Marketplace
The counterparties around the shipment.
A shipment is rarely one exporter and one buyer. Freight forwarders quote against a request, an inspector checks the goods before they load, a second supplier fills part of a consolidated container, and a carrier's own milestones move the shipment along — Marketplace is where Expodite manages all of them against the same order.
Expodite Marketplace manages the counterparties around a shipment: freight forwarders' quotes compared line by line and posted to the order's costs on selection, pre-shipment inspection scheduling, multi-supplier and consolidation-warehouse fulfilment, compliance-screening tasks, and the carrier milestones that update a shipment's status as it moves.
Marketplace
The order is one exporter and one buyer; the shipment rarely is.
A freight quote is compared in an email thread, an inspection date is confirmed by phone, a second supplier's goods arrive at a warehouse with no linked order, and a screening check is a step someone remembers or doesn't.
What it does
Every counterparty, on the order.
01
Freight requests for quote
A request for quote goes to the forwarders on file, their quotes are compared line by line by cost category, and the winning quote posts straight to the order's cost ledger.
02
Pre-shipment inspection
PSI is scheduled and tracked against the order, so an inspection date sits next to the shipment it clears.
03
Suppliers and consolidation
A supplier purchase order and a consolidation-warehouse goods receipt let a shipment draw on more than one supplier, with stock held and reserved before it's packed into one order.
04
Compliance screening
A screening task is created on named triggers — a new buyer, a vessel assigned, an LC bank, a new supplier or forwarder — and a person performs and records the result; there is no automated pass or fail.
05
Carrier milestones
Carrier events, normalised through a shared webhook path, update a shipment's milestones — the same ones a buyer sees on their tracking link.
What changes
One order, every counterparty accounted for.
A freight decision with a paper trail
The compared quotes, and the reason a winner was selected, are on the order, not in someone's inbox.
A screening record that exists
A screening task and its outcome are logged against the entity it was performed on, so “did we check” has an answer.
Multi-supplier shipments that reconcile
Stock received into a consolidation warehouse from more than one supplier reserves and commits against the order it was bought for.
Questions
Marketplace, answered plainly
- Can a freight forwarder submit a quote without an Expodite account?
- Not today — a forwarder's quotes are entered by the exporter's own team against the request. A forwarder-facing submission link is on the roadmap, not shipped.
- Is compliance screening automated?
- No. Expodite creates a screening task on the events that should trigger one; a person performs the check with their own provider and records the decision. There is no built-in screening provider today.
- What is a consolidation warehouse?
- A holding point where goods from one or more suppliers are received against purchase orders and held until they're packed into a specific export order.
See the counterparties on an order like yours.
We'll walk through a freight RFQ and an inspection, live.