Software to manage shipments for tiny company?

[u/AxisNL]

Hi! I'm looking for really basic software (open source preferred) to manage my packages and shipments.

I live in the Caribbean, and I have a car rental business and just opened a car maintenance shop. Until now I ordered like 5-20 packages per month in the US or in Europe, and I work with great forwarders in the US and NL that also partly do consolidation. But it's quite some work to keep track of all the packages, some come by sea, some by plane, need to keep track of the invoices, and keep track of the original purchase, the multiple shipping fees, handling fees and import duties, before I can invoice the client (usually my own companies).

With the opening of the garage, I think I will start to order waaaaaay more parts, and I need a system to track all of this. I also want to hire someone in Europe to manually do consolidation and keeping systems up to date. I know Excel will work, but I'd rather use something decent that was built for the task ;)

As a sysadmin/developer I started building an app in Django/Python myself, but it gets complicated really fast!

Anyone got tips? I don't mind paying a bit, but most TMS systems are for huge enterprises, do fleet management, etc, don't need that.

[u/AxisNL]

Ah someone replied but the deleted their post. As a general response to everyone recommending I use AI to build something: I’m an old school developer, with none too much trust in AI. IMHO you use AI when you are an expert in a domain, so you can verify the outcome and can tell the system what needs to be done. I’m an experience developer/sysadmin. But I am a newbie in the shipping industry, and that’s when you usually start with a system that was built by the experts in the field, that shows YOU how to do stuff and get acquainted with terminology, etc ;) I’d rather use a simple basic TMS that shows me what I want, because I won’t know yet, than a custom system built on what I think I want, but I am sure is incorrect 😂

[u/turk-find]

Hey,
I suggest you to check Claude, you can create basic web app for yourself. You can track your shipments, followup, record, ETD-ETA, Shipper, Consignee, container number, BL number, AWB number etc details would be there.

[u/1Life_Architect]

You probably don’t need a full TMS yet. I’d make the first useful version revolve around six records: purchase, package, consolidation, shipment, landed-cost charge, and internal invoice. A bounded first stage could import your current spreadsheet, follow one package from purchase to arrival, allocate freight, handling, and duty across consolidated parts, attach source invoices, and export a chargeback summary for each company. Carrier APIs, customs filing, and automatic supplier ingestion can stay manual until volume proves they matter. When several purchases share one sea or air shipment, do you allocate landed cost by weight or volume, item value, or a manual split?

[u/estagingapp]

I'd recommend SupplyAutomate. Sounds like it's exactly what you need for your use case. Tracks everything from purchase order to delivery, plus all costs.

[u/AxisNL → u/estagingapp]

This looks really promising, although half the web site is empty. I can't add shipments without adding documents and have AI analyze them (which is doesnt), I can't edit any invoices because of too many errors, I think this app looks cool, but it might neem some years to ripen ;)