How a Singapore freight forwarder cut quoting time from days to seconds with Odoo

The challenge

Operating out of Singapore as a regional hub for global trade lanes across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific meant the client's freight operation touched air cargo, ocean shipping (FCL/LCL), land trucking, and express couriers, often on the same shipment. Landed cost calculations, factoring base unit cost, setup fees, international freight tariffs, and customs duties, lived in disconnected spreadsheets, and margin quietly eroded every time a rate changed and nobody updated the sheet.

Calculating dimensional weight limits and carrier maximum package thresholds by hand delayed shipping quotations by days at a time. Air, sea, courier, and land freight lines were tracked in separate sheets with no shared visibility into sales orders, purchase orders, or forwarder assignments. Preparing factory delivery notes, customs declarations, commercial invoices, and packing lists meant double data entry, which regularly caused clearance delays at major ports. And serving buyers across multiple regions required localized shipping rules and currency price lists without forcing every visitor through a rigid site redirect.

Why Odoo and Why GritXi?

The client needed dynamic landed cost calculation, live carrier rate lookups, multi-modal freight tracking, and export documentation generation all working from the same order data, a combination that generic freight software and generic ERP systems each only partly cover.

They chose Odoo because its Sales, Inventory, and Accounting modules could be extended into a true freight forwarding platform, keeping quoting, cost, and documentation in one system instead of bolting a freight tool onto the side. They chose GritXi because GritXi had already built the specific pieces this required (including the landed cost formula engine, the carrier API integration with automated volumetric splitting, and the one-click export document generator) instead of proposing a generic TMS integration.

The approach

GritXi built a connected logistics platform spanning pricing, carrier rates, multi-modal tracking, and export documentation:

Dynamic landed cost engine

Sales prices are calculated automatically from minimum order quantities, base unit cost, setup cost, freight cost, customs duty tariffs, and attribute-level markups, with granular cost rules tied directly to product attributes like dimensions, branding, and packaging type.

Smart carrier and volumetric packaging

Live carrier rate integration calculates shipping cost the moment a product is configured or quoted. When a shipment's dimensions exceed a carrier's single-package weight limit, the system automatically splits it into multiple compliant cartons, and every product line can carry its own independent freight quote.

Multi-modal port-to-port logistics

Port of loading and port of discharge, forwarder carriers, and inspection levels are tracked per order line, with explicit dispatch controls for air, sea, courier, land, and local delivery. Incoterms (EXW, FOB, CIF, DDP) are embedded with automatic freight and duty allocation, and dispatch dates are calculated automatically from order confirmation milestones.

Export documentation and warehouse operations

Factory delivery notes generate with one click straight from stock pickings. Packing lists are customs-compliant by default, with package types, gross and net weights, and shipping marks calculated automatically. Scheduled sync routines keep the product catalog aligned with external 3PL warehouse systems.

Implementation timeline

Total go-live timeline: 9 months from project start to production across all international trade lanes.

The results

A story from the Singapore trade desk

A last-minute air freight shipment to Europe arrived at the warehouse with dimensions that pushed one carton just over the carrier's single-package weight limit. Under the old process, this kind of discrepancy was often caught only at the carrier's counter, sometimes after the truck had already left, triggering a costly re-packaging fine and a missed flight connection.

On the new system, the volumetric weight engine flagged the overweight carton the moment the packing list was generated, automatically splitting it into two compliant cartons and recalculating the landed cost in the same step. The export documentation and updated packing list were ready in under 30 seconds, and the shipment made its original flight with no fine, no delay, and no manual recheck at the dock.

What the client said

Illustrative case study prepared for industry publication. Client identifiers are anonymized.

Technology used

• Odoo modules: Sales, Inventory, Purchase, Accounting, Website eCommerce
• GritXi custom builds: Dynamic landed cost formula engine, carrier rate API integration with automated volumetric weight splitting, multi-modal port-to-port freight tracking, Incoterms-aware cost allocation, automated factory delivery notes & export packing lists, multi-region geo selector for cross-border storefronts