Most freight quotations lose money in the same few places, and none of them are the rate. A validity box holding a lead time instead of a date. Payment terms that say "as agreed". Duty neither included nor excluded, just silent. Last week's commodity left in this week's template. An insurance line that says "recommended" and is never actually offered.
This builds a complete quotation, checks it against the things that cause arguments later, and then issues it under your own name and logo as a PDF or an Excel file you can send to your client. It works out your chargeable weight properly, tells you whether your trade term matches how you have priced the duty, and shows your margin as you type. Nothing you type leaves your device.
Step 1: your company
Fill this in once. It is saved in this browser and reused on every quotation you build here, so you never type it again. It is not sent anywhere and nobody else can see it.
No logo yet
A PNG or JPG. It is shrunk to fit and stored in this browser only. A logo with a transparent background looks best.
One honest note. This is stored in your browser, not on a server. Clearing your browsing data removes it and you would fill it in again. That is the trade for a tool that asks you to create no account and gives your details to nobody.
Step 2: the enquiry
Tap the ? beside any field for a plain-English explanation.
How it is going
Step 3: the cargo
The packing list
Type what is actually in the shipment, one line per kind of package, and the tool works out the volume, the gross weight and the chargeable weight for you. Dimensions in centimetres, the way a packing list gives them. If you already know your totals you can skip this and type them in below instead.
Description of the goodsPiecesL cmW cmH cmkg eachVolume
Why this is on the quotation and not in your head. The UN number decides the packing, the labelling, the paperwork and whether the aircraft or the vessel will take it at all. A price given without it is a price you may have to withdraw, and the client will have made plans on it.
Quote the temperature, not the word "reefer". A container plugged in at the wrong setting is a total loss claim, and the first question anybody asks is what temperature was agreed. If it is written on the quotation the answer takes two seconds.
Step 4: the charges
One line for each charge. Put what it costs you in cost and what you are charging in sell, and the margin appears as you type. The cost column is for your eyes: it never appears in the quotation you send.
Currencies and rates
Freight is usually bought in dollars and duty is paid in naira, so a quotation that pretends to be in one currency is hiding a conversion somewhere. Set your own rate for each currency you use, price every line in whatever currency you actually buy it in, and choose what the finished quotation prints in. The rates and the date they were set are printed on the quotation, so the client can see exactly what was used.
CurrencyHow many of your base currency, 1 unit is worth
Tax
Add VAT or any other tax that has to appear on the quotation. Tick or untick the small tax box on each charge line to say what the tax is charged on. Your own fees and services start ticked. Disbursements start unticked, because somebody else's bill usually carries its own tax already.
What it is calledRate %Charged on
Financial charge
It is charged on the disbursements only. Mark each line as your fee, as something you buy in and resell, or as a disbursement you pay and recover at cost. The percentage applies to the disbursements and to nothing else, because that is the money of yours that is actually tied up, and it is the only version you can defend when a client asks how the figure was reached.
Step 5: the terms
Step 6: would this quotation survive a dispute?
If you are the one buying this, ask these five questions
What is this price valid until? A date, not "5 to 7 days". Without a date the price can be withdrawn the week you are ready to ship, and you have nothing in writing.
Is import duty included or not? Silence in a quotation means "included" to the person paying. Get the answer in the document, not in an email.
What is NOT included? Storage, demurrage, customs examination, permits, waiting time at delivery. These are the charges that arrive later and turn a good price into an argument.
What is the chargeable weight, and how was it worked out? Air freight and shared containers are sold on space as much as on weight. If the number looks odd, ask to see the sum.
Has insurance been offered? If you decline it, decline it in writing. If nobody offered it, that is worth knowing before the cargo moves.
These are not trick questions and a good forwarder will welcome them. A quotation that answers all five before you ask is the sign of somebody who has done this before.
