a. Bookings should be made by the person or company who is in control of the vehicle that is dropping off or picking up freight. This is because the person or company controlling the vehicle will be the first one to know what the vehicle registration is, and what the expected time of arrival (ETA) is, both of which are pieces of information that are required in order to make a booking.

b. It is possible for anyone to make a booking, including importers/exporters, freight forwarders and truck drivers. However, in most cases the person or company who is in control of the arriving vehicle is best to make the booking for maximum efficiency.

To open an account with Inbound, go to www.inboundconnect.com, click on ‘Register for the Inbound Community’ (in the top right hand corner) and fill in the required information. An email will be sent to you once you have registered in order to verify your email address. Once this is done, you will receive another email containing your password. You can then use your email address and password to login. The Inbound system will prompt you to change your password on your first login for security purposes.

No, opening an account is free of charge.

There are two ways to make an Inbound booking:

Account (regular) user – If you have an account, you can make bookings by going to www.inboundconnect.com. Simply login, then click on the ‘Create Booking’ button and follow the prompts.

One-off (guest) user – If you do not have an account, you can make bookings by going to www.inboundconnect.com. Simply click the blue ‘One Off Bookings’ button and follow the prompts. There is also a guide to making guest bookings available here.

Yes. To make multiple bookings, simply click ‘Add Timeslot’ after you finish your first booking and another booking will appear below. There is also a ‘Copy from above’ button which can be used to populate the same data from the previous booking into the new booking, which means you do not have to type all the common data in a second or subsequent time. Once you have completed all your bookings, simply press the ‘Save’ button and all the bookings will be saved at the same time.

Account (regular) user – If you have an account, you can edit bookings by clicking on ‘Bookings’ and then ‘My Bookings’ on the left-hand side menu. You can then find the booking you wish to edit, right click ‘Edit Booking’, make the changes you wish to make and press ‘Edit’. This will save you changes. Please be aware that some facilities have cut-off times for editing bookings prior to the timeslot window opening. If you are unable to edit your booking, please call Inbound Support on 1300 803 873 or email [email protected]

One-off (guest) user – If you do not have an account, an email will be sent to your nominated email address at the time you make your booking. On that email is a green ‘Edit’ button. Should you wish to edit your one-off booking, please press this button, then make your changes and press ‘Edit’ to confirm and save. Please be aware that some facilities have cut-off times for editing bookings prior to the timeslot window opening. If you are unable to edit your booking, please call Inbound Support on 1300 803 873 or email [email protected]

There are two ways to cancel an Inbound booking:

Account (regular) user – If you have an account, you can cancel bookings by clicking on ‘Bookings’ and then ‘My Bookings’ on the left-hand side menu. You can then find the booking you wish to cancel and right click ‘Cancel Booking’. Please be aware that some facilities have cut-off times for cancelling bookings prior to the timeslot window opening. If you are unable to cancel your booking, please call Inbound Support on 1300 803 873 or email [email protected]

One-off (guest) user – If you do not have an account and you wish to cancel a one-off booking, please contact Inbound Support on 1300 803 873 or email [email protected]

A facility has the ability to set a minimum notice period for you to be able to cancel a booking without charge. If you try and cancel a booking after this minimum notice period has passed, the system will warn you that you may not get a refund for cancelling that booking. If you cancel a booking before the minimum notice period you will be refunded for your booking.

Yes. If a facility is unable to service a particular booking, they may cancel it. If this occurs, you will receive an automated email from Inbound with the details of which booking has been cancelled and why. The facility will provide a reason for each cancellation on that email. Typical examples of circumstances where this may occur include incorrect documents being uploaded to a booking, or freight not being able to fit on the vehicle that has arrived to pick it up.

Inbound allows you to attach required documents to each booking. These documents are then visible to the facility and can be used to prepare for the arrival of your vehicle well ahead of time. The documents that you should attach to your booking should be the same ones that the driver would normally take in paper form to the facility. For example, for seafreight imports the import delivery order(s), seafreight exports the interim receipt, airfreight imports the house air waybill and airfreight exports the SLI.

