Quotations

Quotations are priced proposals you send to customers. They capture the route, the cargo, the commercial terms, and the sell/buy charge lines — everything needed to convert a customer enquiry into a booking.

Overview

• Numbered: QT-XXXXXX (per tenant sequence).
• Modes supported: sea (FCL / LCL), air (direct / consol), road (FTL / LTL / Container), and multi-modal.
• States: draft → sent → accepted | rejected | expired.
• Public link: every quote can be shared via cargosurge.co.com/q/{token} — a branded, read-only view your customer can accept or reject online.
• Auto-conversion: accepting a quote creates the linked Booking with all the data copied over.

When to use

• Every customer enquiry, even if you think it won't convert. Your win-rate data is only useful if you quote everything.
• Rate negotiations — iterate by cloning, not editing. Each version is a separate quote with a full audit trail.
• Benchmarking carriers — use the buy-rate column to track how your freight sourcing compares to sell.

Don't use quotations for:

• Routine reorders from the same customer on the same lane — set up a Rate Card instead (see Vendors section), which templates the common charges.
• Customer invoicing — quotes aren't invoices. Convert to booking, ship, then invoice.

Key UI surfaces

• List view (/app/forwarding/quotations) — filterable by status, mode, customer, date.
• Create form — the single-page form with live margin calculation in the footer.
• Detail view — read-only summary with action buttons (send, clone, revise, convert).
• Public quote view — what the customer sees.

Smart Quotes

CargoSurge can ingest a customer enquiry email and draft a quote for you. Connect your inbox in Settings → Integrations → Email, and incoming emails that match an RFQ pattern get a draft quote pre-populated. You review, tweak, and send. See Smart Quotes (Tier 2) for the setup flow.

Converting to a booking

When the customer accepts (either via the public link or by you marking it Accepted), CargoSurge:

1. Creates a Booking with the same parties, route, cargo, and charges.
2. Copies commercial terms into the booking's contract fields.
3. Links the booking back to the quote (Booking detail → Activity shows the conversion).

You can also manually "Convert to Booking" from the quote detail view without changing the quote's status — useful for fast-track jobs.

Charges & margin

The charges table has seven columns: Code · Description · Basis · Qty · Sell · Buy · Tax. The footer shows live totals: Sell, Buy, GP (Sell − Buy), Margin %.

• Code — pick from your master data charge codes. Type-ahead search.
• Basis — "per container", "per shipment", "per CBM", etc. Tenant-level default in Settings → Tenant → PDF.
• Tax — per-charge tax rate (important for zero-rated export freight mixed with standard-rated domestic charges — see Currency & FX handling).

Common pitfalls

Bulk actions

From the quote list:

• Bulk Send — send multiple draft quotes at once.
• Bulk Expire — close out old sent quotes past their validity date.
• Export to CSV — for analysis outside the platform.

Custom document

The quote PDF is rendered from the quotation doc type in the PDF Designer. Customise your header / footer / branding in Settings → PDF Designer. The structure (customer, route, charges, totals) is fixed — you're editing branding and terms, not the layout.