Freight forwarding software vs Excel: the three places a spreadsheet breaks
The real incumbent, and the one alternative here we can be blunt about: a spreadsheet has no vendor to misrepresent. It is also better than most software at several things, which is why it is still winning.
- Built for
- Forwarders in Kuwait, the UAE and Saudi Arabia
- Modes
- Sea, air, road, rail and courier
- Languages
- Arabic and English, one build, documents in both
- E-invoicing
- ZATCA Phase 2 and UAE e-invoicing, in the product
- Your data
- Your own database, in your own instance
- Getting started
- Free demo call, then 15 working days of paid setup and onboarding
A spreadsheet breaks at three specific moments
It does not wear out gradually, and it is not bad software. These are the three moments at which it stops being the cheaper option, and each one has already happened to somebody reading this.
- The second person joins
- Two people quoting from one workbook eventually send two prices for one lane, and the one that goes out is whichever the person quoting had open. Nobody notices until the customer puts them side by side.
- On a file: A rate card carries a lane, a mode, a carrier and validity dates, and the database will not accept two that cover the same route at the same time.
- A container sits past its free days
- Starting the counter is everybody’s job and nobody’s. It surfaces six weeks later on a supplier invoice, when the question is no longer how much but who was supposed to be watching.
- On a file: The milestone that starts free time starts the clock, and the charge line is written to the job on the day rather than found on a statement.
- Somebody asks who changed it
- A spreadsheet has one truth and no history. When a date moved, who moved it and what it said before are questions with no answer at all.
- On a file: Nothing is deleted. A database trigger stamps every change with who made it and when, and a superseded row is marked superseded and stays where it was.
One container: five free days, then KWD 28.000 a day
The demo’s own figures
- Free time (5 days)
- Accrued (KWD)
How it runs today
A rate sheet in Excel, enquiries in four mailboxes, a WhatsApp group per customer and a shared drive of PDFs. Nobody chose this. It accumulated, and it works.
Keep the spreadsheet if
- You move a handful of shipments a month. Below some volume the overhead of any system is larger than the problem it solves.
- One person does the whole job end to end and it is all in their head. What a system replaces is a handover, and you do not have one.
- Nothing has ever surfaced weeks late on a supplier invoice. If that is true, the case below does not apply to you.
What a system does instead
On a file, the milestone starts the clock, so the charge is known on the first day it accrues.
When the same demurrage charge reaches someone who can act on it
Illustrative timing
Without a clock
Found on a supplier invoice
With the clock
Charge line on the job, day one
Weeks since the charge started running
Check each claim in the demo
No sign-up and no call. All of it takes about ten minutes.
| The claim | How to check it |
|---|---|
| Five transport modes | Start an enquiry in the demo. The mode selector offers sea (FCL and LCL), air, road, rail and courier. |
| Three decimals on every dinar | Open any invoice in the demo. A system built for dollars and adapted shows two. |
| Separation enforced by the database | Sign in to the demo as the customer contact and try to open the operations board. Other customers’ shipments are not hidden behind a filter; they are never returned. |
| Changes kept, nothing deleted | Revise a milestone on a demo job. The planned time stays beside the revised one instead of being overwritten. |
| Arabic and English, one build | Press the language switch and issue a document. The layout, the figures and the document all turn right-to-left, with no English label left behind. |
| About ten minutes for all of it | No sign-up and no call. The whole page rests on that. |
The screen this argument rests on
Ask both of us these, and compare the answers
Our answers are written down, and under each is what a good answer sounds like from any vendor, us included. If another vendor answers better, buy from them.
Is the Arabic a translation layer, or the same build?
The same build. Right-to-left is part of the layout, and a build check fails if a string exists in one language and not the other. Open the demo, press the language switch, and look at a delivery order.
What a good answer sounds like: A good answer names a mechanism: a parity check that fails a build, one catalogue for both languages, right-to-left in the layout. A weak one is “yes, we support Arabic” and a screenshot. Ask to see a printed delivery order; that is where an added-on language shows first.
How many decimal places does an invoice in Kuwaiti dinars carry?
Three, everywhere, because the dinar has three. It is the fastest way to find out whether a system was built for dollars and adapted.
What a good answer sounds like: “Three” should come back at once and without conditions. Hesitation, or “it is configurable”, usually means money is a floating-point number somewhere and the decimals are a display setting, which is fine until a rounding difference lands on a reconciliation.
Whose database is it, and can I have a copy of my data without asking?
Yours: a PostgreSQL database in your own instance, shared with no other customer. An export in an open format is yours any day at no charge. Today we assemble it for you; a single self-service export action is specified and not yet built. Source escrow is available on request.
What a good answer sounds like: Listen for a named engine and an export you can trigger yourself. “We can arrange an extract” is a different answer from “here is the button”, and the difference is what leaving costs you in three years. Hold us to the same test.
What does it cost when volume doubles?
Ask every vendor this, in writing. Per-shipment and per-transaction pricing is normal in this category, but it is a different shape of bill from a flat one, and the difference shows up in year two rather than at signature.
What a good answer sounds like: Any pricing shape is defensible; a refusal to put the shape in writing is not. Ask for the figure at twice and five times today’s volume, in the contract rather than on a call, and ask us the same way.
Can I see it working, today, without a call?
Yes: demo.cargosharks.com, with no sign-up. This question separates vendors more reliably than any feature question, which is why it is last.
What a good answer sounds like: Yes and no are both legitimate. A demo that needs a discovery call first is a sales process, and also a reliable measure of how long onboarding will take to start.
A flat bill against a per-shipment bill as volume grows
Illustrative, not to scale
- Flat
- Per shipment
Why there is no tick-and-cross grid
We know our product properly and theirs from the outside, and a grid written by one side goes stale silently. Ask us directly at hellocargosharks.com and you will get a written answer that cites what each vendor publishes, and “we do not know” where we do not.
See it on your own lanes.
The demo is the real software on seeded data, open with no sign-up. The demo call is free, and we tailor it to your shipments.