How much a typical freight forwarder recovers by switching to TRADE-COST: a numbers-first analysis

The hidden cost of the Excel quote

Honest preamble: this article is not a testimonial. It is a numbers-first economic projection, built on public market data and on feedback from our early beta users. We will publish named case studies once our pilot customers are ready to go on record. In the meantime, here is a transparent calculation — every assumption is laid out and every source is cited.

An independent forwarder handles between 25 and 60 quote requests per month. Each quote takes, on average, 2h45 of effective work: ringing the carrier, recalculating duties on the latest TARIC update, checking arrival VAT, formatting a PDF, sending the email, chasing the customer. Across 30 quotes in a month, that's 82 hours consumed — the equivalent of a full half-time of the principal.

Of those 82 hours, how many are productive in the sense that the end customer agrees to pay for them? Very few. The bulk of the time is eaten by mechanical tasks any software could do in a fraction of a second: cross-referencing an HS code, applying a rule of origin, converting a freight rate to EUR at today's spot, formatting an Excel table to fit a PDF.

The typical profile we study

To make the projection concrete, we work on a composite profile. This forwarder does not exist — it is composed from sector medians (sources: TLF Confédération 2024 panorama, FFOA report on independent forwarders, Eurostat data on French foreign trade).

Pricing the Excel flow

Let's break down the 2h45 per quote:

• Receive and qualify the request (15 min): inbound email or WhatsApp, identify product, Incoterm, volumes, regulatory constraints.
• Look up the HS classification (20 min): open RITA or TARIC, cross with the customer's tech sheets, verify 10-digit subheadings.
• Compute duties and taxes (30 min): ad valorem duties, anti-dumping duties if applicable, possible excise, arrival VAT, customs clearance fees.
• Quote the freight (45 min): call or email 2-3 carriers, wait for replies, compare.
• Format the customer-facing quote (30 min): summary Excel table, PDF export, logo, spell check.
• Send and follow up at D+3 (20 min): email, tracking, follow-up if no reply.

Fully-loaded hourly rate of an executive forwarder in France or the Maghreb: 75 EUR/h (net salary + social contributions + opportunity cost of executive time). Across 30 quotes × 2h45 × 75 EUR/h, you get a monthly operational cost of 6,187 EUR — purely to produce quotes.

Of those 30 quotes, only 8 turn into invoiced files. That means 22 quotes are pure economic loss: the customer went to another forwarder, dropped the project, or found cheaper. That's 4,537 EUR/month thrown out. And it's the sector average, not a pathological case.

The same month with TRADE-COST

Here's how the same flow transforms once TRADE-COST is in place. The assumptions stay conservative: same request volume (30/month), same end conversion (25 %). We do not count any additional leads the widget generates via the homepage.

You go from 2h45 to 58 minutes per quote. Across 30 quotes a month, that's 29 hours of work instead of 82. Fifty-three hours handed back to the principal every month.

At 75 EUR/h fully loaded, that's 3,975 EUR/month of operational cost avoided. 47,700 EUR/year on the "produce a quote" function alone — and this is at a modest 30 monthly requests.

ROI of the 149 EUR/month plan

TRADE-COST's launch pricing is 149 EUR/month for the first year (launch offer, 12-month commitment, 3 free months), then 349 EUR/month from year two. For our typical forwarder:

Across 24 months, a typical forwarder recovers 89,871 EUR net on quote operational efficiency alone. And we counted none of the following second-order effects, which all push in the same direction:

• Extra leads via the embed widget on the forwarder's homepage (3-8 % conversion vs 0.5-2 % for a generic contact form).
• Reduced classification errors (5-15 % of margin lost on a misclassified file, source: 2023 average French customs post-clearance audits).
• Higher conversion rate from sheer response speed — a customer who gets a quote in 1 hour instead of 24 converts 2 to 3 × more (Drift / HubSpot 2024).
• Whitespace margin on outbound quotes, i.e. the ability to bill quote engineering separately now that production cost is divided by three.

From how many quotes the plan pays for itself

If you handle fewer than 30 quotes a month, the savings scale proportionally. Here are the break-even thresholds at the launch rate:

Mathematically, TRADE-COST becomes profitable at 2 quotes per month. The barrier isn't economic — it's cognitive. Most independent forwarders never quantified the hidden cost of their Excel flow. That is why this article exists.

Conclusion: run the numbers yourself

The calculation above is deliberately conservative. It uses public, verifiable assumptions, and ignores the biggest gains (lead capture on the widget, faster conversion, fewer customs errors). It's a floor, not a ceiling.

If you want to run it with your own numbers — your quote volume, your hourly rate, your conversion — our pricing page details the features and exact ROI for your profile. The calculator is public, no signup required.

The 149 EUR/month plan (3 free months trial, 12-month commitment) covers:

• The multi-country landed-cost engine (16 anti-dumping chapters, 464+ auto-classified HS codes)
• The lightweight CRM for your customers and requests
• The JavaScript embed widget you paste on your site
• The white-label subdomain yourbrand.trade-cost.com
• Conversion analytics (calculations, leads, quote-to-deal rate)
• The versioned public API if you want to integrate with your ERP
• Multi-user support with RBAC roles (owner / admin / member / viewer)

For more, read our complete landed-cost guide, our method to compute customs duties, and our forwarder selection grid.