Consolidations & master bookings

A consolidation groups multiple individual house bookings under a single Master Booking that carries the master document (MAWB / MBL) issued by the underlying carrier. Standard practice for LCL sea, air consol, and groupage road.

Overview

• House Booking = an individual customer's shipment. Has its own quote, charges, and HAWB / HBL.
• Master Booking = the wrapper. Carries the MAWB / MBL, the carrier reference, and the consolidator's commercial agreement with the carrier.
• Consolidation Manifest = the list of houses under the master, used by ground handlers and customs.

Consolidations live at /app/forwarding/consolidations.

When to consolidate

• You have multiple LCL shipments going Dubai → New York and want to share a single 40HC.
• You handle multiple HAWBs going Dubai → London on the same Emirates flight; you issue your own consolidator MAWB.
• You're acting as NVOCC and issuing house BLs to your customers under the carrier's MBL.

Don't consolidate when:

• Each booking has a separate carrier, route, or vessel/flight.
• The cargo is incompatible (DG mixed with food, reefer with dry).
• You're sub-contracting another forwarder's master — that's a Cross-Tenant Consolidation instead.

Creating a master booking

1. 1
   Go to Forwarding → Consolidations and click the Master Bookings tab.
2. 2
   Click + New Master Booking.
3. 3
   Pick the Customer — for a master, this is typically your own group entity or the carrier's NVOCC partner, not an end-customer. (Most tenants use a "House Account" customer for this.)
4. 4
   Direction, Mode, Load Type — for sea: LCL; for air: Direct Master (Air); for road: Container or LTL.
5. 5
   Origin / Destination Country & Port — picks from your master-data port catalog.
6. 6
   Vessel / MBL if you already have it; ETD for the planned departure.
7. 7
   Commodity — pick from master data (e.g. General Cargo for mixed consol).
8. 8
   Save — the master booking is created in draft status.

Attaching house bookings

From the master detail view → Sub-bookings tab → + Attach Sub-Booking. Search by booking number and pick. The house's commercial details (charges, customer, parties) stay on the house; only the carrier transport details inherit from the master.

You can also auto-attach: when creating a new house booking, pick the master from a dropdown — the route and carrier auto-fill.

Apportioning master charges

The carrier bills you once per master. To allocate that cost across the houses, use Apportion:

• By weight (default) — proportional to each house's actual_weight_kg.
• By volume — proportional to volume_cbm.
• Custom — manual override per house.

The apportioned cost shows up as a buy-side charge on each house, keeping the per-house margin honest.

Consolidation Manifest PDF

From the master detail → Documents → Consolidation Manifest. Renders a regulatory layout (ICAO Annex 9 for air, IMO FAL for sea, TIR for road) with the master's header info and a table of the houses. This is what you submit to the ground handler / customs.

Cross-tenant consolidations

If two different CargoSurge tenants want to consolidate (e.g. you and a partner forwarder share a master), use Cross-Tenant Consolidations — a partner-tenant invitation flow. See Cross-Tenant Consolidations (Tier 2).

Common pitfalls