Freight Forwarders - How to setup a portal for your clients

Shippers expectations

Today's transportation costs and logistics challenges are putting the supply chain under high pressure. As their transport providers are elevated to a more strategic role, shippers are more demanding from their freight forwarder. They will look for the ones that bring the most dependability,k innovation and productivity. Freight forwarders will have to nurture trusted relationship with customer and help them meet the challenges they are facing.

As a small or medium size Freight forwarder, you have to offer the same service level as big players with a small budget.

With our software NEO6 for the back-office and NEOONLINE portal, you are able to build ongoing relationship with your clients through data.

Our solutions are build and supported in Canada. It has been designed specifically for small and medium size Freight forwarders. It is affordable and extremely easy to use.

NEO6 Portal

• Shipment visibility
• Request for quotations
• Booking requests
• Documentation sharing

Shipments visibility

Once logged in the portal, your clients have access to their files. They can search by PO numbers, file numbers, etc... They can also export to Excel.

Only milestones that you decide to publish will show.

Request for quotations and Request for booking

Air, Ocean or Ground shipments. Your clients can send you a request for quotation or for booking from the portal through an easy to use interface. You will be notified by email and the information will be available in the back office, as a quote to complete or as a new file.

Documentation sharing

NEO6 back-office allows to attach documents to each transport files. If set as public, it becomes automatically accessible to your client through the portal.

If your client upload documents on the portal (ex.:Commercial invoice), it becomes automatically available in the back-office.

Less emails!

NEO6 software for Freight forwarders

NEO6, is a complete ERP software solution for Small & Medium Canadian Freight Forwarders. This complete solution integrates operations (Air, Ocean and Ground), sales and accounting under one single comprehensive package. You will not need another software.

It is incredibly easy to use. In less than one hour, your operation people will be able to create shipments, print documentations, handle costs and generate invoices.

It is the most affordable specialized ERP on the market. You will quickly benefit from optimizing your operations and getting a 360 view of your company activities, both from an operational and an accounting point of view.

NEO6 offers a full set of functions to cover all your company operations: Air, Ocean, Ground, Import, Export, Domestic, Direct & Consolidations, Documentation, P&L, AirWaybills management, Incoterms, Transport Canada Air Cargo Security Program, etc...

NEO6 integrates a complete accounting module designed for the industry: Accounts Receivable, Operation Payables, Accrual Expenses Management, Multi-Currencies, General Ledger, Financial Statements, etc...

We can adapt our software and do customized development when needed.

Call us at +1 438 538-7635 or drop us a line at info@neo-6.com.

Let's see how we can help.

 

USA Coronavirus travel ban from Europe, an opportunity for Canadian Freight Forwarders

USA Coronavirus travel ban from Europe may create a short term good impact on Canadian air freight industry: Canada will become the port of entry to USA for air freight! There are opportunities everywhere. Time to be agile and efficient.

Discover NEO6 an Affordable Software for Canadian Sufferance Warehouses

NEO6 will help you offer outstanding services to your clients and will make your organization more efficient.

NEO6 provides you with functions to manage all warehousing and pickup/deliveries operations through an intuitive easy to learn and easy to use package:

Import Check-in, Export Check-in, Cross dock, Long term storage. Pickup&Deliveries, Auto-rating. Quick billing. Integrated accounting. Secure web access for your clients. EDI. Complete accounting.

A ton of features in an affordable and easy to use software!

Learn more here

4 Keys for your lean business. Why small Freight Forwarders should not use Simply Accounting or Quickbooks.

Most of small freight forwarders are using a combination of software for their daily operations and accounting. For example, they would use spreadsheets or specialized systems for operations and a standard accounting package such as Simply Accounting or Quickbooks for billing and for getting their financials.

While these accounting software are full of features and are fit for a lot of businesses, they lack some important features that are keys for freight forwarders. Let me enumerate a few ones and compare it to our integrated software for small Canadian Freight Forwarders.

Multi Currency

Most of the small accounting packages on the market are not really built for multi-currency. For example, when you bill your same client in USD, CAD and EUR, you would have to create 3 separate accounts in the system. Sending a unique statement to your client becomes impossible. Also, forget about maintaining a CAD credit limit.

NEO6 let you bill your client in different currencies without any problem. All under a single account. The statements will show the invoices grouped by currencies and you will be able to establish a credit limit in Canadian dollars. The system will take in consideration the current exchange rate to calculate the current value of the account.

Accrual Expenses

It is hard to maintain the amounts of provision to keep for upcoming invoices. Especially in maritime freight, the delays between the time you gave orders to vendors and the time you receive the actual invoices could be very long.

