Import & export management software with honest landed costs.
A consignment is more than a goods price: freight in one currency, insurance in another, customs duty at the border. Caravan Trade keeps every cost line in the currency it was billed in — and the lot trail that connects the shipment back to the consignment.
The margin you quoted isn't the margin you made
Import and export margins die in the gaps — a freight bill that lands three weeks late, a duty payment on a different spreadsheet, a consignment nobody can trace.
Trade in spreadsheets
- Freight and duty converted by hand, at whatever rate someone remembered
- Costs blended into the goods price — the real landed cost is anyone's guess
- Foreign addresses mangled by forms that insist on domestic states
- A quality claim on a shipment, and no way to say which consignment it was
- Part-shipments invoiced twice, or not at all
Trade in Caravan Trade
- Every cost line kept in the currency it was invoiced in
- Goods total stays pure — costs shown as their own per-currency breakdown
- Country-aware addresses that keep a foreign province exactly as typed
- Every dispatch attributed to the consignment receipts it consumed
- Line-by-line invoicing that computes the remainder and blocks double-billing
Every charge, in the currency it was billed
Landed cost is only honest if nothing is converted before it has to be. Costs live on the order, typed and attributed, next to the goods they belong to.
- Seven cost types
- Shipping, transport, documentation, insurance, handling, customs duty and other — so the freight bill and the duty payment stop hiding in a notes column.
- Billed by any partner
- A cost line names who billed it: the freight forwarder, the clearing agent, the insurer, the transporter. Each is an ordinary business partner with their own record and history.
- Its own currency
- An ocean-freight invoice in dollars stays in dollars; port charges in local currency stay local. Conversion becomes a reporting decision, not a lossy one made at data entry.
- Never folded in
- The order's grand total stays goods plus tax. Costs appear as a per-currency breakdown beside it, so the commercial value of the goods is never corrupted by a late freight bill.
- On both sides
- Purchase orders and sales orders carry cost lines the same way — the export shipment's outbound freight is tracked with the same discipline as the import's inbound.
Partners on any continent, addressed correctly
Most business software quietly assumes every address is domestic. Trading businesses know better.
Country-aware addresses
Pick the partner's country and the form adapts: the postal code is validated for that country, and a foreign region or province is kept exactly as typed — Province, Dubai, Rotterdam-Rijnmond — rather than being forced through a domestic state list.
- Suppliers, customers, transporters and brokers in one partner book
- Separate billing and shipping addresses per partner, with defaults
- Contacts per partner, snapshotted onto the orders they belong to
- Payment and delivery terms per partner, frozen onto each order
- Domestic tax details where they apply — foreign partners simply don't need them
From the shipment on the water to the invoice line
Receiving a purchase-order line opens a batch-tracked lot — so the consignment keeps its identity all the way through your warehouse and out to the buyer.
1. Receive the consignment
The PO line's receipt opens a lot carrying the supplier's batch identity.
2. Cost it honestly
The lot's moving-average cost builds from the receipt; cost lines sit beside it per currency.
3. Allocate to buyers
Sales-order lines choose the lot they ship from — the allocation is a decision you can review.
4. Dispatch with a trail
The issue is attributed to the receipts it consumed, so any shipment traces back to its consignment.
The full mechanics — lots, moving-average costing, the movement ledger — live on the inventory management page.
“Landed cost in the currency you paid it in, cost lines against any partner, and lot history back to the consignment.”
See it on your own trade. Book a 30-minute demo — no credit card, no obligation.Carriers, zones and pallet-level packing
How the goods move is part of the order, not an afterthought in an e-mail thread.
- Carriers & zones
- Keep your carriers, shipping zones and rates in the system, so dispatch decisions work from the same records as everything else.
- Pallets per shipment
- Order lines carry the pallet they ship on and how many — a property of the shipment, not the product. No pallet means it ships loose.
- Packaging per product
- Each line records its packaging beside the pallet, entered in the units on your paperwork and stored exactly.
- Weight-exact quantities
- Bulk goods are tracked to the gram as exact integers, so repeated part-shipments never accumulate rounding drift across a long contract.
