How It Works?

1. Sign Up

Companies who want to appoint surveyors can sign up as an “Operator” to iMarS platform. The very first person to sign up from your company is the “Designated Person” for your company. After signing up and logging in, Designated Person will need to verify his email address and phone number and will have to upload certain documents related to your company to verify the company account. It is important that the very first person to sign up has access to your company’s records. Once the account is verified, the “Designated Person” will have full access to iMarS menus and functions.

2. Set up your team of Operators

As the Designated Person for your company, once your account is approved by iMarS, you can add operators that work with you in your company in “Operators” menu by adding their email addresses. The added operators will receive an email notification and need to verify their email and phone number. They will then be automatically added to your account and will have access to all the menus, except for “Operators” menu. Designated person is the only person who has the authority to add or remove operators from your company.

3. Create Vessel Portfolio

In “Vessels” menu, any operator in your company can enter the vessel details for the vessels that you manage. The vessel information added by one of the operators will be available in the “Vessels” menu to all operators within your company. You can enter a different address than your company address for the address you want to be on the invoice for a particular vessel, and also you can enter additional email addresses you want the invoices to be sent for the vessel you add. Adding a vessel is a onetime task, and the details can be edited anytime later.

4. Appoint a Surveyor

Appointing a surveyor is so simple in iMarS. By selecting a port, start and end dates for the survey, the vessel, and survey type - you search for available surveyors and survey companies for that port who conduct the survey type you selected at that port. You find out the cost (including cost for transportation if there is any), rating and reviews of surveyors, surveyor’s “About me” details, job acceptance rates, and average response times to survey requests. You can sort the search results by price, rating, or job acceptance rate.

You select a “Primary” surveyor, and as an option, you may select up to two “Substitute” surveyors for your survey. You are then asked to add survey instructions and upload a suvey instructions document. Finally, you select the “Agent” at the port for the surveyor to get the most up to date embarkation information for the vessel. 

Your survey request will be initially sent to your Primary selection only. The Primary selection has 8 hours to respond to your request. If your Primary selection declines the request or does not respond within 8 hours, the request will be sent to your Substitute 1. And similarly, if the Substitute 1 declines or does not respond within 8 hours, the request will be sent to your Substitute 2 selection. At the end of 24 hours (the latest), your request will be finalized, either will be accepted by one of the surveyors you selected or will be cancelled if all your selections decline the request.   

Once the survey request is accepted by a surveyor, the survey is listed in your “Upcoming” surveys tab. You will now be able to communicate with the surveyor through the messaging interface of iMarS.

5. Review Report and Rate Surveyor

The surveyor you appointed may update the survey date based on the latest information on the vessel. Once the survey is conducted, the surveyor uploads the survey report in iMarS, and you get a notification that the report is submitted and ready for your review. You have three days to accept the report, or it will automatically be accepted three days after it is submitted.

It is very important that you rate and write a review for the surveyor after each survey conducted. In a short period of time, this will allow surveyors to build reputation and you will be able to make better informed selections for your survey needs in the future.

6. Invoicing  

Once the report is accepted, an automatic invoice is generated and sent to the invoice email addresses you entered for your vessel and the operator. You can view and download the survey report and the invoice anytime by checking the survey details in your account.

The invoice is due one month after the report is accepted. On behalf of the surveyors and survey companies, iMarS will collect the funds for all the invoices that are addressed to you. Once the invoices are paid, corresponding surveyors account balances are updated by iMarS, and iMarS handles transferring the survey funds to the surveyors. This makes it so much easier on your side for following up and paying invoices from multiple surveyors and survey companies from various locations.  

By using iMarS platform, you can pay multiple invoices at once to iMarS for surveys that are conducted by many different surveyors around the globe. This significantly reduces your wire transfer costs, and saves you time for managing invoices. You will be able to see unpaid and paid surveys list in your “Past” surveys list and manage pending payments easily in one place. After iMarS receives a payment for a survey or surveys from you, they are marked as “paid” in iMarS database, and the survey(s) will be shown as “paid” in your account.

7. Survey’s Life Cycle

The survey life cycle begins when you submit your survey request, and it is listed in your “Pending” surveys tab.

If a surveyor accepts the request, the survey is moved to “Upcoming” surveys tab.

The surveys where a report is submitted in the last three days are in “Report Submitted” surveys tab.

Once the report is accepted (or three days go by), the invoice is generated due payment in 30 days, and the survey is listed under “Unpaid” surveys tab.

When you transfer funds to pay the invoice to iMarS, iMarS marks the survey as paid, and the survey is listed under “Paid” surveys tab. This is the end of the lifecycle of a typical survey.

If a survey is cancelled by the operator of surveyor when it is in upcoming status, or all surveyors you selected decline your survey request, these surveys are cancelled and listed under “Cancelled” surveys tab.

By clicking on each tab, you will easily see the list of all the surveys in separate tabs based on their status, and filter by the operator to see the surveys appointed by a certain operator in your company.