Creating Documents

a3 comes packed full of shipping industry standard documents that you can easily create and modify with the information for your port call.

In this guide, we are going to look at how a document can be created, modified and exported to PDF format from the a3 system.

First Things First

Documents are attached to appointments, so you will need an active appointment in order to follow this guide. If you are creating a cargo document, the appointment will need to have at least 1 cargo associated to it.

Creating a Document

1. Open an appointment and click on the Documentation tab
   
   
   
   
2. Decide if you want to create a Vessel Document or a Cargo Document (you can find out more about the different types of documents available on a3 in this article)
   
   
3. Click the Create button in the relevant document section to see a list of the available documents, then click on a document name to begin the creation process
   
   
   
   
4. If the document you are creating is able to pull in data from an existing Bill of Lading document, you will be given the option to select this first
   
   
   
   
5. The next step is the document edit screen where you can set various options for how your document will display, as well as make changes to the document content. Fields will be pre-populated with data that you have added to the appointment where available, but you can easily modify or add data as required
   
   
   
   
6. Once you've finished editing your document, click the Save button to be taken to a summary page where you can review the content of your document before it is downloaded. At the top-right of this page, you will see the following options:
   
   Click on the Modify button to make further changes to the document, or click the PDF button to download the document as a PDF. If you no longer need the document, you can Delete it here too.

And that's all there is to it - you've created your first document!

Some Handy Shortcuts

We know that documentation can be a long-winded process, so we've built several features in a3 to reduce the burden that documents can cause:

• Document Cloning
  Some documents can be cloned to the same or another appointment in your a3 system - to do this, go to the Documentation tab of the appointment you would like to clone the document from and hover over the document in the list - when you see this icon, it means the document can be cloned:
  
  Click the icon to open the Clone Document window and choose the appointment that you would like to clone this document to. If the document is a Cargo Document, select the cargo that you want to copy the document to.
  
  
• Copy Fields to Other Documents
  Imagine you have multiple Bill of Lading documents already set up, and then you realise that there is a mistake which needs amending on each document - there are surely better uses for your time than editing each document manually? With a3 you can copy the value of a document field to other versions of the same document on an appointment. To do this, edit a document and click the pencil icon that appears next to any field:
  
  You can then tick the other versions of this document on that appointment in order to apply the same value to them.