How to Review and Approve

Who this is for: Freight Forwarders

🧭 Only Freight Forwarders can approve or reject. Shippers can view a submitted booking note but cannot act on it. See Roles and Permissions.

Finding what needs review

The Pending Review counter on the Overview page shows how many booking notes are awaiting a decision, labeled Needs your action. The Pending Review table below it lists them with the details needed to triage: shipper, consignee, ports and request date.

View All opens the Requests list filtered to Pending Review. For daily use, save that arrangement as a view. See Using the Requests List.

How to review

1. Open the booking note from the Overview table, the Requests list, or a notification.
2. Work through the form. Where the booking note came from a document or an email, the source is shown alongside for comparison. See Booking Note Form.
3. Correct anything that needs correcting. Booking notes in Pending Review remain editable by the reviewer.
4. Approve or reject.

What to check

Extracted values against the source. On booking notes created from an upload or email, the source panel is there to be used. Ports, dates, weights and references are the fields where extraction most often goes wrong.

Dates. Cargo Ready Date and Latest Shipping Date, and any plausibility warnings against them. A Latest Shipping Date identical to the Cargo Ready Date often means the fallback rule was applied because the source gave no value. See How Documents and Emails Are Read.

Commercial terms. Payment Terms, Incoterms and Order Type all carry defaults, so a wrong value looks the same as a deliberate one.

Dangerous goods. IMDG Class and UN Number on each entry marked as dangerous, against the declaration.

Completeness. Optional fields are not required to approve, but a booking note missing an HS Code or a reference creates work later.

The Shipper field

On a booking note created and submitted by a Shipper through the portal, the Shipper field is locked and cannot be changed during review. This preserves who originated the booking note and prevents it being reassigned. The field is editable only on booking notes the Freight Forwarder created themselves.

Approving

Select Approve.

Any unsaved changes are saved first, then the booking note is approved, so the approved record contains the latest edits. Saving separately before approving is not necessary.

Normal validation still applies. If a required field is missing, the approval does not go through and the form shows what needs attention. If the changes cannot be saved for any reason, the booking note is not approved and a message explains why — it will not be approved with an older version of the data.

Once approved, the booking note is final and read-only for everyone, including the reviewer who approved it.

Rejecting

Select Reject.

Once rejected, the booking note is final and read-only for everyone. It stays as a permanent record of what was reviewed and rejected. It cannot be reopened, edited or returned to Pending Review.

Because rejection is final and there is currently no way to send a booking note back with feedback, tell the Shipper what was wrong outside the portal. They will need to create a new booking note. The quickest route for them is to duplicate the rejected one, correct it and submit the duplicate.

⏳ Coming soon — a Changes Requested outcome, allowing a booking note to be returned to the Shipper with feedback instead of rejected outright.

Both outcomes send a notification

Approving and rejecting each raise an in-portal notification and an email to the relevant users, with a link back to the booking note. See Notifications.