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Track your free-time and per-diem agreements

Steamship Line Agreements is where your Importer (BCO) workspace keeps the free-time and per-diem terms you negotiated with each line. You read the current record on this page, and you change it by submitting a request that a Conterminal administrator approves or rejects. You cannot edit an agreement directly.

8 minute read · Updated July 27, 2026

These records do not calculate anything yet.

The agreement page is the canonical record of your negotiated terms, and the page header says proposed changes go to review “before they affect billing exposure.” In the current build, nothing else in Conterminal reads these numbers: no alert, countdown, at-risk score, or invoice is computed from them. Correcting a per-diem rate here fixes the record you and support are both looking at. It does not change what any other screen shows.

Reading current agreements

Open Steamship Line Agreements from the workspace navigation. The page opens on your organization name with three counts across the top — Active, Future, and Expired — then one card per agreement.

Each card leads with a status pill and the line, written as code and name together, such as MSC - Mediterranean Shipping. The name is a link to that line's detail page when Conterminal recognizes the code or name, and plain text when it does not. Under it sits the window — Effective Jan 1, 2026 to Dec 31, 2026, or to Ongoing when there is no end date — and on the right, Last updated with a date and time in Eastern time.

How the three statuses are decided

Status is derived from the effective window against today's business date in America/New_York. It is not a field anyone sets, and there is no way to deactivate an agreement other than giving it an end date in the past.

Active: Effective from is today or earlier, and Effective to is either blank or today or later. The last day of a window is inclusive: an agreement ending today still reads Active today and flips to Expired tomorrow.
Future: Effective from is later than today. The terms are recorded but not yet in force. This is the normal state for a renewal you filed ahead of time.
Expired: Effective to is earlier than today. The card stays on the page permanently as history; nothing is deleted when a window closes.

Cards are grouped in that order — every Active agreement, then every Future one, then every Expired one. Inside Active and Expired the most recent start date comes first; inside Future the soonest start comes first, so the next agreement to take effect is at the top of its group.

One line can hold only one agreement covering any given date. The database enforces non-overlapping windows per organization and steamship line, so you will never see two Active cards for the same line. This matters when you file a renewal — see Requesting a new agreement below.

If your workspace has no records at all, the page shows No steamship line agreements and “Request a new agreement to start the carrier/platform review flow.”

What each term means

Every agreement — and every request — carries the same five terms. They appear as a five-across grid on the card and again on each request.

Pickup free days: Whole days of free time to take the loaded container off the terminal before demurrage starts. Stored as a whole number; the form rejects anything with a decimal.
Demurrage per diem: The daily rate that applies once pickup free time runs out and the box is still on the terminal. Entered in dollars, displayed as US currency.
Detention free days: Whole days you may keep the container outside the terminal before detention starts.
Detention per diem: The daily rate that applies after detention free days are used.
Empty return free days: Whole days to get the empty container back after it is stripped.

Every one of the five is optional. A blank term renders as a dash on the card, and a dash means not recorded, not zero. If your contract genuinely grants no free time, enter 0 in the free-day field so the record is unambiguous. Do not enter 0 in a per-diem field — the minimum accepted rate is $0.01, and a truly absent rate belongs blank.

An agreement holds exactly one set of five numbers for one line over one date window. There is no split by container size, equipment type, port, or terminal, and no way to record a tiered rate that escalates after a few days. If your contract varies along any of those axes, the page cannot express it — record the terms you most often work against and put the rest in the request notes so the history carries the detail.

The line's own published tariff is a separate, Conterminal- managed field and is not shown here. This page only ever shows the terms recorded for your organization.

Requesting a new agreement

Use a new-agreement request when the line has no record at all, or when an existing agreement has ended and a fresh contract period starts. The control is the Request New Agreement button directly under the page header; it expands a form in place.

Choose the steamship line. The Steamship line dropdown starts on Select steamship line and lists every active line Conterminal knows, alphabetically by name. It is required. If the line you need is missing, it is not marked active in the reference data — contact support rather than filing against a near-match.
Enter the terms you have in writing. Fill in only the fields your contract actually states. Free-day fields accept whole numbers from 0 up. Per-diem fields accept dollars and cents, placeholder 150.00, minimum 0.01.
Set the window. Effective from is required. Effective to is optional and, left blank, means the agreement runs indefinitely. Read the warning below before you leave it blank.
Explain it in Request notes. The placeholder asks you to “Explain the source document, contract reference, or requested correction.” Take it literally — a reviewer who cannot tie your numbers to a document has no way to verify them. On a new agreement your notes are copied onto the agreement itself when it is approved, so they become the standing provenance for that record.
Submit. Select Submit New Agreement Request. On success the page reloads with a green banner: “Agreement request submitted. Status is pending review.”

