Sending a quote and recording the answer
Shipina does not email your customers — you send the quote yourself and record what they said.
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"Mark as sent" does not send anything
This surprises people, so it is worth saying plainly: pressing Mark as sent moves the quote out of Draft. No email leaves Shipina. You send the quote to your customer the way you already do — on the phone, over email, on WhatsApp — and Shipina records where it got to.
The one thing it does beyond that is put the quote in the customer's own notifications, if they have a portal login. That is not Shipina contacting them on your behalf: it is the same quote appearing in the place they already go to read their shipments, next to their bookings and invoices.
That is a deliberate product decision rather than a missing feature. A forwarder's relationship with their customer runs through the forwarder, and a quote arriving from software the customer has never heard of is worse than one arriving from the person they have been talking to. The only mail Shipina ever sends is about accounts — email verification, invitations and password resets.
Whose move is it
Once sent, the quote sits with the customer. The stepper on the quote says so in words rather than leaving you to read a status:
- Draft — yours. Price it up and send it.
- Sent — the customer's. Waiting on their decision.
- Accepted — yours again. Convert it to a booking.
Recording the answer
When the customer gets back to you, press Accept or Reject on their behalf. You are not speaking for them — you are writing down what they said, which is the same thing you would otherwise write in a spreadsheet.
If your customers have portal logins, an accepted quote is one they can accept themselves. Either way the result is the same status, and the quote is then ready to convert.
Expired quotes
A quote with a validity date that has passed reads as Expired. That is not a loss and not a decision anybody made — nobody answered in time. Rates move, so the honest response is usually to reprice it as a new quote rather than to reopen this one.
Rejected quotes stay
A rejected quote is not deleted. It keeps the customer, the route and the prices you offered, which is what makes the next conversation with that customer a shorter one.
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.