Working With Your Broker on the Same Shipment

You’re a forwarder with a container bound for the United States, and the customs broker handling the entry uses CargoLint too. Right now you email them PDFs, they email back questions, and a corrected invoice starts another round of attachments. Here’s how the two of you can look at the same shipment instead.

“My broker uses CargoLint too. Can we look at the same file without emailing PDFs back and forth?”

Yes, once your organizations are partners. A partnership links two CargoLint organizations so either one can share a shipment with the other. Your broker opens the shipment in their own account, read-only, while it stays in yours.

Owners and Admins add partners and share shipments. Every member on both sides can open what partners share with their organization. See Managing Your Team.

“How do I ask them?”

Open Partners in the sidebar and click Add partner. Enter the work email of someone at the broker and, optionally, the company name as you know them, then click Send request. There is no directory of companies to browse: you reach the broker through an address you already have. Your organization can send up to 20 requests a day.

The broker receives an email with a link. Nothing is shared until an Owner or Admin there accepts, from that link or under Requests waiting for your answer on their own Partners page. The link expires after 14 days. Until then your request waits under Requests you sent, where Cancel request withdraws it.

If the broker has already asked you, sending them a request makes you partners at once: two organizations asking each other counts as consent from both.

“What if they aren’t on CargoLint yet?”

The same request invites them. The email asks them to create an account with the address you entered, and they accept the partnership in the same step. Under Requests you sent, the request reads “not on CargoLint yet, invited to join”.

“What if they decline?”

Your request shows the date they declined and when you can ask again, 30 days later. They can still send you a request at any time.

“We’re partners. How do I share this shipment?”

Open the shipment and click Share results, which appears once the cross-document checks have run. Under With a partner, choose the broker and click Share. The broker’s Owners and Admins get an email with the shipment’s highlights and a link that opens it in CargoLint after they sign in.

Their whole team finds the shipment on the Partners page under Shared with you, with who shared it, when, how many documents it holds and its status. Each shipment is shared on its own, and the partnership works both ways: the broker can share their shipments with you the same way.

“What does my broker see?”

Your shipment page, marked Read-only: the documents, each opening as its PDF, the Expected Documents card, the Consistency Checklist with its findings, and the coverage line showing what the checks were held against. Both pages are built from the same shipment, so they show the same results. The broker can’t correct a field, declare a fact or mark a checklist row.

Nothing is copied into the broker’s workspace, so a shared shipment adds no documents to their monthly count.

“I corrected the invoice after sharing. Do I send it again?”

No. The broker sees your shipment as it is now, so a correction, or a document you add or replace, shows up the next time they open it. If the checks ran again after you shared, their page notes it and says they’re seeing your current results. If you delete a document, their page notes that it was removed and the checks were re-evaluated without it.

“How do we end it?”

For one shipment, open Share results on it. The dialog lists each partner it’s shared with, when, and how many times they opened it. Stop sharing ends that partner’s access at once.

For everything, either side clicks End partnership on the Partners page. Every shipment shared between the two organizations, in both directions, stops being visible right away. Either side can send a new request later.

Partner requests and answers, and each shipment shared or no longer shared, are recorded in the audit log.

“When is a partner share the wrong tool?”

• Someone without a CargoLint account, or a one-off look: under By email link in the same dialog, send a read-only link that needs no account and expires in 3 days. It shows each document with its Quality score and the cross-document findings, without the Expected Documents card. See Share a Document Without an Account.
• A file to keep: send branded, corrected PDFs, or request the whole shipment as an audit packet through the API. See Branded Paperwork for Your Broker.

“Which plans include partners?”

Every plan, Starter included. See Billing and Plans.

What’s next

• Sharing & Cloning - Partner sharing step by step, beside email links
• Working with Shipments - The shipment page your partner sees
• Managing Your Team - Who can add partners and share shipments
• Data Isolation - How a partner’s view reads one shipment and nothing else