A blank Effective to blocks the next agreement for that line.

An agreement with no end date occupies every date from its start onward, and windows for one line cannot overlap. So a second agreement for the same line — a renewal, a re-rate, a corrected contract period — collides with it no matter what start date you choose. Worse, the collision is not caught when you submit. Your request is accepted, sits at Pending, and fails silently when a reviewer tries to approve it. To file a renewal cleanly, first submit a change request that sets an Effective to on the current agreement, then submit the new agreement starting the day after.

The form is not preserved when submission fails. Every rejection path reloads the page from scratch, so whatever you typed is gone and you retype it. Compose long request notes somewhere else and paste them in.

Requesting a change

To correct or re-rate an existing agreement, use the Request Change button at the bottom of that agreement's own card. It expands the same form with two differences: there is no line selector, because the line is fixed by the agreement you opened, and every field arrives prefilled with the current values. Per-diem rates are converted back to dollars for the form, so a stored rate of 15025 cents shows as 150.25.

Edit only what changed. Leave the prefilled values alone everywhere else. What you submit is the complete proposed state of the agreement, not a diff.
Adjust the window if it moved. Effective from and Effective to are part of the proposal, so a change request is also how you close out an open-ended agreement.
Say what you are correcting. Reference the addendum, amendment, or rate sheet in Request notes.
Submit. Select Submit Change Request. You get the same “Agreement request submitted. Status is pending review.” banner.

Clearing a field erases it on approval.

Approval writes all five terms plus both dates from your proposal straight onto the agreement. There is no merge and no keep-what-was-there rule. If you delete the contents of Detention per diem because it was not part of your amendment, approval sets that rate to blank on the live record. Leave prefilled values in place unless you mean to remove them.

Request notes on a change request are not copied onto the agreement — they stay attached to the request. The notes shown on an agreement card come only from whichever new-agreement request originally created it. If you need the standing note on a card to change, say so in your request notes and ask support to update it.

Only one change request per agreement can be pending at a time. Once you have one in flight, the Request Change button on that card is replaced by an amber note: “A matching pending change request was submitted” with the timestamp. That is deliberate — file a correction to the correction only after the first one is decided.

Who can submit vs view

Access to the page and permission to submit are two separate gates.

Who can open the page: Only an Importer (BCO) tenant workspace. The navigation entry does not appear for any other workspace type, and going to the address directly sends you to the unauthorized page. If you work several workspaces, switch to the BCO one first.
Who can submit requests: Tenant admins and tenant managers. Tenant users and collaborators get the full read-only page — every agreement, every past request, every reviewer note — with no request forms at all.

When you cannot submit, the page tells you so in place of the button: “All BCO members can view agreements. Tenant admins and managers can submit agreement change requests.” The Request Change control is hidden on every card as well, so there is nothing to click and no error to trip over. If you need to file something, send the terms and the source document to a tenant admin in your organization. For the wider rules on who sees what, read why you cannot see a page.

The permission is checked twice — once to decide whether to render the form, and again on the server when the form is submitted. A submission from someone without the role is refused with “Only tenant admins and managers can submit agreement change requests.”

How review works

Every submitted request lands in Pending and Recent Requests at the bottom of the page, newest first, capped at the 50 most recent. Each row shows a Pending, Approved, or Rejected pill, the line, whether it is a New agreement or a Change terms request, when it was submitted and reviewed, the proposed window, the proposed five terms, your request notes, and the reviewer's notes under Review notes:.

Review is done inside Conterminal by a Conterminal administrator, who sees your current terms and your proposed terms side by side and either approves or rejects with notes. Approving a change request rewrites that agreement in place. Approving a new-agreement request creates the agreement, carrying your request notes onto it. Rejecting changes nothing except the request's own status and notes. A request can only be decided once — after that its status is fixed.

Despite the page header's wording about “carrier or platform review,” nothing in this flow contacts your steamship line. Approval means Conterminal accepted your evidence and updated your record; it is not the line agreeing to anything. Negotiate with the line through your normal channel, then record the outcome here.

