Forward-IT — Modern Transport Management System for Freight Forwarders

Forward-IT is a multi-tenant transport management system built specifically for freight forwarders and third-party logistics providers. Whether you're running ocean container shipments through Antwerp or Rotterdam, air freight from Brussels or Schiphol, or road transport across the Benelux and beyond, Forward-IT consolidates your operations, documentation, costing, and invoicing into one modern web platform. No more juggling spreadsheets, email threads, and a legacy TMS — every shipment lives in a single workspace from quotation to delivery to invoice settlement.

A modern transport management system should match how freight forwarders actually work, not impose a heavyweight enterprise workflow on a small operations team. Forward-IT is designed by people who have shipped real freight, so the fields that matter on a real bill of lading — parties, references, charges, container seals, VGM, cargo dimensions, dangerous-goods declarations — are first-class citizens. The platform is mode-aware: sea shipments expose master and house bill-of-lading tabs, air shipments use IATA airport codes and chargeable-weight aware cargo summaries, and road shipments produce CMR-ready paperwork from the same shipment record.

What you can do in Forward-IT

Every feature below is built, tested, and live in the platform today — there is no "premium tier" of capabilities held back. The free and paid plans differ only in shipment volume.

Multi-mode shipments: sea (FCL / LCL), air, and road (FTL / LTL) with a unified workflow. Cargo lines, containers, milestones, and documents all live on one detail page per shipment.
Branded PDF documents: generate booking confirmations, master and house bills of lading (HBL / MBL), master and house air waybills (HAWB / MAWB), CMR road waybills, arrival notices, delivery orders, cargo manifests, and more — every document carries your forwarder's logo, address, and banking details automatically.
Offers and quotes: structured customer quotations that import directly into a shipment's cost sheet when accepted, keeping buy and sell prices in sync from day one.
Invoicing: build customer invoices from already-quoted shipment costs, with the system filtering out anything already invoiced. Branded PDFs include your logo, address, payment terms, and bank details. Multi-currency with per-invoice FX rates.
Milestone tracking: a mix of manual milestones and automatic ones (pickup, departure, arrival, delivery) feeds the tracking page and surfaces overdue or delayed shipments on the dashboard.
Document repository: upload bills of lading, packing lists, certificates of origin, customs forms, and dangerous-goods declarations. Files are scoped per shipment and per company, with signed download URLs that expire.
Financial reports: aging report, customer statements of account, P&L per shipment, volume by mode and lane, inactive-clients report, milestones KPI, user activity and performance. Every report exports to CSV, Excel, and branded PDF.
Multi-tenant security: built on Postgres row-level security so each freight forwarder's company data is isolated at the database level. Roles cover admin, manager, operator, and viewer.

One transport management system, every freight mode

Sea Freight

Full container load (FCL) and less-than-container load (LCL) flows with a built-in seaports database. Each ocean shipment has dedicated master B/L and house B/L tabs with the full carrier party list — shipper, consignee, notify party, also-notify, forwarding agent, and so on. Container management captures container number, seal number, VGM, gross weight, package count, and stuffing details. Forward-IT generates bills of lading that match real carrier formats: hard-bordered grids, particulars-furnished-by-shipper clause, prepaid/collect indicators, and the standard "received by the carrier" legal clause.

Air Freight

Air-specific workflow with airline carriers and an IATA airport directory. Each air shipment has master and house AWB tabs with all the references — flight number, departure airport, arrival airport, weight breakdown, dimensions. The cargo summary is chargeable-weight aware so the higher of actual versus volumetric weight drives the rate calculation automatically. Generated HAWB and MAWB PDFs follow IATA conventions.

Road Freight

Full truck load (FTL) and less-than-truckload (LTL) with road carriers, hub lookups, and CMR waybill paperwork. Pickup and drop-off references, route legs, and trucking-order documents to road carriers.

Built for freight forwarders, used in real ports

Forward-IT is used in and around major European port communities including the Port of Antwerp-Bruges (with future integration planned for C-point and NxtPort APIs), Port of Rotterdam (with Portbase integration on the roadmap), and the Belgian and Dutch road and rail networks. Industry conventions you'd expect — Incoterms 2020 references, HS code fields, IATA airport codes, UN/LOCODE seaport codes — are baked into the platform. The transport management system aligns with European freight forwarder workflows as defined by FIATA, CLECAT, and IATA standards.

Simple, transparent pricing

Start free with up to 10 shipments per month and 5 user seats — every Forward-IT feature is included on the free tier, with no functional limits. Upgrade to the Base plan at $40 per month for unlimited shipments and the same 5 seats. Add more user seats from $5 per month each, or $25 per month for a pack of 10 (a smaller per-seat rate that suits larger ops teams). Cancel anytime. All prices are in USD, billed monthly via Stripe with self-serve invoicing and payment management.

Frequently asked questions about Forward-IT

Who is Forward-IT for?

Freight forwarders, 3PLs, and small-to-mid logistics providers handling sea, air, or road shipments who want to replace a patchwork of spreadsheets, email threads, and a legacy TMS with one modern transport management system. Typical customers run 50–500 shipments per month per office.

How does onboarding work?

The Forward-IT team manually provisions your company and the first admin user. Once you're in, you invite the rest of your team via email — invitees set their own password and land directly in the platform. Onboarding typically takes 30 minutes for a small team.

Is my data secure?

The platform is built on Supabase / Postgres with row-level security so every query is automatically scoped to your forwarder's company. Files live in private storage with signed download URLs that expire. We follow GDPR Article 28 obligations as a data processor — see the Data Processing Agreement for the full breakdown.

Does it support multiple currencies?

Yes. Costs, selling rates, and invoices each carry their own currency and FX rate, so your per-shipment P&L reflects the freight forwarder's main reporting currency.

What's on the roadmap?

Direct integration with C-point Belgium and Portbase Netherlands customs APIs, AI-assisted document extraction and B/L drafting, consolidated shipment groupings (LCL co-loads), and more PDF templates for niche document types.

Forward-IT — a transport management system built for freight forwarders, by freight forwarders. Request a demo or log in to your account.

Loading application…