There are two ways to attach documents to an Inbound booking:

Drag and Drop – simply left click on the document you want to attach, drag the document into the Attachments box in your booking, and drop the document by releasing the left click. Once the document has been attached, a dropdown field called ‘Attachment Type’ will appear. Please choose what type of document you have attached from the dropdown list and the attachment is complete.

Browse – if you have saved the document you wish to attach, simply click the ‘Browse’ button, choose the document you wish to attach, and double click on it to attach it. Once the document has been attached, a dropdown field called ‘Attachment Type’ will appear. Please choose what type of document you have attached from the dropdown list and the attachment is complete.

Yes. You will require one booking for each consignment. A consignment is one ‘line of cargo’ (e.g. one lowest house bill of lading or lowest house air waybill). This is to allow the facility to be prepared to load or unload the exact freight your vehicle is transporting. One vehicle can make an unlimited number of bookings for each trip (e.g. one vehicle can pick up five consignments on one trip, but will require five bookings to do so).

Yes. When you type information into your booking (such as container number, house bill of lading number or house airway bill number), Inbound will check certain information with the facility automatically. For example, when you type in a container number, Inbound will confirm that the container has been unloaded and is available to be picked up before allowing the booking to be completed. This will help transport carriers to avoid sending vehicles to facilities who then cannot be serviced, thereby saving unnecessary costs.

The most common reasons that a booking will not save are –

Not all mandatory fields are filled in – check that you have filled in all mandatory fields

No attachment has been uploaded – check that you have attached the required document(s) in the Attachments box

‘Assign Timeslot’ button not pressed – check that the ‘Assign Timeslot’ button has been pressed to confirm the time your vehicle will arrive – the button should be green when pressed and red if not.

Booking not validated – if the system is unable to validate the information (for example, if the container your freight is in is not yet unpacked) then you will see an error message and the booking cannot be saved.

If you have checked all of the above and are still unable to save your booking, please call Inbound Support on 1300 803 873 or email [email protected]

If the facility you are making a booking for charges a booking fee, you will need to have credit in your Inbound account in order to make that booking. You will know if a booking fee is being charged or not because the booking fee will appear at the time you are making your booking. You can also refer to the Site Access Rules (SAR) for that facility under the ‘My Community’ tab – the SAR contains booking fee information.

The full guide on how to make payments and manage your Inbound account can be found by clicking “HowToPay” (link to the how to page document). If you have any questions about the payments or account management process, please call Inbound Support in 1300 803 873 or email [email protected]

For account holders – booking fees are deducted from your Inbound account at the time the booking is saved.

For one-off (guest) bookings – the booking fee will need to be paid by credit card at the time the booking is saved (the system will prompt you to do this).

For account holders – you can receive tax invoices in one of two ways:

Automatically – every Monday morning, Inbound will automatically generate a tax invoice for all of your chargeable bookings for the previous week. This tax invoice will be sent to the email address of the administrator of your account. As well, the tax invoice for each week is available by going to the ‘Finance’ tab on the left-hand side menu, and clicking on ‘Tax Invoices’. The tax invoice contains a summary on the first page, with all the details of every chargeable booking on subsequent pages.

Manually – if you would like to generate a tax invoice for a particular booking or group of bookings, you can do so. To do this, go to the ‘Finance’ tab on the left-hand side menu, and click on ‘Tax Invoices’. At the top of the screen, you will see a prompt that reads ‘You have x bookings awaiting invoicing’ and a ‘Generate Tax Invoice’ button in blue. Simply click the ‘Generate Tax Invoice’ button and then select the bookings you would like to generate a tax invoice for. Please note that any bookings you generate a tax invoice for manually will not appear on your automatically generated weekly tax invoice – a booking will only ever appear on one tax invoice.

For one-off (guest) bookings – you will receive a tax invoice each time you make a booking. The tax invoice will be sent to your nominated email address at the time the booking is completed (that is, when the vehicle arrives at the facility and is processed).

Inbound Technologies Pty Ltd
245 St Kilda Road
St Kilda, VIC, 3182
ABN 70 630 872 641