ERP for Freight Forwarders — software for Spedition, Logistik and forwarding agents
A German Spedition coordinates the movement of goods on behalf of shippers across road, rail, sea and air, often combining several modes per consignment. The ERP requirement set is therefore not really an ERP requirement at all in the classic sense; it is a transport management system (TMS) tightly integrated with customs filing, warehouse management, cross-border documentation and carrier track-and-trace. An ERP for freight forwarders has to cover ATLAS customs filing (the German implementation of the EU customs systems), T1/T2 transit procedures, ADR dangerous-goods documentation, carrier-portal integration for sub-contracted hauls, and a financial-accounting layer that handles per-consignment costing across multiple suppliers and currencies. The market is one of the few where Mid-Market Spedition customers still occasionally run on a paper-and-Excel basis — and where the gap between digitised and non-digitised operators has widened dramatically.
Requirements
The first requirement is full TMS depth: per-consignment master data (shipper, consignee, goods, weight, volume, hazardous-goods classification), per-leg routing with mode and carrier selection, capacity planning across own fleet and sub-contracted carriers, and real-time track-and-trace from the carriers' systems. A medium-sized Spedition with a 50-truck own fleet typically also subcontracts 30–60 percent of its volume, which means the TMS has to integrate with carrier portals (DHL Freight, DB Schenker, Dachser, Kuehne+Nagel, plus dozens of smaller hauliers) via EDIFACT IFTMIN/IFTSTA messages or carrier-specific APIs.
The second requirement is customs and trade compliance. ATLAS is the German customs IT system for export declarations (ATLAS-Ausfuhr), import declarations (ATLAS-Einfuhr), transit procedures (NCTS — New Computerised Transit System for T1/T2) and inward-processing. Every cross-border consignment requires a customs filing, and the ERP has to populate the ATLAS message directly or via a customs-broker partner. The third is dangerous-goods (ADR for road, IMDG for sea, IATA-DGR for air) documentation, classification and routing — with consequences for vehicle selection, driver qualification and route planning that have to feed back into the dispatch decision.
Mandatory functions
Mandatory functions for a Spedition ERP/TMS: per-consignment job management with multi-leg routing; carrier integration via EDIFACT IFTMIN (consignment instruction) and IFTSTA (transit status); ATLAS customs filing for export, import and NCTS transit; dangerous-goods handling with ADR/IMDG/IATA-DGR classification, vehicle-and-driver qualification check and transport-document generation; warehouse management for transhipment terminals and contract-logistics customers.
On the operational side: dispatch board with capacity-and-utilisation view across own fleet and sub-contractors, driver mobile app with electronic proof-of-delivery, telematics integration (Webfleet, Volvo Connect, MAN DigitalServices), tour optimisation for groupage and last-mile, and cross-dock planning. On the financial side: per-consignment costing with multi-currency support, freight-rate management (per shipper, per lane, per surcharge), carrier-invoice reconciliation against IFTSTA confirmations, integrated DATEV export and GoBD-compliant document archiving. Increasingly: CO2-emission tracking per consignment under the EU CountEmissions framework and Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz (LkSG) supplier-due-diligence.
Vendor landscape
The German Spedition software market is dominated by vertical specialists. Soloplan's CarLo is one of the most widely deployed TMS suites in DACH, with deep coverage of road, intermodal and warehouse management, and the largest installed base among mid-sized Speditions. CargoSoft covers sea and air freight forwarding particularly well, with a strong presence at international forwarders. Wanko Pracar focuses on road haulage and own-fleet operators, with a long track record in the food and beverage logistics segment.
AEB is the leading customs and trade-compliance specialist in DACH, often combined with one of the TMS suites for the customs-filing and export-control workflows specifically. Riege.com targets sea and air forwarders with the Scope platform, popular among project-cargo and consolidator operators. On the international side, Transporeon (now part of Trimble) provides shipper-to-carrier connectivity rather than full TMS, and increasingly integrates with the German specialists. SAP TM (Transportation Management) appears at the largest forwarders and shippers; outside the top-20 forwarders in the DACH market, the vertical specialists dominate decisively.
Trends and outlook
Three trends are reshaping Spedition software requirements. First, the post-Brexit and post-pandemic customs complexity has elevated ATLAS and AEB-style customs software from a side-system to a core operational priority — the cost of a delayed customs filing is now measured in delivery-window-misses and contractual penalties, not just paperwork. Second, the EU Mobility Package and the German LKW-Maut extensions (toll on smaller trucks, infrastructure surcharges) push real-time cost-tracking per consignment up the priority list.
Third, CO2-emission reporting per consignment is moving from voluntary to contractual at large shippers (DHL Supply Chain, Amazon Logistics) and will be regulatory under the EU CountEmissions framework. Vendors with integrated emission-calculation per lane and per consignment reduce the reporting burden substantially.
Related Topics
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a freight forwarder run on a generic ERP plus a separate TMS?
In theory yes, in practice almost never. The volume and frequency of TMS-to-finance interactions (per-consignment costing, carrier-invoice reconciliation, customer-invoicing with surcharge logic) is high enough that bolt-on integrations break under operational load. Vertical Spedition platforms (Soloplan CarLo, CargoSoft, Wanko Pracar) integrate the TMS and the financial-accounting/ERP layer natively, which is the standard pattern at Mittelstand forwarders.
How critical is ATLAS integration versus customs-broker outsourcing?
For forwarders with regular cross-border volume above ~50 consignments per week: native ATLAS integration delivers faster turnaround and lower cost per filing. Below that, outsourcing to a customs broker (or using AEB's shared-service offering) is the pragmatic choice. The decision moves with consignment volume and with the share of complex customs procedures (inward-processing, AEO status, sanctions screening) in the portfolio.
What does ADR dangerous-goods handling mean for the ERP?
ADR requires per-consignment classification (UN-number, hazard class, packing group), check that the assigned vehicle and driver are qualified for that class, generation of the standardised transport document (Beförderungspapier) and routing constraints (tunnel restrictions, route bans). ERPs that ship ADR-classification tables and the qualification-check workflow reduce both the operational risk and the audit exposure under Gefahrgut-Verordnung Straße und Eisenbahn (GGVSEB).