Your quotations
Where all of this lives. Your quotations are stored in this browser on this computer, not on any server. That is what lets the tool ask you for no account and send your prices nowhere. It also means two things worth knowing: clearing your browsing data deletes them, and anyone who can open this browser can read them, including your buying prices and your margins. On a shared machine, back them up to a file and then clear this device when you are done.
Step 7: issue your quotation
This is the document your client receives, on your letterhead. Your cost column and your margin are not in it and never leave this page.
A quotation nobody can accept gets accepted in an email that nobody can find six months later. This prints a short panel at the foot of the document: their company, the name and position of the person accepting, a signature, the date, and a box for their order number. It costs you one line and it turns a price into a record.
Keep this quotation
The PDF and the Excel file above are for your client. This is for you: the whole quotation, every cost, every rate and your margin, saved as a small file on your own computer. Open it again next week, on this machine or another one, and carry on from exactly where you stopped. That is how you come back to a job when the invoice is due.
It stays on your computer. Nothing is uploaded and there is no account. The file is written straight to your downloads folder by your own browser. Keep it in the job folder beside the bill of lading, put it on a memory stick, email it to yourself: it is an ordinary file and it is yours. It holds your buying prices and your margin, so treat it the way you would treat the costing sheet it replaces.
The PDF button opens your browser's print window. Choose Save as PDF as the printer, and it saves the document exactly as you see it below. Two settings are worth checking the first time: set margins to None or Default (not Minimum), and turn background graphics ON, or the coloured headings print as empty white bars. If the quotation runs to more than one page, the charge table repeats its heading and every page carries your reference along the bottom.
Before you send it, three things worth knowing
The document is yours. Not mine. I claim no ownership of it and no rights in it. Use it commercially, edit it, send it to whoever you like. You owe me nothing for it.
The figures are yours too. This tool supplies no rates. It arranges the numbers you typed and does the arithmetic. It does not check, verify or endorse any price, so the accuracy of the quotation, the tax treatment and your own terms are your responsibility, not mine. I am not a party to any contract that follows from it.
Nothing here has reached me. Your rates, your client's name, your margin and your logo were processed entirely inside this browser and were never sent anywhere. That is deliberate, and it has one cost: I cannot recover any of it for you. Download what matters and keep the file safe.
The terms of use set this out in full, including the one rule I do ask you to keep: do not issue a quotation in the name of a company you are not authorised to represent.
See the plain text version, for pasting into an email
Step 8: what the job actually cost
Come back to this when the job is done and the supplier invoices are in. Type what each charge really cost you and what you really billed the client. Nothing here goes near the client's document, nothing here changes the quotation, and nothing here asks you for a revision. These are your figures.
Two gaps come out of it. The first is the one everybody looks at: a cost that came in higher than you expected. The second is the one almost nobody measures and it is usually the bigger of the two: a charge you paid for and never billed. That one costs you the whole amount, not a margin on it, and without this page it leaves no trace anywhere.
Tap a heading to read it.
Why quotations lose money
Ask a forwarder where they lose money and they will talk about rates. Look at a stack of real quotations and the rate is almost never the problem. The losses come from the parts nobody proofreads.
A validity field with a lead time in it. "Validity: 5 to 7 days" is not a validity. It says nothing about when your price expires, so when the carrier raises the rate three weeks later, you have no written ground to stand on and you absorb it.
Payment terms that are not terms. "As agreed" and "cash" are placeholders someone meant to replace. They become an argument on the day the invoice is late, and the client is not wrong to argue, because nothing was agreed.
Silence on duty. If a quotation does not say whether import duty is included, the person paying assumes it is. Every time. That is not unreasonable of them, it is what silence means in a price.
Template carryover. The previous client's commodity, the previous shipment's lane, a document list for personal effects on a commercial container. Each one tells the reader you were not paying attention to their shipment, which is exactly the fear they were hiring you to remove.
The chargeable weight, in plain words
Transport is sold on space as much as on weight, so carriers charge on whichever is worse for them.
