Help & Guides
How to use Cargolake, module by module.
Getting started
What Cargolake is, how to sign in, and how to find your way around the workspace.
- What Cargolake isAn overview of the platform and the modules your team will use day to day.
- Following a job from enquiry to cashOne shipment's whole life through the system, showing which module does what and where the handoffs are.
- Signing inHow to log in, how long your session lasts, and what to do when you are signed out unexpectedly.
- Finding your way aroundThe sidebar, why your menu differs from a colleague's, and how list pages and forms behave.
- How permissions workAbilities and roles — the two layers that decide what you can see and do, and why seniority matters.
- Where to start, by jobThe short reading list for your role — sales, operations, billing, accounts payable, credit control or administration.
Account & access
Users, roles, your company's members and seats, and your own profile.
- Adding and managing usersCreate user accounts, edit their details, reset passwords, and assign or revoke their roles.
- Building rolesHow to compose a role from abilities, and how to keep permissions tight without blocking work.
- Your companyWhat your company record holds, how to manage members and seats, and what the subscription status means.
- Inviting people to your companyGenerate an invitation link, what the recipient sees, and how to handle links that do not work.
- Your profile and settingsWhat Settings shows you, how to change your own details and password, and how to check your own permissions.
CRM
Leads, companies, contacts, activities and customer profiles — everything before the job starts.
- Working with leadsCapture a prospect, record what happened, and qualify it into a company you can trade with.
- CompaniesThe customer record — commercial terms, classification, credit, tags and balances.
- Activities and notesLog visits and calls against a lead or company, and keep internal notes separate from customer-facing records.
- ContactsThe people at a company or customer profile, and what the load type on a contact is for.
- Customer profilesWhen one company needs more than one trading arrangement, and how profiles connect to contracts and credit.
Quotations
Pricing a job — quotations, cost and charge lines, contracts, tariffs and the codes prices are built from.
- Creating a quotationRaise a quotation, describe the cargo, and understand the status it moves through.
- Pricing a quotationCost lines and charge lines, the units prices are calculated in, and how to confirm and send.
- How pricing is calculatedThe exact calculation — what each unit multiplies by, the three-phase order, conditions, minimum charge, VAT and currency conversion.
- Contracts and tariffsStanding rate agreements — customer contracts, agent tariffs and warehouse tariffs — and how they pre-fill a quotation.
- Quotation types, codes and groupsThe configuration behind quotations — quotation types, quotation roles, charge codes, billing codes and cost line groups.
Shipments
Running the job — shipments, cargo, containers, and the workflows that move them along.
- The shipment recordCreating a shipment, the parties and dates it holds, and what its status and hold flag mean.
- Cargo, packages and containersDescribing what is actually moving — packages, weights, hazardous detail and container data.
- WorkflowsThe steps a shipment moves through, how a workflow is defined, and what changing one affects.
- Running a transitionHow a shipment moves from one step to the next, what can block it, and what happens automatically afterwards.
- Master shipments, containers and voyagesConsolidations, the containers inside them, and the vessel voyages that carry them.
- Splitting and merging shipmentsBreaking one shipment into several, combining several into one, and the rules that must hold before either is allowed.
- The form builderDesigning the forms that transitions present — sections, field types, validation and conditional visibility.
- Shipment configurationShipment types, packaging, shipment roles, subscription groups and shipment customers.
Catalog
The shared reference data everything else points at — ports, agents, warehouses, vessels and containers.
- Reference data overviewWhat lives in the catalog, why it matters that it is shared, and the discipline that keeps it usable.
- Ports, agents, warehouses and carriersThe parties and places — maintaining ports, agents and their offices, storage companies, warehouses, shipping lines and airlines.
- Containers, vessels and voyagesContainer types versus physical containers versus containers on a movement, and the vessel and voyage records.
Invoices
Billing the customer — invoices, credit notes, invoice types and VAT submission.
- InvoicesWhat an invoice holds, the three company roles on it, payment status and printing.
- Credit notesCorrecting or reducing an issued invoice, line by line, without editing the original.
- Invoice typesThe templates that govern how invoices behave — what can be edited, what publishes automatically, and how lines are matched.
- The VAT portalSubmitting invoices to the tax authority in batches, and reading the results when some fail.
Expenses
Paying suppliers — vendor invoices, custody payment requests, charge lines awaiting cost and period closing.
- Vendor invoicesRecording what a supplier has billed you, allocating it to the jobs it belongs to, and getting it approved.
- Custody payment requestsAdvancing cash to a representative for port and clearance fees, then reconciling what was actually spent.
- Quotation charge lines and closed periodsThe working list of charge lines still awaiting cost, and locking a month once it is finished.
Finance
The ledger — chart of accounts, journals, posting rules, bank and treasury, tax, and financial reports.
- The chart of accountsGL accounts, account types and normal balance — the structure everything posts into.
- JournalsHow entries reach the ledger, what a journal holds, and when a manual journal is the right answer.
- Posting rulesHow business events become journal entries automatically — sources, conditions, lines and account resolution.
- Bank, treasury and chequesBank accounts and statement matching, cash locations and their transactions, and the cheque lifecycle.
- Tax groups, tariff codes, exchange rates and configurationThe settings the ledger depends on — VAT groups, tariff codes, currency conversion and default account mappings.
- Financial reports and the event logTrial balance, income statement, balance sheet, bank reconciliation — and how to find a posting that never arrived.
Exceptions
Decisions the system cannot make on its own — the approval queue and who is routed to it.
Transactions
The running record of a customer's credit exposure, entry by entry.
Reference
Glossary, frequently asked questions and troubleshooting.