Turning a quote into a booking
An accepted quote converts in one step, and the booking gets a reference in your own format.
3 min read
On this page
Converting
Open the accepted quote and press Convert to booking. There is no separate booking form, and no way to create a booking from nothing — a booking always comes from a quote somebody accepted.
What copies across: the customer, the route, the currency and every container line with its buy, sell and kickback prices. They are copied rather than linked, which matters — editing the booking afterwards does not rewrite history on the quote, and the quote stays the record of what was agreed.
The reference
Every booking gets a reference in the format your company configured under
Settings — a prefix, the year and a counter, like VR-2026-0001. The
counter is yours alone. Two forwarders using Shipina can both choose the
prefix VR and both have a VR-2026-0001, because the numbering runs per
company rather than across the platform.
If you have not set a prefix, one was suggested from your company name at signup. You can change it under Settings → Company, and it takes effect on the next booking — existing references never change, because they are already on paperwork.
Filling in what the carrier tells you
A quote is written before anyone knows which vessel the cargo goes on. The booking is where that becomes known, so the shipment details are editable here even though most of them were empty on the quote:
- Main vessel and bill of lading — once the carrier confirms them.
- External reference — the carrier's or agent's own booking number, so you can quote theirs back at them without going digging.
- Commodity and transshipment ports — the fuller picture of the route.
The ports of loading and discharge came from the quote and can be corrected here too, if the routing changed after the customer agreed to the price.
Correcting the customer
The customer copies across with everything else, and if the wrong one was picked on the quote you can correct it here — the Customer card on the booking has a picker, and only Staff see it.
It is more than a label change, so it asks first. Moving a booking also moves the quote it came from and every invoice raised against it, including ones already issued or paid — a booking billed to a different customer than it names would be worse than the mistake. Any bill of lading or invoice PDF Shipina generated is deleted, because it prints the old customer on every page; documents you uploaded yourself stay, and the PDFs can be generated again in one click.
The customer it moves away from loses the booking from their portal. The one it moves to is told it is theirs, the same way they are told about a new booking.
What happens next
The booking is now the shipment. From here you record milestones as the cargo moves, attach the paperwork that travels with it, and eventually raise the invoice — the next three articles.
If your customer has a portal login, converting also tells them: the booking and its reference appear in their notifications, which is usually the first they hear that the shipment is confirmed.
Notes for your team
At the foot of this screen is a Notes card. What your staff write there stays with your staff: no customer or partner sees it on any screen, and it is never printed on a document. Anyone on your team can read the notes and add their own; editing and deleting are yours alone, for the ones you wrote.