Freight broker software with margin in view from quote to carrier bill
Price the customer, source the carrier and keep both sides of every load straight. As freight broker software, Kargentra holds sell price, expected buy, actual cost and margin as separate facts, shows your customer only the sell, and matches each carrier bill against what was tendered, so a variance can be disputed rather than written off.
What gets in the way today
Margin discovered after the fact
Customer quotes live in spreadsheets and the real carrier cost turns up with the bill. By the time anyone sees the margin on a load, the next ten have already been priced the same way.
Carrier vetting in a shared folder
Insurance certificates and qualifications are checked once at onboarding and forgotten. A carrier whose cover lapsed last week can still be booked, because nothing re-checks at dispatch.
Tender rejections cost hours
When a carrier declines or lets a tender lapse, someone picks the next name by hand, sometimes offering the load to a carrier that already said no. Coverage slips while the phone rings.
Customers see too much, or too little
Status updates are copied into emails, and a forwarded thread can expose buy rates. Customers call for updates the record could have answered, and confidence suffers on both sides.
Carrier bills that do not match
Accessorials appear that were never agreed, and detention is billed without evidence. Variances are written off because opening a dispute means a week of email.
Paperwork scattered across inboxes
Proof of delivery, rate confirmations and receipts arrive in different inboxes. Invoicing the customer means assembling a file by hand, and one missing page holds up the whole load.
How Kargentra changes the work
Quote to margin before the load exists
The commercial desk prices a customer sell quote against carrier buy options and sees expected gross margin before any shipment is formed. Quotes are versioned, pass commercial approval, then go to the customer, and a change after the offer creates a successor version.
- Customers accept or decline the price in their own portal
- Customers see the sell price only, never buy cost or margin
- A quote is never a booking
Carrier 360 with live qualification
Every carrier in your network has one Carrier 360 page and a directory standing: cannot be used, undecided, act soon or nothing outstanding. Qualification requirements are held against the carrier with their expiry dates, so vetting is a live verdict rather than a folder checked once at onboarding.
Spot quotes compared on more than price
Invite carriers to quote on a movement and compare up to three on qualification, service fit, track record and the rate-card baseline. Awarding a quote needs a reason, and no carrier ever sees a competitor’s price.
Tender recovery by rule
You set the carrier order, a not-to-exceed cap and an attempt limit once for each lane. When a tender is declined or lapses, the routing guide offers the load to the next eligible carrier by rule, or holds it with a named reason such as guide exhausted or cap exceeded.
Execution both sides can trust
Tracking is labelled by source and freshness, and delivery risk opens an owned exception case. Customers follow confirmed milestones in their portal, and exact vehicle position is shared only when you switch it on for that account.
Freight audit and disputes on one record
Each carrier bill is matched against the tendered expectation and your performed cost, and the variance is stated, never assumed. A variance opens a commercial dispute with reasons, evidence and proposals, and an agreed increase on the customer side becomes a supplemental invoice.
- Seven standard dispute reasons, from rate variance to duplicate charge
- Missing money reads “Not recorded”, never zero
Price the customer against real carrier options
The quotes queue shows each customer quote with its state, sell price, margin, validity and commercial approval. Inside a quote, carrier buy options sit beside the sell with expected margin for each, so the desk can see the trade-off before the offer goes out.
- Commercial approval before any offer reaches the customer
- Validity windows in UTC, so a quote expires when it says it will
- Accepting a quote records sell terms; it does not form a shipment
Know every carrier before you book them
Carrier 360 builds each carrier’s record from what actually happened on your loads: how often it answers, how often it accepts, how quickly, and how many bookings and movements it completed. The Carrier Network Action Center raises lapsed tenders, blocked carriers, expiring qualifications and stale capability before they cost a load.