Air freight. Measure the volume of your cargo in cubic centimetres and divide by 6,000. That gives a "volume weight" in kilos. You pay on that or on the real weight, whichever is higher. A pallet of pillows weighs almost nothing and costs a fortune, because it is sold the space.
Shared sea containers. The same idea using tonnes and cubic metres, where one cubic metre is treated as one tonne. Whichever number is higher is what you pay on. The trade calls the result revenue tons or W/M.
Full containers. Neither. You pay for the box, so the only weight that matters is whether you are over the legal limit for the road.
The mistake to avoid
Writing a sea chargeable weight in kilograms. A quote that says "chargeable weight 2.76 kg" for a container of gloves means 2.76 revenue tons, and everyone in the office knows that, and no client does. Write the unit correctly and the number stops looking absurd.
One habit worth more than any tool
Read your quotation once as if you were the person receiving it and had never heard of your company. Every question you cannot answer from the page itself is a question that will come back as an email, a delay, or a discount.
What this does that a quotation template does not
Most forwarders quote from a Word or Excel template that somebody in the office built years ago. A template is a shape. It holds no rules, it checks nothing, and it forgets everything the moment you save a copy over it. Here is what is different, in plain terms.
It works out the chargeable weight for you
Type the packing list and the tool does the volume, the gross weight and the chargeable weight, in the right unit for the service. Air divides by your divisor. A shared container uses revenue tons. A full container uses neither, and the tool says so instead of printing a weight that means nothing.
It prices in more than one currency, honestly
Freight is bought in dollars and duty is paid in naira. Price each line in the currency you actually buy it in, set your own rate once, and the finished quotation prints the rates and the date they were set. The client can see exactly what conversion was used. A template hides that inside one number.
It separates your money from money passing through
Import duty is not your revenue and it is not your margin. Mark each line as your fee, something you buy in and resell, or a disbursement you pay and recover at cost, and the margin is worked out on your side alone. This is the single most common way a healthy job looks thin on a spreadsheet.
It checks the things that cause arguments
A validity date that is a real date and has not passed. Payment terms that are terms. Duty stated either way rather than left silent. Insurance offered in writing. The trade term matched against how you priced the duty. Thirteen checks, scored as you type, with the reason behind each one.
It knows what you already sent
When a quotation goes to a client the tool records what it said and what it came to. Change anything the client reads and it tells you the document has moved and offers you a revision number. Change your own buying price or your margin and it says nothing, because that is not the client's business.
It tells you afterwards whether you were right
Come back when the job is done, type what each charge really cost and what you really billed, and you get quoted against actual on one page. Including the gap almost nobody measures: a charge you paid for and never billed. That one costs you the whole amount, not a margin on it.
It takes your rates as they are
Your charges are in Excel already. Copy the cells, paste them into Step 4, and they become charge lines with the journey block and the unit filled in. The tool shows you which column it thinks is which and lets you correct it before anything is added.
It handles cargo that is not ordinary cargo
Dangerous goods get a UN number, a class, a packing group and a proper shipping name, printed on the quotation, and the tool refuses to let you call something dangerous without saying what it is. Temperature controlled cargo gets a stated setting, because that is a condition of carriage and not a preference.
It can be turned round to face the client
One switch takes your buying prices, your mark-up and your margin off the screen so you can show somebody the quotation across a desk. Nothing is deleted and switching it off puts every figure back. It hides them from a person looking at the screen. It is not a lock, and the tool says so rather than pretending otherwise.
Nothing you type reaches me
No account, no upload, no server. Your client names, your buying prices and your margins are processed in your own browser and stay on your own device. That is deliberate, and it has one cost worth knowing: I cannot recover any of it for you, so save what matters to a file.
It is free, it will stay free, and the document it produces is yours with no strings on it. If it saves you an hour a week, that is the whole point of it.
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