- Logistics
- AI Business Automation
- AI Consulting
- Custom App Development
Fifteen carrier portals, one quote
A brokerage compiling a single quote logs into a dozen or more carrier systems by hand, then audits the invoices against those rates weeks later, also by hand. Automating both ends turns a morning of copying into a background job with an exception queue.
Representative engagement. This describes a pattern we build rather than one named client: the situation that produces it, how we approach it, and the range of outcomes that kind of work lands in. Figures are stated as ranges or targets, never as a measured result for a specific customer. Our named client work is on the work index.
- Industry
- Logistics
- quote turnaround target, from a manual multi portal round trip
- Under 2 min
- invoices audited in full rather than spot checked
- Every line
The problem
Rates live wherever each carrier keeps them: an API for a few, a portal for most, a spreadsheet emailed monthly for the rest. Compiling a competitive quote means visiting all of them, and the answer goes stale while it is being assembled. Invoice auditing has the same shape at the other end of the process. Accessorials, fuel surcharges and reweighs mean the invoice frequently differs from the quote, and checking every line by hand is not realistic, so most of them are simply paid. Onboarding a new carrier makes both worse, which quietly discourages adding carriers, which is the opposite of what a brokerage should be doing.
What we built
One rate layer over every carrier, whatever each of them offers. APIs where they exist, structured ingestion where they do not, and a normalised shape underneath so a quote is a query rather than a morning. Invoices are matched automatically against the rate that was quoted, and only the differences go to a person. Accessorials are classified rather than lumped together, so a recurring discrepancy is visible as a pattern instead of as noise. Adding a carrier becomes configuration. That is the structural change: the second one costs less than the first, and the fifteenth costs almost nothing, which is what makes widening the carrier base worth doing.
What changed
Quoting moves from a manual round trip to something answered while the customer is still on the call, and the rate it is answered with is current. On invoices, the value is in what gets checked at all. Auditing every line rather than spot checking a few surfaces the recurring discrepancies that were previously just paid, and those tend to be the ones worth the most.
Built with
- Python
- TypeScript
- PostgreSQL
- Temporal
- Anthropic