Demurrage and detention management software for African trade lanes
Two clocks on every container, one tariff engine that knows which grid applied on which date, and an audit on every carrier invoice before it gets paid.
Most demurrage is not lost in one dramatic failure. It leaks: a free time clock nobody was watching, a tariff revision nobody re-read, a carrier invoice nobody recalculated, a charge absorbed instead of rebilled. Individually each is small. Across a year of container volume, it is the difference between a healthy lane and a loss-making one.
Demurrage and detention are not the same problem
Treating them as one line item is the most common and most expensive modelling error, so it is worth being precise.
Demurrage accrues while the container is still inside the terminal, after its free time has expired. The clock starts at discharge. Clearing it is a customs and terminal problem: documents, duties, inspection, a truck slot.
Detention, frequently billed as per diem, accrues after the container has passed the gate and before the empty is returned to the carrier's nominated depot. The clock starts at gate-out. Clearing it is a haulage and warehouse problem: unpacking speed, depot opening hours, empty return capacity.
They run on different clocks, use different tariff grids, and are usually cleared by different people. Detention grids tend to be the more aggressive of the two, because an unreturned container blocks the carrier's equipment rotation. A system that shows you a single combined figure tells you that you have a problem. It does not tell you who can fix it.
Why African lanes need their own model
Generic D&D tooling is usually calibrated on North European and transpacific assumptions. On African lanes, three things differ at once:
- Free time is shorter while terminal dwell is longer. The window between "no charge" and "accruing daily" is narrower than the operational reality of clearing the box.
- Tariff grids vary by port, not just by carrier. The same carrier can run different tiers and different allowances at two ports on the same coast.
- The data is captured where there is no network. If the timestamp that starts a clock is written down on paper at the quay and typed in three days later, every downstream calculation inherits that error.
Indicative free time on common African calls runs from roughly 7 to 14 days depending on port, carrier and contract. Those are orders of magnitude, not a substitute for reading your own active grid, which is exactly why the software holds the grid rather than a rule of thumb.
How the engine works
1. Both clocks start automatically
The demurrage clock starts at discharge, the detention clock at gate-out, each against the free time allowance in the applicable carrier contract for that container type and that port. Neither depends on someone remembering to open a spreadsheet row.
2. Alerts arrive while the outcome is still changeable
A notification on the day a charge lands is bookkeeping. A notification 72 hours out is an operational decision: expedite the declaration, book the truck, escalate the inspection. Thresholds are set per lane and per customer, because a 48-hour warning is useless on a corridor where the haulage lead time is four days.
3. The tariff engine uses the grid that applied on the day
Progressive tiers, container type, reefer premiums, weekend and public holiday treatment. Grids are versioned by date, so a container that accrued in March is calculated on March's tariff even if the carrier revised the grid in June. This single detail is responsible for a large share of disputes that forwarders lose.
4. Every carrier invoice is recomputed before payment
When a D&D invoice arrives, the calculation is rebuilt from the container's own timeline: discharge, gate-out, empty return, container type, and the grid in force on each of those dates. Where the result differs from the invoice, you get both figures and the arithmetic between them. That is what converts a dispute from a phone call into a document.
5. Charges get rebilled instead of absorbed
A debit note is generated against the responsible party in the correct currency, with the days and the applied rate itemised. The reporting view that matters is not total demurrage, it is demurrage absorbed versus demurrage recovered, broken down by customer and by lane.
Carrier coverage
MSC, Maersk, CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd account for most African calls and ship pre-configured, alongside Cosco, ONE, Evergreen, ZIM, PIL and Grimaldi. Any other carrier can be added: a tariff is a set of tiers, a free time allowance and a container type matrix, all editable per port and per contract. Regional and feeder operators are configured the same way as the majors.
Ports and lanes
Free time rules, terminal workflows and tariff grids are configured per port rather than assumed:
- West Africa: Tema and Takoradi, Apapa, Tin Can and Lekki, Abidjan and San Pedro, Lomé, Cotonou, Dakar, Conakry
- Central Africa: Douala and Kribi, Pointe-Noire, Matadi and Boma, Libreville, Luanda and Lobito
- East and Southern Africa: Mombasa, Dar es Salaam, Durban and Cape Town, Beira, Walvis Bay
Inland corridors are tracked as part of the same container record, because that is usually where detention accrues: the Northern Corridor out of Mombasa, the Central Corridor from Dar es Salaam, the Lobito corridor, and the Matadi to Kinshasa run.
What surrounds the calculation
- Offline terminal capture. Operators scan and time-stamp moves on the quay with no signal; data syncs when coverage returns.
- Multi-currency billing in USD, EUR, CDF, AOA, XAF and XOF with dated exchange rates, including dual-currency invoicing where a central bank requires it.
- Customs files on the same record, so the declaration that explains a delay sits next to the charge it caused.
- Row-level security in PostgreSQL, so tenant isolation is enforced by the database on every query.
- Interface in English, French, Português, Español and Kiswahili for teams that are rarely monolingual.
"Before Surestaria, we were losing 15 to 20% of margin on demurrage we never rebilled. Within three months we had recovered the equivalent of the annual software cost." Anonymous testimonial, forwarder in Matadi
Deployment
Surestaria is configured and deployed by our team rather than sold as a self-service signup. We load your carrier tariff grids and free time rules, import your reference data, set up the workflows for your ports, and train both office and terminal staff. Bring a month of real container data to the demo and we will run it through the engine on the call.