Shipments for several customers

Overview

One truck can carry several customers’ goods. Cargoflow allows it two ways: one shipment with lines from several customers (shown as multi-client) or several shipments, one per customer, linked to the same dock job. Either way each customer only reserves their own stock and only pays for their own part; the difference is in the documents, the email and the portal.

Two ways to consolidate

	One shipment, several customers	One shipment per customer, same truck
Shipment numbers	One, from the first customer’s sequence	One per customer
Reservation	Each line from its customer	Each shipment from its customer
Handling and charges	Per customer, with their own rates	Per customer, with their own rates
BOL and packing list on close	One per customer, with their lines	One per shipment
Shipment-closed email	Only to the first customer, with every line	Each customer gets their own
Portal	Only the first customer sees it, with every line	Each customer sees theirs
Worker’s loading record	One shipment with all lines	Several shipments in the same panel

Tip: if customers must not learn about each other’s goods, use one shipment per customer. It is the safest option today.

Build a multi-customer shipment

In Create Shipment, pick a default client: it will be the first group’s.
Click Add company and add the first customer’s products with Add product.
Click Add company again. The new group starts with no customer: pick it and add its products.
Repeat for each customer. Each group’s search only offers that customer’s products and general ones.
Save as a draft or confirm.

On the shipment screen the lines appear grouped, with each customer’s name heading their group.

How each part behaves

Shipment number and main customer: those of the first line’s customer.
Reservation: each line reserves its customer’s stock or general stock. See How stock gets reserved.
Linking to the truck: the dock job must belong to one of the shipment’s customers, or have no customer.
Close and inventory: each outbound movement is recorded under the line’s customer.
Billing: outbound handling, services billed at ship-out and storage at ship-out are calculated per customer, with their quantity and their rate card. See Where each charge comes from.
Accessorials: when capturing one against that truck, the panel lets you pick which customer pays.
Documents on close: a BOL and a packing list are generated per customer, each with their lines and with that customer’s template if they have one. Whatever you print from the menu before closing comes out as a single document for the whole shipment.

What each customer sees

Important: on a multi-customer shipment, the shipment-closed email goes only to the first customer’s contacts and its table lists every line, including the other customers’. The portal behaves the same way: only the first customer sees the shipment, with all its lines; the others don’t see it at all. If that isn’t acceptable for your customers, build one shipment per customer on the same truck (next section).

One shipment per customer on the same truck

Create one shipment per customer, each with its reference.
When the driver arrives, assign a dock on the dock board and pick all the shipments going on that truck. Or link them one by one from each shipment’s dock job card.
The worker sees every shipment in the Loading record, enters one seal (it is copied to every shipment without one) and saves.
The supervisor closes each shipment separately. Each customer gets their email, sees their shipment in the portal and has their own BOL.

The dock job must have no customer or be that customer’s; if the job was created under one customer, another customer’s shipments can’t be linked to it. In that case create the dock job with no customer. See Create a dock job.

Example

A Test Carrier truck takes 20 cases for Sample Imports and 35 for Southern Logistics to the same destination.

With one shipment: Ana builds SH-SAMPLE-2026-00031 with two groups. On close, handling for 20 is billed to Sample Imports and for 35 to Southern Logistics, two BOLs come out, and the email reaches only Sample Imports, with all 55 cases in the table.
With two shipments: Ana creates SH-SAMPLE-2026-00031 and SH-SOUTH-2026-00207, Luis links both to the same job, and each customer gets their email with their cases.

Limits and cautions

Correcting the customer of a multi-customer shipment moves every line to the new customer and drops lines with products exclusive to another customer. If only one part was wrong, edit the lines instead.
The shipment number always comes from the first customer. If you reorder the groups in a draft, the main customer may change.
A cross-dock shipment never carries several customers.

Error messages

“This product is already a line for this company.”

The same product repeats for the same customer. Combine it on one line.

“This product does not belong to the receipt client.”

On a shipment it means the product belongs to a different customer than its group.

When linking: the shipment belongs to a different client than the job.

None of the shipment’s customers is the job’s. Link it to a job with no customer or with the right one.

FAQ

Which customer does the shipment number belong to?

The first line’s customer. That’s why, in the shipments list and its filters, the shipment appears under that customer.

Who pays an accessorial for the truck?

When you capture it, the accessorials panel lets you choose among the customers of the shipments linked to that dock job. If you don’t choose, it goes to the job’s customer. See Capture an accessorial.