With NEO6, each purchase order is entered in the appropriate transport file. It updates immediately your GL accrual expense account, in the proper currency. When you receive invoices from vendors, against these purchase orders, it is also affecting the account immediately. When you look at your financials, you know exactly and immediately your real profit, taking the provisions in consideration.

Profit Analysis

When using separate operation and accounting system, getting the profit per file (or per client, or per agent, or per carrier, etc...) requires a lot of manipulation. Since the costs and the invoices are produced on the accounting side, you must reference it in each transaction. Since your files are not known by your accounting software, it cannot be looked up so it is easy to do errors.

In NEO6, each operation related transaction - purchase order, vendor invoice or client invoice - is entered in each transport file. The profit analysis per file is live and easy to get.

Fully Integrated

When you have a separate accounting system, the data has to be duplicated. In most of the case, your accountant must retype information and work purchases in parallel. In the best scenario, the information is pushed electronically to accounting. In any cases, maintaining two sets of information lends to more work, errors and desynchronized information.

NEO6 integrates operation modules and accounting modules in a single comprehensive system. All data is within the same database. Your information is always up to date. As soon an operation person does a work order or an invoice, it is immediately reflected in your financials.

Conclusion

Simply Accounting, Quick books and all other standard accounting packages are nice and efficient for a lot of small businesses. Due to the particularity of the freight forwarding company operations, it is definitely not the best fit for your company.

If you want to be lean and efficient, and if you want to have a 360 visibility on your numbers, you need an integrated software that will transparently work for operation and accounting.

NEO6 is a complete software designed specifically for small Canadian Freight Forwarders. It is easy to learn and easy to use. It is affordable. It handles all your mode of transport, Air, Ocean and Ground, for your Import, Export and Domestic shipments. And it integrates a complete accounting module.

Get more information here.

3 Ways to boost your Freight Forwarding Business

Grow your Freight Forwarder Business!

Starting a one-person freight forwarder business is relatively easy: A good knowledge of the industry, some good contacts, a phone and a desk let you start quickly a little operation. The real challenge is to grow it to a sustainable level. Then you have to build a good team, to organize and manage a lot more traffic, to handle a bigger cash flow, etc... while maintaining clients happy and chasing new prospects. Eventually you, as an owner, spend a lot more time managing your organization instead of focusing on the growth.

This is the time to get organized.

1 - Industrialize your operations

Finding good people is hard. Make sure you provide your team with the best tools, so they are efficient and spend more time helping your clients instead of spending time on tedious tasks. An ERP Software like NEO6 help them in their daily operations such as producing the transport documentation (Air Waybill, Bill of Lading, Manifest, etc...), managing the shipment costs, billing the files, etc... It simplifies their life every day. It is about optimizing your organization.

2 - Provide yourself with a 360 vision

A freight forwarding business involves a lot of data to handle. As your business grow, it becomes very hard to follow everything: Making sure all shipments are on track, ensuring that each shipment is properly billed, controlling costs involved in these shipments, etc...

NEO6 provides you with a 360 degrees vision on your operation. You can easily view the status of each shipments, you can quickly control the tasks that have been done, you can analyze the profitability by file, by client, by agent, etc....

3 - Integrate your accounting

When you grow, things are going faster, and you cannot anymore have an accounting system that is not completely in sync with your operations.

Because NEO6 comes with its own complete accounting module, especially build for the industry, you also have a real time view of your financials.

Your solution: NEO6.

Quick start

Unlike most of the software on market, NEO6 is really easy to implement. You team don't have to spend days figuring how it works. They will take advantage of the software minutes after starting using it.

"Less is More"

We believe that complexity should be hidden from the users. We work harder to make it easier for you. Although it is complete and powerful, NEO6 is definitely the easiest software to learn and use.

Affordable

NEO6 is provider as a service ("SaaS", Software as a Service). Our monthly fees are the best deal on the market.

No risk.

We are 100% confident about our work. There is no long term commitment so you can easily leave if you are not satisfied.... which we don't believe you would ever. :-)

Learn more about NEO6 here or drop us an email at info@neo-6.com.

Canadian Freight Forwarding software specifically designed for SME

As a small to medium size Freight Forwarder, you have a lot of challenges to address: Growing sales, defending existing client base against aggressive competition, offering top notch service to more demanding clients, searching good rates, maintaining cash flow, etc.... the list goes forever. Time is limited. You want to streamline your company's operations to improve efficiencies, reduce costs and increase your organization's growth.

A Freight Forwarding software that covers all aspects of your company operations can help you in multiple ways:

• Enhance employee's productivity
• Provide a real-time vision of your operations
• Improve your customer service
• Increase your control
• Etc...

