How to check whether your detention invoice is correct: a practical guide

Before you pay your next D&D invoice, give it five minutes. Most of the errors that cost cargo owners money are visible without a lawyer or specialized software — you just need to know what to look for.

1. Find your contract's free time clause

Every carrier contract specifies how many days a container can sit before extra charges apply — usually 4 to 7 days. Check whether it differs for import and export.

2. Compare against the invoice's calculation

Subtract the discharge date from the return date to get total days. Subtract your contractual free time. Multiply by the daily rate. Compare to the invoiced amount. If the numbers differ by more than a few euros, it's worth asking why.

3. Check whether weekends are counted correctly

If your contract says "working days" and the invoice counts weekends as chargeable — that's a direct basis for dispute.

4. Look for force majeure circumstances

If the container was delayed by port congestion or a strike, documented congestion is a negotiating argument even where it isn't an automatic right.

5. Check the invoice's formal completeness

Does it include the container number, B/L number, a clear period, and the applied rate as a separate line? Missing information correlates with a higher error rate.

When a professional review is worth it

Checking one invoice by hand takes about 15-20 minutes. If you handle dozens of containers a month, that's disproportionately expensive per invoice — but the cumulative effect over a year is often thousands of euros. Systematic, automated checking across all invoices at once, rather than one at a time, is what changes the economics.