A depot has no consignee, no Goods Declaration and usually no examination. It has boxes belonging to other people, a gate that has to prove their condition, and principals who want a stock report that matches their own system. STOS is container depot management software built around exactly that.
Terminal software usually assumes a consignment: a Bill of Lading, a declaration, a consignee waiting for delivery. Strip all of that away and what is left is a container, its condition, whose it is, and how long it has been standing on your ground. That changes what the system has to be good at.
You are holding equipment for shipping lines, leasing companies and their agents. They judge you on whether their stock figure matches yours, whether the box they were promised is actually available in the size and type they asked for, and whether the movement reached their system without a phone call.
Damage disputes are settled by what was written down when custody changed hands, and by nothing else. If the condition at in-gate and out-gate is captured properly, in the same transaction as the gate event, the argument does not happen. If it is on a pad in a drawer, it always does.
Not per consignment. Revenue is a large number of small, repetitive events, which is exactly the kind of revenue that quietly disappears when the gate and the invoice are two different systems and somebody has to type the day's movements in twice.
An Equipment Interchange Receipt records a container's identity and condition at the moment responsibility passes. A depot generates them all day in both directions, so equipment interchange receipt software is not a feature of the gate, it is the gate.
An importer's transporter arrives with a box that has just been stripped, or a haulier brings one back off an inland run.
An exporter's transporter arrives to collect a box for stuffing, against a release from the line.
Where a depot has its own interchange layout, damage code set or survey step, STOS supports workflow customisation for niche and specialised operations rather than forcing the yard to work the software's way.
A shared depot is the hardest yard to run honestly. Boxes belonging to four principals sit in the same rows, get shuffled to reach each other, and every one of those unproductive moves is a chance for the stock figure to drift away from reality.
Areas are laid out by type before live tracking is switched on, so grounding puts a box somewhere deliberate instead of wherever there was a gap.
Grounding, grounding status, container location and return to yard give the supervisor the current position rather than this morning's position.
Empty container tracking and repositioning covers movement within the yard and back out to where the equipment is actually needed.
Real-time equipment location tracking and automated resource management for lifting work, so a reach stacker is not idle at one end while a queue builds at the other.
Every depot relationship eventually comes down to a reconciliation meeting. Their system says one number, yours says another, and whoever cannot show the movement behind the difference loses. STOS answers that by making the movement the source of both the stock figure and the message.
CODECO is the standard EDI message telling a shipping line a container was gated in or out, and it is generated from the gate event itself. Alongside it STOS exchanges EDI with Pakistan Customs, PCS PSW, Maersk, Hapag Lloyd and weighbridge systems. Each partner has an integration status panel, failed messages are queued for retry, and the message log lets the documentation officer check before resending rather than firing a duplicate at a line.
For the reporting the lines ask for on top of the messaging, the analytics module handles customisable reports, KPI monitoring on gate events, truck movements and inventory, exports in XML, CSV and PDF, and access control per report. Reports can be scheduled or produced on demand, and management gets automated email alerts.
Depot revenue is thousands of small charges. It only adds up if each one is created by the event that earned it.
A depot in Karachi or Port Qasim sets up its own tariff heads for lifting and storage work, and STOS bills against them. Because the financial module captures billable operations from the operational record, the gap between what the yard did and what the invoice says closes by design rather than by audit.
The cashier side covers cheque receipt, amounts received, refunds, credit allowed and settlement, and the accountant keeps vouchers, receivables, payables, chart of account, ledgers and year closure in the same platform. Management sees ageing, daily sales and collection reports without waiting for anyone to build a spreadsheet.
And because roles and permissions are unlimited and granular, the separation holds: the gate records movements, finance owns rates, and nobody quietly does both.
If you are shortlisting the best container depot software for 2026, judge it on the five things a depot actually lives or dies by, and ask to see each one on a live screen rather than a slide.
OCR and RFID identification, barriers and driver displays. If a human still types the container number, the data downstream is only as good as their afternoon.
The condition record has to be part of the gate transaction in both directions, not a separate form filled in later from memory.
Yard areas, grounding, grounding status and container location good enough to produce a per-principal position on demand.
CODECO and customs EDI generated from the event, with status panels, retry queues and a message log so nothing silently goes unreported.
The fifth is commercial, not technical: tariffs, waivers and settlement controlled by finance, with roles and permissions keeping the gate out of the rate card. For a wider comparison of platforms, see Best TOS 2026.
Empty container yard management software runs a depot whose stock is containers rather than cargo. It has to record every box arriving and leaving with its condition, keep each shipping line's stock separate and countable inside a shared yard, release the right size and type against a booking, report movements back to the line, and bill lifts and storage per principal. STOS by Ciphertronix does this with its gate, cargo, yard, financial and analytics modules, and reports movements by EDI including CODECO.
An Equipment Interchange Receipt is the record of a container's identity and condition at the moment custody changes hands, at the depot gate in either direction. In STOS this is one movement rather than three: the gate event is captured with automated vehicle and container identification using OCR and RFID, the condition is recorded through the digital inspection and examination workflow, and the receipt and gate pass are generated from that same record. STOS supports workflow customisation, so the interchange record and its inspection fields can be set up to match what your principals accept.
Yes. STOS gate operations are designed to be paperless: OCR and RFID identification instead of a manual read, automated security barriers and access control, and information displays that tell the driver where to go. The interchange record and gate pass are produced from the system rather than written on a pad, the movement is reported to the line by CODECO, and reports over those movements export as XML, CSV or PDF.
By making the yard itself part of the data. In STOS yard areas are defined before live tracking is enabled, grounding records where each box actually sits, and grounding status, container location and return to yard keep that picture current. Empty container tracking and repositioning covers movement between areas, so stock can be counted and reported per principal instead of estimated by walking the rows.
Through configurable tariffs rather than hard-coded charges. STOS has flexible tariff and rate management with tariff heads, tariff charges, agent tariff, storage tariff, sales tax and exchange rate, plus multi-currency billing and invoicing and capture of all billable operations. A depot sets up its own heads for lifts, storage and services, and every billable event comes from a movement the system already recorded.
Five things. A gate that identifies the box automatically rather than depending on a clerk reading a number. A condition record captured at interchange, in both directions, in the same transaction as the gate event. Yard data good enough to produce a stock position per principal on demand. Automatic EDI reporting to the lines, with retry queues and a message log so failures are visible. And tariffs, waivers and settlement that finance controls, with roles and permissions keeping the gate out of the rate card.
Plenty of operators in Karachi run a depot alongside a bonded terminal, or feed an inland facility up-country. STOS covers all three from the same platform.
Bonded facilities outside the Karachi and Port Qasim perimeter, running CFS de-stuffing, examination, storage and delivery.
Off-dock softwareInland container depots clearing cargo at their own customs station and consolidating exports where the factories are.
Dry port softwareCargo, gate, shed and examinations, financial and analytics modules, EDI integration and deployment on cloud or on-premises.
Explore STOSSee the gate, the interchange record, the yard position and the invoice as one movement, on your own container numbers.