Six systems on one record.
A forwarder does not have six jobs. It has one shipment that the rate desk, customs, the warehouse, the customer and the billing clerk all need to read. Six systems write to that shipment. Nothing is exported between them and nothing is mapped, so two screens cannot hold two answers.
One is the base. Five are switches.
SCM holds the record. The other five read it and write back to it (Fig. 1). Screen counts are what is in the build today, counted on 2 September 2026.
SCM
QMS
ABI
Portal
LiveTrack
Stage 1WMS
The same number is not keyed twice.
Retyping is where the numbers stop agreeing. Three numbers are set out below, with everywhere each one is read. Each is entered in exactly one place; nothing downstream is keyed again, so nothing downstream can disagree. Fig. 2 sets the three beside everywhere each one is read.
ENTERED ONCE READ BY ════════════ ═══════ ╔═══════════════════╗ ┌──────────────────────────────────┐ ║ THE WEIGHT ║──→│ House B/L AES commodity │ ║ pieces · kg · cbm ║ │ Invoice quantity QMS revenue ton │ ╚═══════════════════╝ └──────────────────────────────────┘ at booking ╔═══════════════════╗ ┌──────────────────────────────────┐ ║ THE CHARGE LINE ║──→│ Shipment sell Supplier cost │ ║ qty · rate · basis║ │ Month-end invoice Job P&L │ ╚═══════════════════╝ └───────────────┬──────────────────┘ on the quotation └ ─ ─→ QuickBooks ╔═══════════════════╗ ┌──────────────────────────────────┐ ║ THE CLOCK ║──→│ Storage charge D&D, two clocks │ ║ event + zone ║ │ The morning queue, worst first │ ╚═══════════════════╝ └──────────────────────────────────┘ a scan · a discharge · a gate-out
The weight
Pieces, weight and volume go on at booking. QMS prices the LCL line on revenue ton from them: 8 cubic metres and 12,000 kilos bill as 12.000 W/M, and the line prints both inputs beside the answer.
The house B/L prints the same fields. The AES commodity line takes them. The invoice quantity is the number the B/L shows, because there is only one of it.
The charge line
A charge is priced on the quotation, with the basis it was priced on. Accepting the quotation opens the shipment carrying every line, so the sell side of the job is already there before it is worked.
Supplier bills land on the cost lines. Month-end billing turns the revenue lines into the invoice. What the two sides leave is the job’s profit. With Connect the invoice goes to QuickBooks and the payment reads back and flips it to paid.
The clock
An event starts a clock: a receiving scan, a discharge, a gate-out. The event is stamped with the zone it was stamped in, so a four o’clock delivery in Los Angeles does not read as eleven at night to the customer.
Storage stops at load-out and reaches that shipment’s invoice. Containers runs demurrage and detention as two clocks. The morning queue reads all of them and sorts by what costs the most to leave alone.
Seven more switches, under the systems that own them.
An extension is not a second product. It sits under the system that owns the record it touches, and it goes on and off the same way. Two more sit outside this list: Voice, and party screening, which has its own switch and is priced at zero.
What happens when a switch is turned off.
Fourteen switches, turned by the customer’s own administrator. There is no ticket, no waiting on AMC, and no charge for the ones left off — Fig. 3 is what a clerk sees afterwards.
Off means the menu is gone
The menu is neither greyed out nor replaced by a page that asks for a call to sales. The menus for that system are not there and the screens behind them are not reachable, so a clerk cannot walk into a half-bought room by accident. When the switch is turned back on, the menus return with the records they always had.
One switch costs nothing
Party screening has its own switch, priced at zero. The law requires the check and the list is free government data — 25,939 entries in the United States consolidated list. The decision is recorded, and the age of the list is on the screen next to the result, because a check run yesterday against a list six months old has confirmed nothing.
Where the claim is not made
Fifteen of the Portal’s signed-in customer screens do not read the company switch yet. The statement in the first column is therefore not made about the Portal, and it is recorded here rather than left to be discovered. It is on the list of things being fixed, not on the list of things being sold.
Asked about the platform.
Do I have to buy all six?
Is anything exported or mapped between the six?
Who decides what is on, and how fast does it change?
What does the platform not do?
Forty-five minutes on a real shipment.
One shipment is taken from quotation to invoice, on a demonstration company or on a copy of the customer’s own spreadsheet. Difficult lanes are welcome. The session ends with a written quotation.