Throughout September, we continued expanding BargeOS with enhancements across cargo planning, voyage execution, contract management, invoicing, and operational reporting. This release introduces new support for automated freight contract intake, expanded ship and equipment planning, European river routing, and more flexible voyage management tools. Additional improvements help teams maintain accurate voyage data, manage contracts more effectively, and streamline day-to-day operations.`1
Highlights
Smarter Cargo & Equipment Planning: Expanded shipment planning to include ships, draft equipment assignments, saved planning views, and more accurate equipment recommendations based on location, timing, and contract rates.
Expanded Contract Management: Added email-based freight contract intake, improved contract expiration tracking, expanded freight and product contract visibility, and additional tools for managing contract terms and rates.
Faster Voyage Execution: Streamlined equipment assignments, event recording, barge releases, and voyage updates directly from operational dashboards, with stronger synchronization between reported events and voyage status.
Greater Routing & Operational Visibility: Expanded routing and river-level monitoring to European waterways, improved cargo inventory tracking, and refined ETA and vessel status reporting.
Improved Billing & Communications: Enhanced invoice review, duplicate detection, outbound document handling, and voyage communications with better supporting information and more flexible attachments.
Stronger Data Quality & Reliability: Improved inbound email processing, voyage status accuracy, carrier integrations, file security, and day-to-day platform performance.
Freight contracts can now be processed directly from inbound emails for companies that enable this functionality.
BargeOS can classify incoming messages as freight contracts, extract key commercial terms, and present the captured information for review before the contract becomes active. Items requiring human verification are identified during the review process.
This reduces manual contract entry while maintaining oversight of the information being added to the platform.
Cargo planning now supports ships alongside barges, expanding planning capabilities for coastal and ocean-going operations.
Planners can recommend and assign ships, save equipment selections as drafts before moving them to "Needs Orders," and generate route estimates for ocean or non-inland voyages.
Equipment assignment workflows were also expanded to support adding tugs or ships to multiple trips at once. Related ships remain distinct from vessels assigned as operating equipment.
BargeOS now supports voyage routing along European rivers, expanding the platform's geographic coverage.
European river levels update automatically and can generate low-water warnings on voyage maps. These updates operate independently of U.S. gauge feeds, improving data availability across regions.
Water-level measurements also display in centimeters for European gauges and feet for U.S. gauges, aligning with their respective reporting standards.
Contract management now provides clearer visibility into agreements requiring attention.
Users can filter contracts by date range and review counts of active, expired, and expiring agreements. New indicators highlight voyages operating under expired contracts and option periods that require notice.
Contracts within valid option periods also remain recognized as active, helping teams distinguish agreements that require action from those still in force.
Companies can configure grain barge application requirements, including specific industry deadlines and the 7:00 a.m. Central Time rule for applicable dates.
These controls support the Dead Barge alert functionality, helping operators identify trips approaching or exceeding application deadlines.
Shipment planning received several improvements designed to make equipment selection and day-to-day planning more accurate.
Planners can now save and update views with custom filters and column layouts, export shipment lists, filter loadings by date range, and group or color rows by status.
Equipment recommendations also consider more operational context, including:
Additional improvements ensure canceled shipment requests properly complete or park linked voyages rather than leaving outdated trips active.
Several enhancements reduce the number of steps required to manage active voyages.
Operators can now assign equipment to multiple trips, replace a "to be named" barge while recording its placement, and initiate load or discharge events directly from voyage actions.
The equipment assignment interface was also redesigned to provide a more complete workflow, including support for related ships.
Trip Dashboard terminology and contract visibility were refined, with clearer distinctions between product and freight contracts and more consistent rate displays.
Office-side event entry is now more streamlined and consistent.
Load and discharge reporting share a single Record Event action, with locations automatically populated where applicable. Single-product voyages can also prefill product and quantity information.
Users can edit product and quantity directly from voyage rows, while quantity labels reflect the appropriate measurement units. Administrators can also hide optional Deck Log fields based on company needs.
Additional validation requires notes for traffic reports categorized as "Other."
Voyage status and cargo quantities now stay more closely aligned with reported operational activity.
Improvements include:
The Trip Dashboard also refreshes after events are created, edited, or deleted, helping teams work with current voyage information.
Reconsignment workflows now support generating the related vendor charge when applicable.
Inventory timelines also provide a clearer view of cargo by displaying one row per barge and product, rather than unnecessarily separating the same cargo by carrier.
Discharge records can now capture unloaded product quantities and associated products, improving the accuracy of downstream inventory tracking.
Carrier ETA handling and voyage status reporting were refined to better reflect actual operations.
Traffic reports can distinguish between vessels standing by with an estimated arrival time and those standing by without one. Reports without an ETA require an explanatory note.
Additional improvements ensure carrier ETAs transition appropriately after tender or constructive placement, and that voyage timing follows the actual route rather than relying on straight-line assumptions.
Location handling received several updates.
Vessel searches now return more relevant name matches, nearby facilities are identified more precisely when a matching port is available, and route-based departure checks better accommodate winding waterways.
These changes improve the consistency of voyage location information across planning and operational workflows.
Voyage emails can now include additional operational context such as logistics, location, product, company, and vendor notes.
Outbound email templates also support spreadsheet attachments for longer tables that may otherwise be cut off by email clients. This option is configurable by template and is not limited to voyage orders.
Contract workflows received additional enhancements throughout September.
Supply contracts now support CFR/C&F and Delivered terms with associated freight rates. Freight contracts can apply separate demurrage escalation formulas and use a simplified weekly placement calendar.
Product purchase and sale contracts, along with freight contracts, are also more clearly displayed within the Trip Dashboard and voyage details.
Percent-of-tariff pricing now uses designated grain-tariff regions where applicable, rather than relying on region names to determine pricing behavior.
Invoice and cost review workflows gained several usability and accuracy improvements.
Updates include:
Invoices, contracts, and vendor rates can also be uploaded for processing directly from their respective screens.
Outbound invoice and voyage communications now support more flexible document handling.
Teams can attach voyage files, including contracts and inspection documents, when sending notices. Outbound email forms were also refined for easier review, and rendering improvements help ensure voyage emails display correctly in Outlook.
Several updates improved how BargeOS handles operational information received through email and attachments.
Improvements include:
These improvements expand the types of operational information that can be processed while reducing manual corrections.
Carrier handoffs and voyage updates received several fixes to prevent incorrect statuses and failed updates.
Back-to-back dedicated tows now use the previous voyage's completion time when communicating the next trip's arrival. Permanent carrier-system rejections are no longer repeatedly retried, and multi-stop updates are handled more reliably.
Additional fixes preserve voyage events when legs are edited, keep ship location and ETA current after equipment changes, and prevent activity logs from recording false changes caused only by timezone adjustments.
Several behind-the-scenes updates strengthened platform reliability and access controls.
Private company files—including bookings, contracts, invoices, and uploads—now require authenticated access.
Additional fixes improved transport request editing performance, outbound invoice list responsiveness, voyage action menus, and browser handling of web pages and drawings.