Freight Forwarding Management System
A full-stack management platform for a freight forwarding business covering quotation generation, job tracking across air, sea, and land shipments, multi-currency accounting, and document management in one operational system.
Tech Stack
Responsibilities
- Owned full-stack delivery across quotation, job tracking, accounting, and document management modules
- Built a quotation engine that generated freight estimates based on shipment mode, origin, destination, weight, and volume
- Designed the MySQL schema for job tracking across air, sea, and land shipment modes with status transitions and milestone logging
- Implemented multi-currency invoicing with GST/IGST breakdowns for domestic and international shipments
- Built the Next.js frontend for job management, quotation approval flows, and accounting views
Case Study
Freight forwarding operations span multiple physical and financial workflows — generating quotes, booking shipments, tracking jobs across carriers and modes, producing invoices, and managing documentation — each of which was being handled in a separate spreadsheet or tool. The business needed one system that connected these workflows so operators could manage a shipment from enquiry through to delivery without switching between tools.
The quotation engine was the entry point for every new job. It generated freight estimates based on shipment mode (air, sea, or land), origin and destination, cargo weight and volume, and applicable surcharges. Quotes were stored and tracked through an approval workflow — drafted by operations staff, reviewed, accepted or rejected by the client — and an accepted quote converted directly into a job record without re-entering data.
The MySQL schema for job tracking was designed around shipment milestones: booking confirmed, cargo received, in transit, customs clearance, out for delivery, delivered. Each mode had mode-specific fields — container numbers for sea freight, airway bill numbers for air, vehicle details for land — while sharing a common job lifecycle model. Status transitions were logged with timestamps and operator IDs for a full audit trail.
The accounting module produced itemised invoices with multi-currency support and GST/IGST breakdowns depending on whether the shipment was domestic or international. Exchange rates were stored per invoice at the time of creation so historical billing was accurate even as rates changed. The document module tracked bills of lading, certificates of origin, and customs declarations against each job, giving operations a single place to verify a shipment's paperwork status before it moved to the next milestone.