Why store legs and not prices
A door-to-door price looks like one number and is really seven or eight. Pickup, export formalities, terminal handling at origin, the long leg, terminal handling at destination, the line's local charges, clearance, delivery.
Store it as one number and it is useless the moment anything changes, because you cannot see which part moved. Store it as legs and most of your next quotation is already done, since only one or two legs will be different.
It also makes you a better buyer. When you can see that your clearance fee has been the same for two years while the carrier's local charges have doubled, you know which conversation to have.
The two questions this answers that a spreadsheet does not
Is this rate still good? A rate is a promise with a date on it. Without the date it is a rumour, and quoting from a rumour is how a job gets sold below cost by someone who was being careful.
Do my own rates agree with each other? When two people price the same lane in the same week from different emails, the client eventually sees both. This checks for that automatically and tells you before they do.
How to fill it without it becoming a chore
Do not start by entering everything. Start with your busiest lanes, five or ten of them, and only the legs you quote often. A rate bank with fifteen accurate entries beats one with three hundred stale ones.
Add a rate the moment it arrives. Not later. The email with the rate in it is open in front of you right now, and it has the validity date in it, which is the field everybody skips when entering from memory a week afterwards.
Put the supplier's name on every entry. When two rates for the same leg disagree, the useful question is not which number is right but which supplier gave you which, and when.
Write the awkward conditions in the note. Minimum charges, what is excluded, whether space is subject to confirmation. Those conditions are what turns a good-looking rate into a bad quotation.
What to do with an expired rate
Do not delete it. An expired rate is evidence: it tells you what that lane cost three months ago, which is exactly what you need when a supplier tells you the new price is reasonable. Keep the history and let the tool mark it expired.