longer periods of time to a probably maximum of one year.

If a Freq of "Daily" is used, a grid or table should be built for Mon-Fri and Sat-Sun/Holiday.

An ECRS allows a company to use one comprehensive solution for managing cost recovery. Combining a fully functional Expense and Cost Recovery System dramatically reduces the administrative overhead and improves the efficiency of recovering firm costs and expenses. With an ECRS, a business is provided with a single focus point of support for small and large firms with a diverse set of cost tracking devices and expenses.

There are many templates and record formats used by various vendors and vendor systems currently available, and more are constantly being developed. Even though there is a set of "standards" for electronic data interchange (EDI), the flexibility within those standards allows for customization that nearly every industry and every vendor modifies. It is much like HyperText Markup Language (HTML) for designing Web pages: the framework is established, but each browser/vendor has its own extensions, rules and implementations.

In the legal industry, some standardization has been attempted with Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard (LEDES). In other industries, Extensible Markup Language (XML) is used as more and more ECRS and ETL applications use Web interfaces.

The following is a list of popular vendors and types of costs with transaction information as provided by the vendor or by intermediary companies:

ASP, AT&T, ASTRA, Balmar, Big Apple, Cable & Wireless, Carpe Diem, Control Systems, Danyl, Dial Car, Docs Open, DTE, Eastern Connection, Equitrac, Expense Report Systems, Falcon Courier, Federal Express, File Maker, iManage, Infortext, Legal Fax, Lexis, MCI, Metro Legal Services, Microsoft, On-Line Lookup, On Time Delivery, PC Docs, Pitney Bowes, Pollcat, Postage, Records Management System, RedTop, Remote Time Entry, RightFax, Soft Solutions, Trac Systems, United Parcel Service, Verizon, Washington Express, and Westlaw all own their registered and/or respective trademarks.

These are vendors with time and billing systems packages which have ECRS interfaces or facilities to send/receive ECRS and EDI:

Aderant, Barrister, CMS & CMS Open, Elite, Juris, Keystone, Lexis-Nexis, ProLaw, Solution 6, and Thomson Reuters, all own their registered and/or respective trademarks.

These are vendors with ECRS applications, ECRS products and third-party ECRS consultants:

Argos, BillBack, Control Systems, CostWare, Equitrac, ERS, Harvester, MiniSoft, Norman Wise & Co, nQueue, UDI, Wehrheim, and WSI all own their registered and/or respective trademarks.

Due to various reasons of the ship, cargo, port and other parties, the ship party increases the cost expenses or suffers economic losses in transporting the cargo, and the ship party provides for additional charges in addition to the basic rate to compensate for these expenses or losses, which is called Surcharge or Additional.

There are many different types of surcharges, and as some circumstances change, new surcharges may be eliminated or developed. In this article, STU Supply Chain has compiled a list of the more common ocean freight surcharges that are currently in effect, in the hope that it will help you better understand ocean freight surcharges.

· General Rate Increase

· Peak Season Surcharge

· Emergency Bunker Surcharge

· Terminal Handling Charge

· Original Receiving Charge

· Port Congestion Surcharge

· Container Imbalance Charge

· Destination Delivery Charge

· Heavy-Lift Additiona

· Currency Adjustment Factor

· Long Length Additional

· Emergency Cost Recovery Surcharge

· Container Service Charge

· Fuel Adjustment Factor

· Entry Summary Declaration

· Suez Canal Surcharge

· Panama Canal Transit Fee

· Document Fee

· Automatic Manifest System

· Temporary Additional Risks

· Advance Commercial Information

· General Rate Increase

· Cleaning Charge

· TRANSHIPMENT SURCHARGE

· DIRECT ADDITIONAL

· PORT ADDITIONAL OR PORT SUECHARGE

· OPTIONAL SURCHARGE

· DEVIATION SURCHARGEALTERNATIONAL OF DESTINATION CHARGE

GRI is the General Rate Increase, which is generally used for South American and American routes. It is used in South America and the U.S., where the shipping company's transportation cost increases significantly due to various reasons such as port, ship, fuel, cargo or other aspects, and the ship owner adds a general rate increase surcharge to compensate for these increased expenses.

