e2cargo is a web based app for freight forwarders, carriers and hauliers.

The problem

I was recently talking to the director of a client working in the freight industry about how they record their sales and job data it led me to discovering a great niche bit of software.

My client showed me a HUGE spreadsheet with a row for each job over the last 3 years. Every time anyone in the five strong sales team made a sale they inputted client details, job details, departure location, arrival location, carriers used, cost, invoice date and date paid.

They knew there was a lot of risk relying on a spreadsheet like this and regularly struggled to reconcile the spreadsheet to their accounts. They’d previously enquired into getting custom software but received quotes of around £50,000 + maintenance costs. Apparently this is normal and has traditionally forced small to midsize hauliers into using spreadsheets.

The solution

As an online software obsessive I looked into whether there were any cloud solutions available and came across e2cargo. I signed up to a 30 day trial and was pretty blown away. It solves the problem 100%.

For a business of my clients size the cost is £79 per month (though check out our 10% discount below) the time saved and better control it gives over the business makes this an absolute bargain.

It works in a nice intuitive way following a job through it’s life from quotation to shipment to invoicing. The full list of functions is as follows:

• Quotations
• Shipments
• Invoicing
• VAT for all EU countries (B2B and B2C)
• Profit and loss calculation
• Master data
• Multi-currency
• Clear dashboard
• Address book
• Store transport documents
• Export data
• Invoice and revenue statements

Rather than write about it more, if you are in this industry I would really encourage you to take out a free trial and play with it for 30 minutes. I think you’ll quickly see how it transform your business processes.

I have one issue with the software, it doesn’t integrate with Xero Accounting Software. It does integrate with FreeAgent but I find this a bit of an odd choice. As much as I like FreeAgent it works best for one man bands, which isn’t the case for most of e2cargo’s target clients. You can though export invoice data and then import it into Xero manually, which doesn’t take long at all.

Discount

e2cargo have provided us with a code that provides a 10% discount, just put it in when signing up for the free trial. The code is: COA2012

Follow this link to try a free trial

If you want like it and want any help implementing e2cargo then don’t hesitate to contact us.