Cargolake is an operations platform for freight forwarders, logistics operators and logistics startups. It replaces the spreadsheets, mailboxes and disconnected tools most forwarding businesses run on with one system that carries a job from first enquiry through to money in the bank.
What it covers
The work is organised into modules. Which ones you see depends on the permissions your administrator has given you — see How permissions work.
| Module | What you do there |
|---|---|
| CRM | Track leads, convert them to companies, record activities and notes, and manage customer credit profiles. |
| Quotations | Price a job: build quotations, apply contracts and tariffs, and manage the charge codes and billing codes prices are made of. |
| Shipments | Run the job: shipments, master shipments, containers and voyages, moved through workflows your business defines. |
| Catalog | The reference data everything else points at — ports, agents, addresses, contacts, containers. |
| Invoices | Bill the customer: invoices, credit notes and invoice types. |
| Expenses | Pay the suppliers: vendor invoices, custody payment requests and charge lines waiting to be costed. |
| Finance | The ledger: chart of accounts, journals, posting rules, bank accounts, cheques, treasury and reporting. |
| Exceptions | Anything that went wrong and needs a decision, queued for the people who can make it. |
| Transactions | A per-company view of financial movement. |
| Administration | Users, roles, legal entities and your own profile. |
How the pieces fit together
The normal path through the system runs left to right:
Lead ──▶ Company ──▶ Quotation ──▶ Shipment ──▶ Invoice ──▶ Ledger
(CRM) (CRM) (Quotations) (Shipments) (Invoices) (Finance)
│
└──▶ Vendor invoice ──▶ Ledger
(Expenses)
Nothing forces you down that path — you can raise a shipment without a quotation, or an invoice without a shipment — but the modules are designed to hand work to each other, and the data flows one way. A quotation carries its priced charge lines into the shipment; the shipment's charge lines become invoice lines and vendor costs; both end up as journal entries in the ledger.
Multi-company
Cargolake is multi-company. Everything you create — customers, shipments, invoices, ledger accounts — belongs to a legal entity, and you only ever see the data of the entity you are signed in under. Reference data such as ports and countries is shared across all of them.
If your group runs more than one forwarding company, each is a separate legal entity with separate books. See Your company.
What Cargolake is not
- It is not a carrier booking portal — it records what you booked, it does not book it for you.
- It is not a warehouse management system, though it does track storage areas and warehouse tariffs.
- It is not an accounting package you file statutory returns from directly; it is a ledger that produces the numbers those returns are built on.
Last updated 9 September 2026