- Blocking reasons, warnings and unresolved facts listed separately
- Versioned carrier agreements with effective windows and evidence
- Declared capacity by lane, clearly marked as indicative
A tender waterfall that never re-offers a declined load
Tenders go to carriers in routing-guide order with an answer-by deadline. A decline or a lapse moves the load to the next eligible carrier within the cap, and the whole sequence is visible on the movement, so a coverage problem is a named state rather than a surprise.
- Recovery switched on per tenant, per lane
- Queue chips for awaiting an answer, lapsing within a day and sent back
- Accepted, booked and dispatched kept as separate states
The modules that matter most here
- Transportation ManagementBrokerage quotes, carrier sourcing, routing guides, tendering, dispatch release and the close from delivery to Finance.Explore TMS
- Carrier Network & PortalYour carriers quote, accept tenders, confirm bookings, nominate resources, file evidence and answer disputes in their own portal.Explore Carrier
- Customer PortalShippers accept quoted prices, follow confirmed milestones, download documents and dispute an invoice line with evidence.Explore Customer
- Freight Finance & BillingSell, buy, accessorial and margin facts per load, freight audit, disputes in both directions and customer invoicing.Explore Finance
- Control Tower & Live TrackingLive execution, source-labelled tracking and governed exception recovery across every covered load.Explore Control Tower
- Collaboration CenterRecord-anchored threads with carriers and customers, with internal notes that never reach an external party.Explore Collaboration
Freight Brokers: frequently asked questions
What should freight broker software include?
At minimum: customer quoting with margin, carrier onboarding and qualification, sourcing and tendering, execution tracking, carrier bill audit and customer invoicing. The difference that matters is whether these share one record. In Kargentra the quote, the carrier award, the tender, the delivery evidence, the carrier bill and the customer invoice all sit on the same load, so margin and disputes are traced to facts.
How does Kargentra track margin per load?
Margin is tracked from the first quote. Expected margin is shown on each carrier buy option before the offer, the frozen carrier buy is recorded beside the quote-time estimate once a tender is accepted, and the realised position updates when the carrier bill is matched. Each figure keeps the rate rule version behind it, and amounts in different currencies are never summed or converted silently.
How are carriers vetted before booking?
Each carrier has a qualification verdict built from the requirements held against it, with blocking reasons, warnings and unresolved facts listed separately and expiry dates in view. A carrier that cannot be used is excluded from sourcing, and insurance and qualification are checked again at dispatch readiness, so a lapse after onboarding still stops the load.
Can customers accept quotes themselves?
Yes. Once a quote has passed commercial approval and been offered, the customer accepts or declines the price in the Customer Portal under its own permission. The customer only ever sees the sell price and validity, never your buy options or margin, and the accepted quote becomes the recorded sell terms for the load.
What happens when a carrier rejects a tender?
If tender recovery is switched on for the lane, the routing guide offers the load to the next eligible carrier within the not-to-exceed cap and the attempt limit. A carrier that declined, let the tender lapse or cancelled is never offered the same load again. When no option remains, the load is held with a named reason for a person to act on.
How does Kargentra handle accessorials and billing disputes?
Accessorials such as detention, redelivery and layover are recorded as their own facts against the load. When a carrier bill differs from the tendered expectation, the variance can open a commercial dispute with a reason, evidence and proposals from both sides. Outcomes are explicit, from keeping the expected value to agreeing an adjusted one.
Further reading
- Guide · 9 min readFreight audit and billing readiness, explainedThe freight audit process step by step, why delivery evidence decides billing readiness, common invoice errors and how disputes are resolved.
- Guide · 10 min readWhat is a transportation management system (TMS)?What a TMS does, how it works from transport demand to freight audit and billing, who uses one and how to evaluate it without being sold a map.
- Guide · 9 min readAI in logistics operations: assist, propose, approveWhere AI helps logistics teams today, what data it needs, and the guardrails that keep advice from turning into unapproved action.
See Kargentra run your operation
A working session on your lanes, your sites and your hand-offs: order to invoice, on one record.