The full name of PSS is Peak Season Surcharge, which is generally charged by many shipping companies during the peak season when freight is busy, and is somewhat similar to China's Spring Festival price increase. April-November of each year is generally the peak season for the world's freight.

The full name is Emergency Bunker Surcharge (EBS), which is a surcharge on ocean freight and is generally settled in US dollars. In case of FOB terms, this charge should be borne by the consignee, not the shipper, because EBS is not part of FOB local charges. This charge can be paid on arrival or in advance.

EBS is generally a temporary surcharge to compensate for the fast rising cost when the international crude oil price is climbing rapidly and the shipping company feels that it exceeds its own capacity, and the market is not prosperous and it is not convenient to increase the shipping cost in time.

THC is Terminal Handling Charge, which can be further divided into OTHC-Origin Terminal Handling Charge and DTHC-Destination Terminal Handling Charge, Origin Terminal Handling (OTHC) are charges made by the terminal operator in regards to container movements. Destination Terminal Handling Charges (DTHC) are charges used to describe the charges raised by the port of arrival or port of discharge to lift the container onto or off the vessel.

ORC is the Original Receiving Charge, a complex charge that is both different from and related to the Terminal Handling Charge (THC), which is only available at ports in South China, mainly in Guangdong, while THC is available at all ports; only one of ORC and THC is charged - if ORC is charged, THC is not charged, and if THC is charged, ORC is not charged.

ORC is specifically designed for ocean-going routes that originate from ports in South China and have destinations in North America, Central and South America, Europe and North Africa. For ports in South China to other ports of destination such as Southeast Asia, only THC is charged as for ports in other regions.

The full name of PCS is Port Congestion Surcharge, and when the port is congested or particularly busy, the waiting time and duration of the ship will be prolonged, and the tug fees and other port call charges may increase, which will cause a significant increase in transportation costs, and the shipping company will charge the shipper a port congestion surcharge to compensate for this cost loss.

CIC full name is Container Imbalance Charge, sometimes also known as Container Imbalance Surcharge, this charge is due to the imbalance of trade volume or seasonal changes in cargo flow and container imbalance, shipping companies to compensate for the cost of transferring empty containers and a surcharge.

DDC full name is Destination Delivery Charge, in DDU, DDP and other terms, this fee is the seller / shipper shipper burden, otherwise are paid by the buyer / consignee consignee. For example, CIF terms - the buyer / consignee to bear all the costs and risks of the goods in the port of shipment after crossing the ship's rail, so all the costs of the port of destination, including DDC are borne by the party / consignee.

HLA is Heavy-Lift Additiona, also called Surcharge for Over Weight, which means that the weight of a single piece of cargo exceeds a certain standard (the standard specified by different forwarders or shipowners may be different), requires special equipment (such as heavy-duty cranes) or special operations (such as the need for padding, reinforcing materials and manual tying or reinforcing) A surcharge is charged to compensate for the increased operation cost, if the loading and unloading operation is difficult, or if special treatment is required on the ship's stowage.

Generally, overweight is defined as over 2, 3 or 5 tons. The overweight surcharge is charged according to the weight, the higher the weight, the higher the surcharge, and if the vessel is to be transferred, the surcharge will be added once for each transfer.

CAF is Currency Adjustment Factor, also known as CAS-Currency Adjustment Surcharge, which is a significant loss to the shipping company when the currency in which the freight is billed has depreciated significantly. In order to compensate for the loss, the shipowner will pass on the loss to the shipper/consignor by adding a currency adjustment surcharge.

