03 · Clients
Freight client management software built around the quote.
A forwarder's relationship with a customer is a run of enquiries, quotes, rates and invoices. Lotic holds all four under the client they belong to — and keeps them current because quoting is what writes them, not a separate admin job at the end of the week.
"What did we quote them last time?"
It is the most-asked question on a quoting desk, and in most forwarding businesses it is answered by searching an inbox. Someone remembers roughly when, searches a company name, opens four threads, finds a PDF attachment, and reads a total off it. Ten minutes, if the person who sent it is at their desk.
The reason it is hard is that the client's history isn't anywhere. It is scattered across:
- an inbox, in threads titled Re: Re: FW: quote request;
- a quotes folder of PDFs named by date, or by nothing;
- the rate spreadsheet that priced them, which has since been overwritten;
- an accounting system that knows what was billed but not what was quoted;
- and a CRM, if there is one, that a salesperson updates when they remember.
Client management software for freight forwarding earns its place by making that history a by-product of the work instead of a second job.
What sits under a client.
Everything they have asked for
Read out of the mailbox as they arrive and attached to the client automatically — including the ones that were never quoted, which are usually the interesting ones.
What you sent, and for what
Each quotation with the shipment it covered — lane, mode, load — and the total it carried. A repeat enquiry can be checked against the last one in seconds.
What it was priced from
A quotation is tied to the rate card behind it, so a number six months old can still be explained rather than merely remembered.
What you actually billed
The accepted quotation carries through to an invoice. Quoted and billed sit in the same record, which is the only way to see whether they ever differ.
Quote history is pricing intelligence.
Once a client's quotes are in one place, they stop being filing and start being useful. You can see which customers only ever ask and never book, and how much quoting time that is costing. You can see the lanes a customer runs often enough to be worth a standing rate. You can see whether the quote that lost went out at the wrong number or simply went out late.
None of that requires a report to be built. It requires the history to exist, in one place, without anyone having maintained it — which is exactly what a spreadsheet-and-inbox setup cannot provide.
Built for forwarders, not adapted from a sales CRM.
| General CRM | Lotic | |
|---|---|---|
| The record | Contacts, companies and deals | Clients, their enquiries, quotations, rates and invoices |
| Who keeps it current | Whoever remembers to log the call | The quoting work itself |
| Shipment detail | A free-text note or a custom field | Structured: lane, mode, container type and count, incoterm |
| Pricing | Not modelled | Priced from your rate cards across six cost modules |
| Quoted vs billed | Different systems, no link | The accepted quote becomes the invoice |
If you already run a CRM your sales team likes, keep it. Lotic is not trying to be your pipeline tool — it is trying to make sure the quoting record it would otherwise be missing actually exists.
Frequently asked questions.
What is freight client management software?
It is a customer record built around the things a forwarder actually exchanges with a client: enquiries, quotations, the rates those quotations were priced from, and the invoices that followed. The point is that the history is produced by the quoting work rather than typed up alongside it.
How is this different from a CRM like HubSpot or Salesforce?
A general CRM stores contacts and deals, and it is genuinely good at that. It cannot price a shipment, does not understand a lane or a container type, and has no link between what you quoted and what you billed. In Lotic the client record is a by-product of quoting, so it is current without anyone maintaining it.
Can I see what we quoted a customer last time?
Yes — every quotation sits under the client it went to, with the shipment it covered and the total it carried. That is the question a forwarder asks most often when a repeat enquiry lands, and in a spreadsheet-and-inbox setup it is usually the hardest one to answer quickly.
Does it handle invoices as well as quotes?
The accepted quotation carries through to an invoice, so the numbers you quoted are the numbers you bill and nothing is re-keyed between the two. Lotic is not an accounting package — it produces the invoice from the quote rather than replacing your ledger.
What happens when several people quote the same customer?
Everything lands in the same client record, so the second person can see what the first one quoted before they price it. Two different numbers for the same lane in the same week is a spreadsheet-and-inbox failure mode, and a shared record is what removes it.
Do I have to import my customer list to start?
No. Clients build up from the enquiries that arrive in the mailbox you connect, so the list fills itself with the customers who are actually active rather than with everyone who has ever been in a contacts export.
Be the first to quote.
Private beta. Places open in small batches.