On the other hand, an integrated software can be costly, complex to implement and hard to learn. So selecting the good software for your organization becomes critical.

Some points should be put in consideration when choosing the appropriate software for your organization:

• Does it perform the basic tasks you are expecting ? (obvious)
• How easy it is to do these tasks ? This is key. As a SME, your job is not to run an IT department.
• How easy it is to learn ? You don't want to spend time and time learning software.
• How flexible is it ? As a small/medium size company, your survival is linked to your flexibility. You need a software that can adapt quickly to your needs.
• How personalized is the support ? Is the software provider offering personalized support and enhancement if need be ? Will you be a little number for them or will you be able to create a close relationship with them ?

NEO6, is a complete ERP software solution for Small & Medium Canadian Freight Forwarders. This complete solution integrates operations (Air, Ocean and Ground), sales and accounting under one single comprehensive package. You will not need another software.

It is incredibly easy to use. In less than one hour, your operation people will be able to create shipments, print documentations, handle costs and generate invoices.

It is the most affordable specialized ERP on the market. You will quickly benefit from optimizing your operations and getting a 360 view of your company activities, both from an operational and an accounting point of view.

NEO6 offers a full set of functions to cover all your company operations: Air, Ocean, Ground, Import, Export, Domestic, Direct & Consolidations, Documentation, P&L, AirWaybills management, Incoterms, Transport Canada Air Cargo Security Program, etc...

NEO6 integrates a complete accounting module designed for the industry: Accounts Receivable, Operation Payables, Accrual Expenses Management, Multi-Currencies, General Ledger, Financial Statements, etc...

We have designed NEO6 with the small and medium size Freight Forwarder in head. We are passionate with our job. Our focus is to create cool, functional and easy to use solution. We treat our clients as partners because we grow with them.

Click here to learn more about NEO6 for Freight Forwarder or drop us a quick email at info@neo-6.com so we can discuss how we can help your organization.

Are you ready for the upcoming changes in the Transport Canada Air Cargo Security Program?

Under amendments to the Canadian Aviation Security Regulations (2012), Transport Canada will be introducing changes to its Air Cargo Security Program. These amendments will increase the effectiveness of the secure supply chain as well as to align the Canadian practices with the international standards.

The upcoming changes of the regulations will enforce participants in the Air Cargo Security program to comply with the new requirements of Transport Canada, based on the category they apply for.

Participants must ensure that the cargo remains secure through verifiable chain-of-custody procedures. Once the program is fully enforced (October 2016), only participants will be able to handle, store, transport, screen cargo for air transport within the supply chain and maintaining its secure status.

Basically the program changes have the following objectives:

- Meet the ICAO aviation security standards

- Reduce the risks to the safety and security

- Keeps goods moving by air efficiently

To achieve these objectives, several changes will be introduced to respect the following principles:

- Participants in the Air Cargo Security Program will be trusted.  That will be done through various measures such as inspection and enforcement activities from Transport Canada.

- Cargo will be screened and secured by authorized participants using Transport Canada prescribed methods.

- Secure status of the cargo will be maintains through verifiable chain-of-custody procedures implemented by participants.

(Click here for some details on the program)

These new rules will have a tremendous impact on the industry, from the shippers to Air carriers, Freight forwarders, Trucking companies andWarehouses operators that are on the front line and must be ready for these changes. In the current phase, Transport Canada will be processing applications to the Air Cargo Security program starting October 2015.

ISS CONSULTING & TRAINING can assist your organization with the Air Cargo Security program.  Our team of consultants can help you throughout the whole process, from the initial application until Transport Canada confirms your acceptance.

This program is an on-going support.  Save your time and your resources by letting us help you implement and follow the Air Cargo Security Program without pain.

Compliance assistance plan for Freight Forwarders, Trucking Companies and Warehouse operators 

ISS CONSULTING & TRAINING offers an easy and affordable plan to help Freight Forwarders, Trucking Companies and Warehouse operators to be 100% compliant with the program.  Click here for information on this plan...

Compliance assistance for Airlines 

Our team has the expertise to help Airlines maintaining their compliance with the program as well as helping their clients to become "Known consignor" so they can avoid bottlenecks. Click here to see how we can help you as an airline...

Compliance assistance for Shippers 

If you ship cargo by air, you need to get register as a "Known consignor" so your screen your own cargo and avoid screening cost and delay at the airport.  Click here to get help...

Contact ISS CONSULTING & TRAINING now at +1 514-447-4324 or email us at info@group-iss.com.