A disputes desk that only reports "we recovered USD 38,000 this quarter" is leaving most of its value on the table. The same tracker that produced that number can produce three reports, for three audiences, each of which changes a decision.
For the shipper: billed, disputed, recovered, by carrier and cause
The key-account manager's QBR question is "why did we pay so much D&D?" The answer is a table: by carrier, how much was invoiced, how much the desk disputed, how much came back, and the top causes. It turns a complaint about the forwarder into a shared view of the carriers — and it shows the desk's work.
For procurement: which terms generate disputes
If one carrier's over-billing is 60 % tariff-rating, the contract reference is not reaching their billing system. If one lane's detention is driven by rolls at transshipment, that is a service-reliability point for the next tender. If holiday-counting is the top cause at one port, the free-time clause should say "working days, port calendar" explicitly. Twelve months of dispute causes is the strongest evidence a procurement team can bring to a renewal, and it is a by-product.
For finance: the accrual
Open disputes are an asset of uncertain value. Finance needs them by status with a recovery assumption: historically, tariff-rating disputes recover at 85 %, holiday disputes at 70 %, goodwill requests at 20 %. The tracker carries the history; the accrual schedule applies it.
Why the tracker has to be the source
All three reports are only as good as the tracker's cause field. That is why D&D Pilot assigns a cause at pre-screen and carries it through to credit — not as a free-text note a clerk fills in later, but as a classification from the clause check, consistent across branches and months.