Products and Parties

Two things repeat across your documents: the goods you trade and the companies you trade with. CargoLint remembers both so you classify and type them once instead of every time. They follow opposite philosophies, on purpose.

Products: a curated catalog

A product is an item you trade, scoped to the shipper that supplies it, with an optional product code (SKU) and HS code. Together they form your catalog.

The catalog is curated - a product enters it only when you choose: you accept the “add to catalog” prompt while reviewing a line item, add one by hand, or import a spreadsheet. Nothing is added behind your back.

It pays off during review. CargoLint matches each line item to the catalog by shipper plus code or description; a catalogued product brings its saved HS code with it, a differing code prompts you to update the catalog, and an unknown product prompts you to add it. Classify a product once and every future shipment reuses that classification.

The reason for curation is trust: a clean catalog is a reliable classification source. If every line from every document were added automatically, the catalog would fill with noise and one-offs, and you could no longer trust a match.

Parties: a learned set

A party is a company on your documents - a shipper (exporter) or consignee (importer) - stored as a name, address, and tax ID.

Parties are learned - they save themselves. When you approve a document, CargoLint stores its shipper (from the Vendor or Exporter) and its consignee (from the Customer), matching by company and address so it never duplicates one already on file. You can also add a party by hand before its first document arrives.

A party isn’t tied to one role. The same company can be the shipper on one shipment and the consignee on another, so the Shipper and Consignee roles accumulate - a company seen in both ends up tagged with both. Roles record how a company has been used, not a rule about how it can be used.

Parties pay off during review too: the shipper and consignee fields recall them by name or address, and near-duplicate warnings (same address, different company; same company, different address) keep the set clean.

Curated vs learned - why the difference

The two models reflect what each kind of data is for:

• A product catalog is valuable when it’s deliberate and clean - a trusted answer to “how do we classify this?” So you curate it.
• A party list is valuable when it’s complete - every company you actually deal with, on file and ready to recall. So it learns from the documents you approve.

Put simply: the catalog is something you build; your parties build themselves.

How they work together

Products are scoped to a shipper, and a shipper is a party - so the shipper field when you add a product draws from the same companies CargoLint already knows. And both compound: the more documents you process, the more recall fills in automatically and the less you correct by hand.

What’s next

• Managing the Product Catalog - Add, import, and edit products
• Managing Parties - Maintain shippers and consignees and filter by role
• How to Review Documents - Where products and parties are recalled and saved
• How to Manage HS Codes - Find the classifications the catalog stores