- Approval-gated dispatch
- Orders move Draft → Pending approval → Approved, and only an approved order can dispatch or receive — a review step before goods cross a border.
Paperwork that matches the goods
International trade runs on documents. Yours come out of the same system that holds the order, the costs and the lot.
Printed on your letterhead, numbered your way
Orders, invoices and proforma invoices render as PDFs on your own company letterhead, e-mailable to the partner straight from the app. Document numbers follow the schemes you define — your own series and financial-year tokens, computed from the document's business date.
- Proforma invoices as fixed indicative quotes, convertible to real invoices through the normal gates
- Whole-order or line-by-line invoicing with the remainder computed for you
- Attachments on the order — keep the packing list and certificates with the record
- Custom fields per business unit — container number, vessel, port of loading
- Domestic tax handled where it applies, including GST with HSN-wise invoices for Indian entities
The invoicing detail — approvals, numbering, letterhead — lives on the billing & invoicing page.
The complete capability list
No tiers hiding the trade features behind an upgrade. This is what the platform does for importers and exporters.
Landed cost
What the consignment really cost you.
Global partners
Who you trade with, wherever they are.
Consignments
The identity of the goods, preserved.
Operations
Running the trading house around it.
Import–export is wired into the rest of your trade
The consignment's story runs through purchasing, stock, sales and reporting without being re-keyed once.
Purchase orders
Approve, receive and let the receipt open the lot — with the cost lines beside it.
Inventory & lots
Batch-tracked stock, moving-average cost and the ledger that proves the trail.
Billing & invoicing
Proformas, part-shipment invoicing and documents on your letterhead.
Reports & analytics
Purchase, sales, stock and P&L over the same live data — plus plain-English questions.
Questions importers and exporters actually ask
Can I record freight and customs charges in a different currency from the goods?
Yes. Every additional cost line — shipping, transport, documentation, insurance, handling, customs duty — carries its own currency. A consignment bought in one currency can carry an ocean-freight bill in another and local clearing charges in a third, each recorded as invoiced.
Do those charges distort my goods total?
No. The order's grand total stays pure goods plus tax. Additional costs are shown as a per-currency breakdown alongside it, so your landed-cost picture is honest without corrupting the commercial value of the goods.
Who can bill a cost against my order?
Any active business partner — a freight forwarder, a clearing agent, a transporter, an insurer. The cost line records who billed it, what type it is and in which currency, on the same order as the goods.
Can I keep suppliers and buyers outside my home country?
Yes. Partner addresses are country-aware: pick the country and the address keeps its own region or province exactly as typed, with the postal code validated for that country — no domestic-only assumptions forced onto a foreign address.
Can I trace a shipment back to the consignment it came from?
Down to the batch. Receiving a purchase-order line opens a lot, and every outbound dispatch is attributed to the receipts it consumed — so a buyer query traces back to the supplier, the consignment and the receipt date in seconds.
How do part-shipments get invoiced?
Orders can be invoiced whole or line by line. The system computes what is already billed and only invoices the remainder, with each invoice line capped at its source line's quantity — repeated part-shipments can never double-bill.
Does my data sit alongside other companies' data?
No. Every customer gets their own database. Your consignments, costs and partner terms are physically separate, not a tenant column in a shared table.
We also sell domestically — does that work in the same system?
Yes. Domestic sales run through the same orders, stock and invoicing, with local tax handled where it applies (including GST with HSN-wise invoices for Indian entities), so one system covers both sides of the business.
Where to go next
The whole platform
Purchasing, sales, invoicing, partners and reports — the system your consignments move through.
See every module →Pricing
Straightforward plans with multi-currency costs included, not gated behind a tier.
View pricing →Inventory & lots
The batch-level machinery behind the consignment trail.
Read more →See your own consignment, end to end
Thirty minutes, your goods, your routes. We will take a consignment from purchase order through costs, receipt and dispatch to the invoice — and show the trail at the end of it. We usually reply within one business day.
Already a customer? Log in to your back office.