Customs and trade compliance control for cargo operations

Shipment Control stops a shipment moving until its compliance file is complete. It builds a document checklist per shipment and per destination country from a versioned rule set, collects the evidence from whoever holds it, and runs a control gate that returns one determination: file complete, blocked, released under waiver, or advisory only.

Built for carriers, forwarders and cargo operators who carry regulatory exposure on what they load.

The rule sets are the asset. Each destination country or customs bloc has its own versioned set with a five-state lifecycle — author and approver must be different people, versions carry a future effective date, and a new version is simulated against twelve months of past shipments before it is allowed to take effect. A rule entry names the certificate, cites its legal basis, states which control point it must be in place before, and declares who bears the obligation, so an importer’s duty never blocks at the carrier’s level while a statutory duty blocks on every shipment.

Determinations are append-only. The gate freezes its whole input vector — rule set version, checklist, elected values, check results, open holds — at the moment it issues, and never edits it afterwards. Evidence is sealed in sets at their own points, and every field records which source it came from, keeping both values when two sources disagree.

Seventeen modules, 128 record types, 24 workflows and 119 capabilities, on Drupal with a single-writer database.

Key features

Versioned destination rule sets per country and per customs bloc

Separate author and approver, with future effective dates and retrievable old versions

New rule versions simulated against twelve months of past shipments before activation

Automatic checklist per shipment and per discharge country

Blocking items separated from advisory, and overdue separated from still within deadline

Control gate at six control points returning four determinations

Append-only determinations with the full input vector frozen at issue

Holds at six scopes: parcel, compartment, hold, port call, voyage and vessel

Waivers limited to contractual items, on a configurable approval ladder

Statutory and sanctions items with no waiver route at all

Evidence collected from outside parties over four submission channels

Single-use submission links for counterparties with no account

Five declaration layers, each with its own deadline and obligation bearer

Cross-checking of key fields between sources, re-run whenever a source changes

Sanctions screening with its own hit adjudication file

Certificate validity checked against the expected date of arrival

Deadlines computed from the rules and recomputed when the schedule moves

Destination tracking from arrival filing through to delivery rights

Incidents, separated cost clocks and claim files with per-type time bars

Data masking by sensitivity class, applied to the viewer at view time

Source provenance on every field — divergence is kept, never overwritten

Immutable audit log held apart from the application log

Retention rules per data type, suspended by legal hold

Metrics as versioned definitions, so the way a figure is counted cannot change mid-period

Use cases

Carriers & Vessel Operators

Hold cargo at the berth until its documentation file clears, and keep the determination as sealed evidence afterwards.

Freight Forwarders & Agents

See what each shipment is waiting on and who owes it, with a chase history you can point at when responsibility is argued.

Regulated Export Operations

Enforce certificate requirements per destination country from a rule set that is versioned, reviewed and simulated before it goes live.

Trade Compliance Teams

Keep statutory obligations apart from contractual ones, so a waiver can never be granted where the law does not allow one.

The controller workspace: what is waiting, what is overdue, and who owes it.

Every shipment in one list, with its parcel status and customs status side by side.

A checklist generated per shipment and per destination country, blocking items kept apart from advisory ones.

Items held by outside parties become requests with a name, an address and a date.

A counterparty with no account submits through a single-use link opened straight from an email.

Every submission is reviewed and either accepted or returned, never silently absorbed.

Five declaration layers, each with its own deadline, obligation bearer and submission channel.

Cross-checking key fields between sources, re-run whenever one of those sources changes.

The pre-loading control gate: six control points, four outcomes, and the whole input vector frozen at the moment the determination is issued.

Holds at six scopes — parcel, compartment, hold, port call, voyage and vessel — each authority on its own row.

Waivers exist only for contractual items. Statutory and sanctions items have no waiver route at all.

The port release order is the thing the gate can actually stop — revoking it is what keeps cargo in the warehouse.

Rule sets per country and per customs bloc, versioned, with author and approver required to be different people.

A new rule version is simulated against twelve months of past shipments before it is allowed to take effect.

Hold surveys with the cleanliness standard stated as a named level and a blocking determination at hold level.

Stowage allocated per sellable cell and per compartment, versioned so a manifest can be rebuilt as it stood at any past moment.

Evidence collected in three sets and sealed at its own point — commencement of loading, departure from berth, completion of discharge.

Destination tracking from arrival filing through to delivery rights, with milestones counted back from ETA.

Incidents at three scopes, with a cause taxonomy that forces a corrective action when the fault is the shipowner’s.

Claim files with their own time bar per claim type, and an exportable file set usable as it stands.

An audit log written once for sensitive actions and kept apart from the application log.

Metrics defined as versioned definitions, so the way a figure is counted cannot change mid-period.

Tech stack

Drupal
PHP-FPM
MySQL / MariaDB
Redis
Object Storage
Twig

Shipment Control