You are not notified when a decision is made. No email or alert is sent on approval or rejection, so check the page. A decided request keeps showing the terms that were proposed, not what is live today — after an approval, read the agreement card above to confirm the record actually says what you expect.

Troubleshooting

“A matching pending agreement request already exists.”

You already have an undecided request covering the same thing. For a change request that means another pending change on the same agreement — the card should already be showing the amber pending note instead of the button, so reload the page. For a new-agreement request it means a pending request for the same steamship line with the same Effective from date, which nothing on the page warns you about beforehand. Scroll to Pending and Recent Requests, find the earlier one, and either wait for it to be decided or ask support to reject it.

“Effective to date must be on or after the effective from date.”

The end of the window is earlier than its start. Check both date fields — this usually means a year was typed wrong, or the dates were entered in the wrong boxes. Effective to may also simply be left empty for an open-ended agreement.

“Effective from date is required.”

The start date is missing or is not a complete date. Every request needs a start date, including a change request that is only re-rating an existing agreement — the prefilled value has to survive your edit.

“Per diem rates must be positive dollar amounts.”

A per-diem field holds something the form cannot read as dollars and cents. Enter digits only, with at most two decimal places: 150 and 150.25 are both accepted; $150, 1,500, 150.005 and 0 are not. The minimum is $0.01. If the contract has no such rate, clear the field instead of entering zero. Rates are entered in dollars and stored internally in cents, which is why 150.25 comes back as 150.25 and never as 15025.

“Free day values must be whole numbers greater than or equal to zero.”

A free-day field contains a decimal, a negative number, or stray text. Half days cannot be recorded. Round to the whole day your contract states and note the detail in Request notes.

“Choose a steamship line for the new agreement request.” or “Selected steamship line was not found.”

The dropdown was left on Select steamship line, or the line chosen is no longer marked active in Conterminal's reference data. Reload the page and pick again; if the line is genuinely missing from the list, contact support to have it activated rather than filing against a similar name.

“Choose an existing agreement to change.”

The change request lost its link to the agreement it belongs to, usually because the page had been open a long time and the agreement was rewritten or removed in between. Reload the page and reopen Request Change on the current card.

“Only tenant admins and managers can submit agreement change requests.”

Your workspace role is tenant user or collaborator. This is a permission, not a bug — a tenant admin in your organization has to submit on your behalf.

“Could not submit the agreement request. Try again.”

The save itself failed rather than your input being rejected. Retry once. If it repeats, send support the steamship line, the window, and the approximate time you tried, so the failure can be found in the logs.

The error banner reopens the wrong form

When a submission is rejected, the page reopens the Request New Agreement form at the top even if the failure came from a Request Change form further down the page. Read the red banner, then scroll back to the agreement card you were actually working on and open Request Change again. Your entries are not preserved either way.

My request has sat at Pending for a long time

One cause is worth ruling out yourself: a proposed window that overlaps an existing agreement for the same line cannot be approved, because one line can hold only one agreement per date. Submission does not check this, so an unapprovable request looks identical to one merely waiting. Compare your proposed dates against the other cards for that line — an agreement with no Effective to covers everything from its start onward — and if they collide, file a change request to close the old window first.

The green “submitted” banner keeps coming back

The success and error banners are driven by the address of the page, so reloading or revisiting a page you reached by submitting shows the same banner again. Nothing was submitted twice. Open Steamship Line Agreements fresh from the navigation to clear it, and confirm against Pending and Recent Requests.

An agreement I changed still shows the old numbers

Submitting a request never changes the agreement — only an approval does. Check the request row's status pill. If it says Approved and the card above still disagrees, reload; if it still disagrees after that, send support the steamship line and the review timestamp.

The page will not open at all

Steamship Line Agreements exists only for Importer (BCO) workspaces. From any other workspace the navigation entry is absent and the address redirects to the unauthorized page. Switch workspaces first if you hold more than one.

Contact

Support can reject a stuck pending request, activate a missing steamship line, or correct a record that was approved with the wrong numbers. None of those are self-service. When something on this page is wrong rather than merely out of date, say which agreement and what the source document states — the terms themselves are only as good as the contract they were copied from. If you also watch per-diem exposure day to day, see at-risk and per-diem watch, which is a separate surface from this record.