Inquiry to invoice. One record.
One ocean job can involve a customer, an overseas agent, a carrier, a trucker, a customs broker and a terminal. Freight Operations puts the whole job on one Odoo record — quote, operation, fees, invoice and vendor bills — so the margin is visible while you can still act on it.
Trusted by GES Logistics and Sea Sky Services
The problem
Forwarders rarely lose money on the jobs they know are thin.
They lose it on the fee that was never billed, the agent invoice that landed after the file closed, and the quotation priced off a stale tariff. Seven patterns we find in almost every operation running on spreadsheets and a standalone accounts package.
Rates live in inboxes and spreadsheet tabs, so quotations go out slowly — and sometimes off last season's buy rate.
Sales, pricing, operations and finance each keep their own copy of the file. When the customer asks where the cargo is, somebody reconstructs the answer.
Gross profit is worked out after the job closes. By then the rate has been honored and the fee can't be recovered.
Detention, storage, amendment fees and agent commission are agreed in email and forgotten at billing time. Each one is pure lost revenue.
A bill of lading retyped from a spreadsheet is a claim waiting to happen — wrong party, wrong release term, or a missed filing deadline.
Operational data is exported and re-keyed into a separate ledger. Month-end is slow, and multi-currency jobs become an argument.
Which lane earns? Which agent underperforms? Answering takes a week — and the answer is then disputed.
The core
Every job, whatever the mode, through the same tracked sequence.
Each step hands its data to the next, so nothing is entered twice and nothing is lost between desks.
Rate requests go to the agents and carriers on the lane; replies land on the job.
Printed from quoted buy and sell figures. Win, loss and the reason are recorded.
Pricing hands over to operations with eleven milestones and checklists.
Selling and buying lines accumulate, estimated beside actual.
Customer invoice and vendor bills post straight into Odoo Accounting.
Parties, route, cargo, equipment, dates and rates on one record — with a full audit trail and locking once the commercial basis is agreed.
Ocean, air, road, rail, express and multimodal. FCL, LCL, break-bulk, RORO, FTL and LTL — on import, export or cross-trade.
Rate requests leave from the job itself, responses come back onto the same record, and the customer quotation prints from them.
Detention, storage and commission are captured as billable lines on the job — not remembered from email.
Eleven milestones from booking through export clearance, departure, discharge and import clearance to job closure.
Ports, carriers, commodities, equipment and incoterms as master data, with role-based access for sales, pricing and operations.
Where it pays for itself
Margin on every job, while you can still act on it.
Each job carries a profit and loss view: estimated cost and revenue beside actual, with gross profit on both. The gap between them is where forwarding margin is won or lost.
The customer invoice is raised from the job's billable lines; the agent's bill is recorded against the same job. The margin is visible immediately.
Buy in one currency, sell in another, report in a third. Branches keep their own ledger; management reporting consolidates across them.
Job profit and loss: estimated cost beside estimated revenue, before a single invoice is raised.
How it's packaged
One core. Add-ons you switch on when the business needs them.
Every add-on extends the same job record, so the core is required. Each add-on is licensed separately — you pay only for the parts of the business you actually run.
Inquiry, quotation, shipment / job, fees and costing, customer invoice and vendor bills, and operational milestones. Runs on Odoo Enterprise, fully bilingual in Arabic and English.
Group house shipments into one master console — with manifests, cut-offs, and margin across the whole console.
For NVOCCs, consolidators and LCL / groupage.
Pipeline, campaigns and sales targets, plus one party structure for customers, agents, brokers and carriers.
For a real sales desk and an agent network.
One branch sells the job, another operates it — mirrored, billed between entities, no re-keying.
For groups with several branches or entities.
Volume, trade-lane and vendor dashboards, job profitability at several depths, and scheduled reports.
For management that wants an answer today.
Clearance as a first-class job — inside a shipment or standalone — with duty and clearance cost captured for billing.
For customs brokers and in-house clearance.
Vehicles, plates, drivers and multi-stop delivery, with cartage advice and scheduled-vs-actual dates.
For own fleets or subcontracted road legs.
House and master B/Ls and air waybills, eighteen release terms, arrival notices, manifest and security-filing extracts.
For anyone issuing their own B/Ls or AWBs.
Customer and carrier agreements with validity dates, per-equipment rate bands and surcharge rules.
For forwarders quoting off contracted rates.
Aged receivables, trial balance and statements across companies; cash visibility and credit approval authority.
For multi-company finance teams.
Customer-facing shipment and container tracking, with invoice and statement visibility.
For customers tired of asking "where's my cargo?"
Every add-on requires the core. Any add-on can be taken on its own.
Inside the product
Real screens, from a working system.
- Master console grouping house shipments, with its own status
- Vessel, gate-in and documentation cut-offs on the console
- Invoice and vendor bill raised at console level
Console profitability across every house inside it — not just the houses one by one.
- Inquiry and opportunity pipeline through Odoo CRM
- Sales targets per person and team, measured against booked volume
- Agent network affiliation and partner segmentation
A measurable pipeline with named owners — and every party on one shared structure.
- Containers, equipment split, trade lanes and freight rates
- Which lanes earn, which agents perform
- Profitability as at a point in time, as costs land
Operations and finance argue about the decision, not about whose spreadsheet is right.
Where to start
Three starting points. Priced against your operation.
These are the combinations forwarders most often begin with. Any add-on can be added later.
A forwarder replacing spreadsheets who wants the job-to-invoice flow working first.
- Core — Freight Operations
A sales desk and management reporting on top of the core.
- Core — Freight Operations
- Freight CRM & Partner Management
- Dashboards & Analytics
Multi-branch groups running consolidation, customs and their own documentation.
- Core — Freight Operations
- Consolidation, Intercompany, Customs, Trucking
- Documentation, Rate & Tariff
- Finance Extensions, Customer Portal
Why no price list? Licensing depends on your branches, users and add-ons, and implementation on what has to be migrated. You get a written quote for both after the discovery call.
Why NavyBits
Freight depth on standard Odoo.
Release terms, console margin, chargeable weight, agent cost control — detail a generic ERP doesn't carry.
Invoices and bills post to a full double-entry ledger with multi-currency, tax handling and audited reporting already in place.
Standard Odoo underneath. The code is open to you, and your variations are delivered as normal development.
Licensing, implementation, document formats, training and support — all through NavyBits.
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How an implementation runs
We map how you quote, operate, document and bill today, and agree the target flow. Output: a written scope.
Companies, branches, currencies, ports, lanes, equipment, fee structures, tariffs and the chart of accounts.
Customers, agents, carriers, tariffs and open jobs, loaded and reconciled before go-live.
Role-based sessions for sales, pricing, operations and finance, with written procedures.
A live pilot on a limited set of lanes, then a controlled cut-over with our people on the floor.
Ongoing support, version upgrades and a prioritized backlog of refinements.
Customization is expected, not exceptional. Forwarders differ in how they build a console, split a fee or lay out a bill of lading.
See it run on your own trade lanes.
Book a working demonstration and we'll model two of your real trade lanes — one ocean, one air — from inquiry through to the margin report, using your own document formats.
Core and add-ons licensed separately. Implementation and support quoted per scope.
A 30-minute call on how you quote, operate and bill today.
Your trade lanes, your documents, your fee structure.
Core plus the add-ons you actually need, with a timeline.