Creating your first quotation

The fastest way to get a feel for the platform is to create a real quotation end-to-end. This walk-through uses a sample sea-FCL lane Dubai → New York and takes about 5 minutes.

Overview

A Quotation (QT-...) is a priced proposal you send to a customer. When they accept, you convert it to a Booking (BK-...), which is where the shipment lives from then on. Quotations are throwaway-cheap — you'll make many per customer, and only a fraction convert.

Before you start

You need:

• A customer record. If you don't have one yet, create a placeholder from CRM → Customers → + New Customer. Two fields are enough for a test: legal name and country.
• A rough idea of the route (origin / destination ports or cities) and cargo (weight / volume / commodity).
• Your sell rate and ideally a buy rate so the platform can compute margin.

Step-by-step

1. 1
   From the app sidebar, go to Forwarding → Quotations. Click + Create Quotation.
2. 2
   Customer — pick from the dropdown. The customer's default incoterm, payment terms, and currency pre-fill subsequent fields.
3. 3
   Direction & Mode — for this walk-through pick Export / Sea / FCL. Load type options change per mode (e.g. Road offers FTL, LTL, Container).
4. 4
   Route — Origin Country: UAE, Origin Port: JEBEL ALI (AEJEA). Destination Country: USA, Destination Port: NEW YORK (USNYC). Ports are pulled from the master-data catalog — if you can't find one, create it in Settings → Master Data → Ports first.
5. 5
   Cargo — add a line: 2 × 40'HC, commodity General Cargo, weight 22,000 kg each, CBM 28. The totals at the top update live.
6. 6
   Charges — add OCEAN FREIGHT at e.g. USD 1,850 sell, USD 1,600 buy per 40HC. Add BAF at USD 240 sell / 200 buy. Repeat for any other charge. The footer shows live sell / buy / GP / margin as you type.
7. 7
   Commercial Terms & Notes — pick the standard terms that apply (e.g. Subject to space availability, Free time 7 days at destination). These will print on the PDF. Add any quote-specific Notes or Special Instructions below.
8. 8
   Save as Draft if you want to come back to it, or Save & Send to generate the PDF and email it to the customer. If you chose Send, the customer also gets a public tracking link (e.g. cargosurge.co.com/q/{token}) they can use to accept or reject online.

Common pitfalls

What happens when the customer accepts

If they accept via the public link (or you mark it Accepted manually), CargoSurge:

1. Creates a Booking with the same parties, route, cargo, and charges.
2. Copies the commercial terms so they stay tied to the contract.
3. Links the booking back to the originating quote (Booking detail → Activity shows the history).

From there the booking follows its own lifecycle — see Bookings.

Where to go next

• Quotations — the full reference: air vs sea vs road differences, smart quotes, bulk actions, numbering.
• Commercial Terms & Notes — the 8 standard clauses, how to add your own.
• Bookings — next step when the customer accepts.