Choose your next TMS with your eyes open.
Honest, specific guidance for freight forwarders weighing up CargoWise, Descartes and FreightSuite. Written by people who ran a forwarder on the old tools and built the new one.
Ranges reflect what FreightSuite sees across customer discovery and OCLS calculator submissions. Your own numbers will differ. Measure them before you sign anything.
Side by side, on the things that decide the deal
Implementation time, how work actually gets done, what finance looks like inside the system, and what you pay for. No feature-count scoring.
vs
FreightSuite vs CargoWise
The incumbent. Where a module-by-module, configure-everything suite is still the right answer, and where an agentic platform changes the maths.
Read the comparisonvs
FreightSuite vs Descartes
A broad portfolio assembled over many years against one platform built as a single system. What that means for integration, support and day-to-day operations.
Read the comparisonvsFreightSuite vs email and spreadsheets
Plenty of profitable forwarders run on Outlook, Excel and a legacy system nobody touches. What that costs per shipment, and when it stops working.
Coming soonHow to buy, measure and switch
Practical, operator-level guides. Each one is short enough to read before a steering meeting and specific enough to act on afterwards.
How to evaluate a TMS in 2026
Eight questions that separate a system that will still be right in year five from one you will be migrating off. Includes the scripted demo scenario we recommend you force every vendor to run.
Coming soonOCLS: the one number to measure before you choose
Operational Coordination Labour per Shipment. What it is, how to measure it in a week without a consultant, and why it predicts margin better than headcount or volume.
Open the calculatorAI agents in forwarding: reactive vs proactive
Reference matching, data extraction and chasing are reactive. Accrual checking and credit control are proactive. Why the difference matters and which to deploy first.
Read the guideMulti-office billing, inter-office billing and profit shares
Very few TMSs handle a three-office shipment correctly without a spreadsheet on the side. How the problem works and what to ask for.
Coming soonMigrating off CargoWise without stopping operations
Data, open files, cutover week and the first month. A plan built around a fixed turn-on date rather than a milestone ladder.
Coming soonFinance inside the TMS: accruals, cost matching and credit control
Why month-end takes three weeks at most forwarders and what it looks like when the system accrues, matches and chases on its own.
See billing and accountingWhat forwarders on FreightSuite report
See the comparison on your own shipments.
Bring three real files from last month. We will run them through FreightSuite live and show you the labour, the accruals and the margin side by side.
