Job Type & Required Documents
How StarShipper works out what a job covers, and which paperwork it needs
Showing every variant, each marked with the profiles it applies to.
Overview
Not every job is end to end. Sometimes you handle the whole move from the load port to the door. Sometimes you only clear the goods once they land in Australia. Sometimes all you do is truck the box from the wharf. StarShipper calls that the Job Type, and it decides which paperwork the job asks for and how its progress is read.
Key insight: You never set the Job Type. It is worked out from which party roles on the job point at your own company, so it stays correct when the parties change and there is no extra field to keep in sync.
The three services
A job covers any combination of these
Forwarding
You are the forwarder on the job, arranging the freight itself.
Derived from the forwarder role.
Customs
You are the customs broker, lodging the entry and clearing the goods.
Derived from the broker role.
Transport
You move the container on the land leg.
Derived from the transport provider role.
A job can be any one of those, any two, or all three. A customs-only job and a job where you do everything are read differently, which matters because a job you pick up at the Australian wharf would otherwise look permanently stalled in the early stages of a journey it was never part of.
What your company handles
The default every job starts from
Most jobs at a given business look the same: a customs broker clears, a forwarder forwards and clears. So StarShipper asks once, on your company profile, rather than on every job.
- Go to Settings > Organisation.
- Under Your business, choose what you do — customs broker, freight forwarder, both, or transport. The scope new jobs start from follows from it, and the page says which underneath.
- Set your registered entity in the same place: search your company name and pick it, so your ABN is confirmed rather than typed and your company is recognised on a document.
Each job picks this up straight away, and a job whose own documents say otherwise overrides it.
| Industry profile | Pre-filled services |
|---|---|
| Customs broker | customs |
| Freight forwarder | forwarding |
| Freight forwarder & customs broker | forwarding, customs |
| Transport / 3PL | transport |
| Shipping agency | forwarding |
Picking "Other" pre-fills nothing, because it says nothing about what you handle. Choose one of the three above and the checklist starts working.
You can also mark a party record as your own company under Settings > Third Parties. StarShipper creates one for you when your account is set up, so this is only needed for a branch or a second trading name.
When the Job Type is unknown
StarShipper says so rather than guessing
A wrong guess here would quietly ask for the wrong paperwork, so when the scope cannot be worked out the job says it is unknown rather than showing a plausible list. There is one cause, and it is fixed in one place.
“Not determined”
Nothing has said what your company handles, and no role on this job points at your own company either. Set what you handle in Settings > Organization — each job picks it up at once. The required-document checklist shows nothing at all until then, rather than a list nobody can stand behind.
Where a Job Type came from
A checklist built from your company profile says From your company profileunderneath it. Without that line, the scope came from this job's own parties — a document named your company as the broker or forwarder — which is the stronger answer.
The required-document checklist
Built from the Job Type, ticked by extraction
Each job carries a checklist of the documents it needs, shown in the sidebar on the job. The list is built from the Job Type, so a customs-only job asks for different paperwork than a job where you also arrange the freight and the truck. Nobody picks a template.
Lines tick themselves as documents arrive and are classified. You do not mark anything off by hand, which is the part most people expect to have to do.
Outstanding
The job needs this document and it has not arrived.
Received
A document of this type has landed on the job and been classified.
Waived
You have said this job does not need it. The line stays on the record struck through, so the history of the decision survives.
Waiving and adding lines
For the jobs that do not match the usual pattern
Waive a line when this particular job does not need it. Hover the line and use the waive button. The line is struck through and stops counting toward what is outstanding, and you can require it again at any time.
Add a line when a job needs something the standard set does not cover, a fumigation certificate on a timber consignment for example. Added lines behave like any other, so they tick themselves when the document arrives, and you can remove one you added by mistake.
Why waiving keeps the line: deleting it would make “this job is complete” mean something different on every job. Keeping the line and marking it as not needed means a finished job is one where every line is either received or waived.