Customers & Contracts

Logistall keeps customer information in three connected places: the customer record itself, a list of contact people at that customer, and — for shippers you’ve negotiated long-term pricing with — rate-agreement contracts. By the end of this page you can set up a new customer ready for their first shipment, keep the right people on file so you always know who to call, spot a customer approaching their credit limit, and record a negotiated agreement so everyone quotes from the same terms.

Set up a customer

The Customers page lists every shipper you do business with.

Scenario: a new shipper has agreed to move their first load with you next week. Before you can book their shipment, they need a customer record.

1. On the Customers page, add a new customer.
2. Fill in the three groups of fields:
   • Identity — a customer code, the organization you’re billing under, and the company name.
   • Contact — a primary contact name, email, phone, billing city, and country.
   • Financial — currency, payment terms (NET15/30/45/60, COD, or Prepaid), credit limit, and active/inactive status.
3. Save. The customer is now available to pick on shipments, quotes, and invoices.

Tip

Set the payment terms and credit limit when you create the record, not later — they’re your guardrails once invoices start flowing, and it’s much easier to agree terms before the first load moves than after.

Watch what a customer owes you

Each customer also tracks an outstanding balance — how much they currently owe you across open invoices. The Customers table highlights the balance when it’s greater than zero, and shows it next to their credit limit so you can see at a glance how close they are to it.

Scenario: a regular customer calls wanting to book three more loads this month. Before you say yes, glance at their row on the Customers page — if their outstanding balance is already brushing against their credit limit, that’s a conversation to have before you take the booking, not after.

Keep the right people on file (CRM contacts)

Beyond the single primary contact on the customer record itself, you can keep a fuller list of people at that company — a CRM-style contacts panel.

The panel appears inline when you’re editing a saved customer (as well as on Carriers and Organizations, since the same panel is reused there). For each contact you can record:

• A name, role, email, phone, and notes.
• One contact marked as primary (shown with a star).

Contacts are added, edited, and removed directly in that panel — there’s no separate contacts page.

Scenario: your day-to-day contact at a customer goes on leave and tells you to call their colleague in dispatch for the next two weeks. Add the colleague to the contacts panel with their role and a note — the next person on your team who opens the customer sees exactly who to call.

Note

The contacts panel only appears once the customer has been saved — add the record first, then reopen it to build out the contact list.

Record a negotiated agreement (rate-agreement contracts)

For customers you’ve negotiated standing pricing with, use the Customer Contracts page to record the agreement itself, so the terms live in Logistall rather than in someone’s inbox.

A contract has:

• A linked customer, a status (draft → active → expired, or terminated), start and end dates, payment terms, an optional credit limit, and notes.
• An auto-invoice flag you can set for contracts you intend to bill automatically against in the future.
• One or more rates nested under the contract — each rate can be scoped by mode, service type, origin city, and destination city (leave any of these blank to mean “any”), with its own base rate, per-kilometer rate, fuel percentage, and currency.

To manage a contract’s rates:

1. Open the saved contract to see its rate list.
2. Select Add under Rates to add a new lane rate, or edit/delete an existing one.

Tip

Use blank scope fields deliberately: a rate with no origin or destination applies to any lane, which is handy for an across-the-board agreed rate — while a fully scoped rate pins down one specific lane.

Caution

Contracts are a system of record for what you’ve agreed with a customer — today, pricing a quote (see Quotes & Rate Cards) draws from your rate cards, not from contract rates, so an active contract doesn’t automatically fill in a quote’s price. Use the contract as your reference for what a customer is entitled to, and set your rate cards (or the quote’s pricing fields directly) to match what the contract specifies — otherwise the calculator may quote a contracted customer your standard price.

Related pages

• Getting Started
• Dashboard
• Shipments
• Quotes & Rate Cards