LLA is Long Length Additional, also called Over Length Additional or Surcharge for Over Length, which means that the length of a single piece of cargo exceeds a certain standard (the standard may be different for different forwarders or shipowners), requires special equipment or special operation, is difficult to load or unload, or is difficult to load or unload when the ship is overloaded. It is a surcharge charged to compensate for the increased operation cost. Generally, the surcharge is charged for over 9 meters, and for container cargo, the surcharge is charged for over 6 meters, and the rate increases according to the length.

The full name of ECRS is Emergency Cost Recovery Surcharge, which can also be called "adverse weather operation surcharge" - such as bad weather conditions causing a significant increase in ship transportation and operation costs This surcharge is imposed in cases such as these.

Container Service Charges are fees charged by the shipping terminals for the storage and positioning of containers before they are loaded on a vessel. The charges usually consist of goods handling, unloading the container, stacking and crane service.

The full name is Fuel Adjustment Factor and is generally used on Japanese routes. This surcharge is somewhat similar to the temporary fuel surcharge above - essentially the same, but called by different names.

ENS (Entry Summary Declaration) refers to the European Customs Advance Manifest Rules. Since January 1, 2011, the EU to (all imported goods to the EU) or through (all transit goods, all goods in transit, all unloaded goods on board, etc.) all shipments to EU ports mandatory implementation of the "Manifest Advance Declaration" rules, the rules apply to all EU member states.

The full name of SCS is Suez Canal Surcharge, the route from Asia, Oceania, East Africa and other regions to Europe basically have to pass through the Suez Canal, the ship through the Suez Canal when the shipping company needs to pay a certain amount of navigation fees to the canal authorities, the cost of the shipowner through the Suez Canal Surcharge form to customers.

The full name of PTF is Panama Canal Transit Fee, which is the same as the Suez Canal Surcharge, the shipping companies in the Far East and the West to the East of the United States generally have to pass through the Panama Canal, and the shipping companies need to pay a certain amount of navigation fees to the canal authorities when the ships pass through the Panama Canal.

DOC=Document, in the freight forwarding industry, there are 2 fees for DOC, one is DOC charged by the shipping company, which is a fixed fee. The other is the DOC charged by the port of destination, which is also considered as one of the basic fees of the port of destination, and is charged by the agent of the port of destination in US dollars, and the fees are different for each agent.

AMS is also called Automatic Manifest System (AMS), which is used for U.S.-Canada routes and is unique to the U.S. - all cargoes to the U.S. or transit cargoes to other countries or regions via the U.S. have to be declared in AMS (24 hours before shipment). Manifest system.

The full name of TAR is Temporary Additional Risks (TAR), which can be simply understood as a war surcharge, or another way of saying war surcharge.

ACI is Advance Commercial Information, a Canadian customs requirement that all cargo arriving in Canada or transiting through Canada to other countries must be declared to Canadian customs 24 hours prior to shipment, very similar to the AMS in the U.S.

GRI is the General Rate Increase, which is generally used for South American and U.S. routes. It is a general rate increase surcharge that is imposed by the shipowner to compensate for the increase in shipping costs due to various reasons such as port, ship, fuel, cargo or other factors.

The full name of the CC is Cleaning Charge, which is commonly used for break-bulk carriage.

A surcharge charged by the shipowner when cargoes destined for a non-basic port are transferred to the destination port, including transshipment charges and second-haul freight.

A surcharge charged when a certain amount of cargo is shipped to a non-basic port and the shipping company can arrange direct shipping to that port without transferring.

A surcharge added by the shipping company due to poor equipment conditions or low loading and unloading efficiency in some ports, and other reasons.

A surcharge added by the shipping company when the consignor is not sure of the specific port of discharge and requests to choose a port of discharge among two or more ports proposed in advance.

DEVIATION SURCHARGE

A surcharge imposed by the ship when the ship has to make a detour to deliver the cargo to the destination port because the normal channel is impassable.