Visits & Dwell
A visit is one stay in the yard: gate-in to gate-out. It is the unit dwell is measured over and the unit billing is built from.
What a Visit Records
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Asset and asset type | What stayed. |
| Customer | The billed party, stamped at gate-in and never rewritten. |
| Gate | The entry gate, so visits can be filtered by gate. |
| Gate-in / gate-out | When the stay started and ended. |
| Dwell | How long it lasted. |
| Reason | How it closed — gate_out, or expired. |
| Seal | Entry seal, exit seal, and whether they matched. |
| Locations | Each location stint within the stay, with its own from/to times. |
| Line items | The billable lines resolved for this visit. |
An asset that moves twice during one stay has three location stints on a single visit — the visit does not restart when the asset moves.
Open vs Closed Visits
Both appear in an asset's visit list, newest first, but they are not the same thing:
- A closed visit is settled. Dwell is final and line items are resolved.
- An open visit is the stay in progress. Its dwell is accrued up to the moment you asked, and it carries no gate-out time and no close reason.
An open visit is marked as open and stamped with the instant it was calculated. If you are reading the data directly, discriminate on that flag rather than assuming a gate-out time exists — the field is genuinely absent while a stay is running.
On screen, an open visit sorts first and shows dwell ticking up.
Closed by Expiry
A visit whose asset never gets a recorded gate-out eventually closes with reason expired rather
than staying open indefinitely.
This is a housekeeping mechanism, not a normal outcome. A regular flow of expired visits means departures are not being recorded at the gate, and the dwell on those visits is an artefact of the expiry rule rather than a measurement of anything. Chase the process, not the number.
Accessorial Line Items
Anything not derived automatically is added as an accessorial — a wash, a repair, a demurrage adjustment, a special handling charge.
Add one from the visit itself: pick a billing code from your catalog, set the quantity, and add a note. It appears on that visit's line items immediately and flows into the next billing report.
Accessorials pick their code directly and never go through the
mapping rules — the person adding it has already decided what it is. Which is
also why an accessorial can never come back UNMAPPED.
Available to Sysadmin, Admin, Dispatch and Gate roles, so the person who saw the work happen can record it.
Reading Dwell Honestly
- Dwell measures the stay, not the billable period. Free days and rounding are applied by your billing rules, not by the dwell figure.
- Dwell on an open visit is a moving number. It is accurate as of when you read it; two reads minutes apart will differ.
- A visit needs a gate-in to exist. An asset that arrived without passing the gate has no visit, so it contributes no dwell and no storage charge. This is the single most common reason a billing report looks light.