From clause to voyage result.

A useful charter-party system should follow the commercial decision: read the agreement, identify the exposure, test it against outside facts, price both sides and show the next action.

1. Read the agreement

Start with a PDF, scan or photograph. CharterWise reads each page, using OCR where the document needs it. It identifies the form automatically.

Choose a commercial screen of the form’s eight load-bearing clauses or a full pass against the complete schedule.

2. Resolve the wording

Printed clauses, amendments and riders stay together, including the printed wording each rider overrides.

The agreement is checked against the clause schedule for its form. Deviations are surfaced with severity and plain-English reasoning. Two agreements can be compared clause by clause.

3. Work the voyage

Freight, cargo quantity, bunkers, port costs, commissions and time sit in an editable working that recalculates as its assumptions change.

What the agreement should be tested against.

1. Cargo intake and deadfreight

Draught, water depth and density, tides, under-keel clearance, terminal limits, stowage factor, moisture and hold geometry. This produces a safe-intake range, quantity shortfall and deadfreight exposure.

2. Laycan and vessel readiness

AIS movements, progress at the previous port, berth prospects, class and PSC records, repairs, dry-dock schedules, bunker availability and document readiness. These inputs give the probability and cost of missing the cancelling date.

3. Route and voyage economics

Route, speed, currents, bunker prices, canal tariffs, war-risk exposure and carbon charges. Together they produce a range for duration, fuel consumption and total voyage cost.

4. Vessel, berth and cargo compatibility

Draught, beam, LOA, air draught, gear, outreach, hatch dimensions, berth restrictions and cargo-specific requirements. The result is a clear view of whether the nominated combination can work and what a failure would cost.

5. Cargo readiness and quality

Production, stockpile and export activity, satellite observations, moisture, contamination and survey evidence. These inputs estimate readiness, expected delay and quality-claim exposure.

6. Counterparty and payment risk

Sanctions, beneficial ownership, corporate filings, litigation, payment history and relevant commodity-price exposure. The result should show whether the fixture can proceed and the expected value of collection risk.

7. Port costs and documentary leakage

Tariffs, disbursement benchmarks, NOR and statement-of-facts timestamps, invoices, notices and settlement history. This shows the expected port cost, recoverability and claims leakage.

The answer.

A generic risk score is not enough. The useful output is a P10, P50 and P90 view of owner TCE and charterer landed freight, the clauses moving that range, the evidence behind each exposure, who bears it and the action or deadline that follows.

GENCON is the starting point. The same method needs to hold across cargo-specific voyage forms, NYPE and Baltime time charters, contracts of affreightment and bespoke riders without flattening them into generic prose.

Grounded and private.

CharterWise uses a locally indexed corpus of BIMCO standard forms and explanatory notes. It checks each agreement against the clause schedule for its form.

The model, OCR and database run on the customer’s hardware. Contract text stays there.