Shipment status tracked in email threads rather than a central system, so finding where a shipment is means searching through a chain of forwards?
Customs documents prepared manually for each shipment with no templates, wasting hours your operations team could spend on work that requires judgment?
Freight Management Software
Custom freight management software for freight forwarders, customs brokers, and logistics companies who need shipment booking, quotation management, customs documentation, and customer visibility in one system -- not a trail of emails and shared spreadsheets.
Built for forwarding operations where shipment status is tracked in email threads and customs documents are prepared manually for each shipment. One system for quoting, booking, documentation, and client communication.
Shipment booking across air, ocean, road, and rail in one platform
Quotation management with cost and sell rates and margin tracking per shipment
Customs documentation generated from shipment data -- Bill of Lading, airway bill, commercial invoice
Customer portal with real-time milestone tracking and document access
RaftLabs builds custom freight management software covering shipment booking across air, ocean, road, and rail, quotation management and margin tracking, customs documentation including Bill of Lading and commercial invoices, milestone tracking, customer portals, and carrier and agent relationship management. Most freight management platforms ship in 10-14 weeks at a fixed cost.
100+Products shipped
·24+Industries served
·FixedCost delivery
·12-14Week delivery cycles
Email threads and manual documents are not a freight management system
Freight forwarding operations typically reach the same breaking point: the volume of shipments has grown past what email and spreadsheets can handle. A client asks for a status update and your operations team has to search through a chain of emails to find the last update from the carrier or agent. A new customs declaration needs to be prepared and someone manually types the same data into a document that was used on the last shipment, with the fields changed for this one.
The cost of this approach is real. Hours spent on document preparation that could be automated. Shipment status queries that take twenty minutes to answer. Margin leakage on quotes because there's no systematic tracking of cost vs sell rates across your shipment portfolio.
Freight management software gives your operation a central system for quoting, booking, documentation, and client communication. Quotes are built from your rate database. Customs documents are generated from data entered once at booking. Clients check shipment status in a portal rather than emailing your team.
What we build
Shipment booking across all modes
Shipment booking for air, ocean (FCL and LCL), road, and rail in one platform. Carrier and agent selection from your network with routing options -- direct, transshipment, and multimodal. Booking confirmation and reference number management per carrier and mode. Incoterms applied per shipment with role responsibilities clearly recorded. Collection and delivery instruction management for door-to-door shipments. Special handling flags for dangerous goods, temperature-controlled cargo, and oversized shipments. The booking process that creates a single shipment record from which all downstream work flows -- documentation, tracking, and billing.
Quotation management and margin tracking
Quote creation from your buy rate database -- carrier rates, agent rates, port charges, customs fees, and ancillary services. Sell rate applied per client or per shipment based on your pricing model. Margin visible at quote stage so your team knows the contribution on every job before it's booked. Quote to booking conversion tracked so you can see win rates by lane, mode, and client. Post-shipment margin reconciliation comparing estimated cost at quote with actual cost from carrier and agent invoices. The profitability data your management team needs without manually calculating margin on each shipment at month end.
Customs documentation generation
Customs and shipping document generation from data entered at booking: Bill of Lading, sea waybill, airway bill, commercial invoice, packing list, certificate of origin, and customs entry declarations. Document templates configured for your standard clients and trade lanes -- commodity descriptions, HS codes, and standard terms pre-populated from client and product records. Document generation in PDF ready for electronic submission or printing. Document version control and reissue tracking. Distribution to carrier, shipper, consignee, and customs broker from within the system. The document workflow that replaces manually preparing customs paperwork for each shipment from scratch.
Milestone tracking and shipment visibility
Shipment milestone tracking from booking through to final delivery: booking confirmed, cargo received at origin port, departed origin, arrived transshipment port (if applicable), departed transshipment, arrived destination port, customs cleared, available for collection or out for delivery, delivered. Milestone updates captured from carrier and agent communication or direct carrier API feeds where available. Exception flags for shipments behind schedule at any milestone. Internal milestone views for your operations team and client-facing views with the appropriate level of detail per client.
Customer portal
Client portal where your customers can see all their active and historical shipments, check milestone status, download documents, and request quotes. Shipment filtering by reference, consignee, origin, destination, and status. Document download: Bill of Lading, arrival notice, customs clearance certificate. Arrival notification emails sent automatically when a shipment reaches destination port. The portal that cuts the inbound status calls and positions your operation as more professional than a competitor who asks clients to call or email for updates.
Carrier and agent relationship management
Carrier and agent database with contact records, service areas, trade lane coverage, rate agreements, and performance history. Agent instructions and standard operating procedures stored per agent and accessible to your operations team. Invoice management for carrier and agent payables with matching against agreed rates. Performance tracking: transit time accuracy, documentation turnaround, and exception rate per carrier and agent. Agent onboarding workflow for new agent relationships -- SOP agreement, rate negotiation, and system access. The agent relationship system that gives new operations staff the information they need to work with your carrier and agent network from day one.
Frequently asked questions
Freight management software is built for freight forwarders and customs brokers who manage shipments on behalf of clients across multiple carriers and modes. It covers quoting, booking, customs documentation, milestone tracking, and client communication. A TMS (Transport Management System) is typically used by shippers or logistics companies managing their own transport -- it focuses on load planning, carrier tendering, and freight invoice auditing for their own freight spend. The difference is the business model: forwarders act as agents managing freight for clients and need margin tracking and client-facing portals; shippers managing own transport need cost optimisation against their own freight budget. The two platforms have overlapping capabilities but different emphasis.
Multi-modal shipments -- for example, a shipment that moves by road from origin to port, ocean freight to destination country, and local delivery on arrival -- are managed as a single shipment record with legs. Each leg has its own carrier or agent, its own booking reference, its own set of documents, and its own milestones. The overall shipment status reflects the current active leg. Documents for each leg -- ocean Bill of Lading for the sea leg, delivery note for the final mile -- are generated from the single shipment record without re-entering the cargo and party details. Handoff events between legs are tracked as milestones so the full journey is visible in one timeline.
Yes, where those systems provide API or EDI connectivity. Ocean carriers -- Maersk, MSC, CMA CGM, and others -- provide tracking APIs and in some cases booking APIs. Air cargo tracking is available through IATA Cargo-XML and some carrier-specific APIs. Port community systems vary by port. We assess the connectivity options for each carrier and mode during scoping and integrate directly where APIs are available, or via EDI (EDIFACT) for carriers and agents that use it. Where no electronic feed is available, milestone updates come through the manual update workflow in the platform. We don't promise integrations that don't exist -- we tell you what's achievable and what requires manual input.
A freight management platform covering shipment booking (air and ocean), quotation management, customs document generation, milestone tracking, and a client portal typically runs $50,000--$110,000. A full platform with multi-modal booking, EDI carrier integration, agent management, and a finance module for payables and revenue reporting typically runs $110,000--$230,000. Cost depends on the number of modes and carriers you need to connect to, the complexity of your documentation requirements, and the scope of the client portal and finance reporting. We scope every project before pricing it and give you a fixed cost before development starts.
Tell us the modes you operate, your current system, and where the documentation and visibility gaps are. We'll scope the right platform and give you a fixed cost.
