From WhatsApp to dispatched launch, without retyping a thing

Customer facts in this story are marked [to confirm] and will be replaced with the operator's own words and numbers before it is shared.

The desk before

A launch operator's day starts on WhatsApp. Ship agents send the jobs: a crew change at Anchorage A at 06:00, four off and two on; a surveyor to a tanker at OPL; provisions to a bulk carrier waiting for a berth. Someone in the office reads each message, writes it on the day's sheet, and calls the captains.

The captains do their part on paper. Every boat carries a pre-printed log book with a serial number on each sheet. Left base, alongside, cast off, back to base, passengers, fuel, the master's signature. The sheets come back to the office in a bundle at the end of the week, sometimes later.

Invoicing waits for the sheets. Each agency has its own rate card: a trip rate by anchorage, a combined-trip rate when two jobs share a run, waiting time by the hour, surcharges for weight and distance. The person raising the invoice reads the sheet, finds the rate card, does the sum, and types it into the accounting system. Month end is a week of that.

[to confirm] How many boats, how many trips in a typical month, and how long invoicing took before.

What was handed over

• The WhatsApp group where agents send jobs
• Photos of the signed log sheets, as they come in
• The rate cards, one per agency
• AIS on the boats that have it, a phone tracker on the ones that don't

Nothing was migrated. The first week ran on the same sheets and the same group.

What runs now

The job arrives on the board. The agent's message is read into a job: vessel, service, passenger counts, time, place. It appears under Unassigned on the dispatch board. The dispatcher drags it onto a boat. Combined trips are suggested when two jobs share an anchorage and a window.

The log sheet is read from the photo. The captain, or the office, photographs the signed sheet. Muvik reads the serial number, the four timestamps, the counts and the vessel, and shows them next to the scan. A person confirms or corrects. A rescan of the same serial updates the trip rather than creating a second one.

The tally register knows what is missing. Every serial in every book is accounted for: recorded, still to come, spoiled, lost. A sheet that never turns up is a question at week's end, not a surprise at month end.

The invoice is drafted per trip. Each recorded trip is priced from that agency's rate card and appears as a draft. The approver reads it, changes what needs changing, and approves. Statements roll up by agency.

Fuel is reconciled. Bunker receipts and the supplier statement are read and set against the estimated burn per trip, per boat.

What the team does differently

The dispatcher's morning is the board, not the group. The captains still write the same sheet. The office photographs sheets on the day they come in, because a photo now does something. Invoicing is a review, not a data-entry job.

[to confirm] A quote from the operations manager, and any figure the operator is comfortable putting a name to.