Manifest - Definition & Importance
What is Manifest?
Manifest is a transport document that has the details of the bills issued by the carrier through a ship or an air-craft. A manifest has details like consigner, consignee, number, origin, destination, value which is furnished to the custom authorities. In case of passengers it list their names, port of boarding and de-boarding, which is in turn furnished to the immigration authorities.
Shipping manifest is a document containing the detailed list of the crew, cargo, passengers etc. on a ship or aircraft for the use of customs department or other officials. Such a list that is solely used to identify the cargo is called a cargo manifest. This document is used by the owners of cargo to check that the cargo that had boarded the ship reaches the destination in full quantity.
Importance of Manifest
Cargo manifest can also be used as a Bill of lading which serves the purpose of being a legal document certifying the title of goods at a particular point of time. Bill of lading generally carries the same information so sometimes the same document serves the both purposes of being a cargo manifest as well as the bill of lading. However, if many companies are having their cargo on the ship then they will have a separate bill of lading for their respective goods whereas the document will contain the list of cargos of all the companies. In the case of presence of the dangerous goods on the ship, they will also have to have a separate Dangerous Cargo Manifest. The main difference between bill of lading & cargo manifest is that while bill of lading does the purpose of being a legal document, cargo document is more about physical aspects of the cargo like weight, quantity, size etc. The document is finally viewed by the customs office to verify the bill of ladings of all the companies whose cargo is on board.
Hence, this concludes the definition of Manifest along with its overview.
This article has been researched & authored by the Business Concepts Team. It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.
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