Ritzy Shipping • User Manual
Run your freight forwarding operation end to end — open Sea, Air and Miscellaneous jobs for import and export, capture the shipment and its charges, quote new enquiries, raise invoices, and print the bills of lading and airway bills — all from one module.
Cargo is the heart of the forwarding business. A job is one shipment — who is sending it, who is receiving it, from which port to which, on which vessel or flight, what the cargo is, and what you charge for moving it. From that single record you raise the customer’s invoice and print the transport documents.
Open the Cargo group from the top menu. Under Transactions you pick the kind of job:
| Job | For |
|---|---|
| Sea Import / Sea Export | Ocean freight, inbound and outbound. |
| Air Import / Air Export | Air freight, inbound and outbound. |
| Miscellaneous | Land / cross-trade / other movements. |
Each list shows the jobs for the current financial year (chosen in the top bar). Search by job number or customer, then open a job to view or edit it.
Every job list shows one row per job. A job with several houses shows their shippers and consignees merged, and on Sea jobs their packages and gross weight added up. The search also finds a job by its master or house BL / AWB number, and searching for something on one house still lists the whole job.
From a job list, click New and fill in the header.
A job needs a Job Date and a currency. The date cannot fall in a closed period or outside the current financial year; on a saved job this is checked only when you change the date. New always opens an empty form, even straight after saving another job, and the same goes for a new quotation or billing document.
A job made from a quotation keeps the quotation’s Invoice To party on its houses when the job is saved, so Load from Job on a billing document still finds it.
Cancel is refused when:
When the work on a job is finished, close it so nobody changes it by mistake. Open the saved job (not in edit mode), click Close Job beside its status and confirm. A closed job opens read-only, its save is refused, and it is no longer offered when you pick a job on a voucher. Click Reopen Job on the same job to make it editable again. This works on Sea, Air and Miscellaneous jobs, import and export.
You can type the BL No or HAWB No on each house yourself, or have Ritzy issue it when the job is saved, built from a prefix, a running number and a suffix. Automatic numbering works for Sea, Air and Miscellaneous jobs, and is off until you switch it on.
| House Prefix | House Last No | House Suffix | Digits | Next number issued |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HBL/ | 41 | /26 | 6 | HBL/000042/26 |
Each job type has its own series in each financial year, and a house is numbered from the year of its job. The Job Numbering tab shows the year selected in the top bar. When a new year is created, the house prefix and suffix carry over and the running number restarts. A suffix of last year’s /yy, such as /26, moves on to the new year.
Each House BL/AWB has a Charges tab holding one grid. Each charge is a block: the charge and its narration on the left, then a Buy row over a Sell row in the same columns, with the profit beside them. Pick a charge and its buy and sell prices are filled from the Charge master; adjust the quantity, price and tax as needed. Only charges flagged for this job’s type & direction appear, keeping the list short.
| Row | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Buy | Creditor account, currency, exchange rate, quantity, UOM, price, tax, tax amount, total, and the total in your base currency. The creditor list is the same as on the Purchase voucher. A new line starts in the job’s currency and rate, and changing the currency sets its rate. |
| Sell | Quantity, UOM, price, tax, tax amount, total, and the total in your base currency. Selling is always in the job’s own currency and rate. |
Profit is selling less cost, before tax, so it agrees with the job reports. The totals under the grid show Selling, Tax, Total, Cost and Profit. The narration wraps so all of it stays in view. Tab runs through the charge, the narration, the Buy row and then the Sell row, so a whole charge can be keyed without the mouse.
The selling charges become the basis of the customer invoice; the buying charges feed cost and profitability reporting.
| When the charge is | What locks | To change it |
|---|---|---|
| On a live Invoice or Cash Memo (the Sell row shows its number, with a padlock at the end of the block) | The charge, its narration and its Sell row. It cannot be removed, and neither can a house ahead of it. The Buy row stays open. | Cancel that document. |
| Posted by Cost Allocation | The charge and the Buy row’s creditor, currency, rate, quantity, price and tax. It cannot be removed. The narration, the UOM and the Sell row stay open, unless the charge is also billed. | Un-post it in Cost Allocation. |
The job save refuses these changes too, so they cannot get through from another screen. Saving a job keeps the Cost Allocation posting on each posted charge, so its cost cannot be posted twice.
The buying charges are posted to purchase vouchers with Cost Allocation, under Accounts → Transactions beside Purchase. It is shown there only while Cargo or Liner is installed; a user without the Accounts menu finds it under Cargo instead. The voucher needs a date in an open period inside the current financial year. Un-posting releases the charges so they can be changed and posted again.
Under Transactions → Quotations you can prepare a rate quote for a customer — routing, cargo and a list of charges — and print or email it. A quotation that is no longer wanted is cancelled from its row in the list, never deleted: it keeps its number and stays in the list marked cancelled, opens read-only, and can no longer be edited or turned into a job. Once a job has been assigned from a quotation, it can no longer be cancelled.
The Create Job button always shows on a quotation. It is greyed out while you are editing, once a job exists, and on a cancelled quotation. Hover over it to see why.
The fastest start is Paste Enquiry: paste the customer’s email (or dictate it) and Ritzy extracts the shipper, consignee, ports, cargo and Incoterms for you to review, so you don’t re-type the enquiry.
When a job is ready to bill, generate the billing document from its selling charges. Ritzy supports the full family:
Invoice Cash Memo Credit Note Debit Note
Each document pulls the job’s charges, numbers itself, and can be printed from a template. Adjustment notes (Credit / Debit) correct a previously issued invoice.
Every billing document belongs to one house of one job, and cannot be saved without them. There are two ways to start:
By default a document posts to the accounts as it is saved. A company can add a draft step for each document type:
| Posts on save | Draft step | |
|---|---|---|
| Settings | Save & Post for Transactions is off, or Enable Posting is off for this document type. | Save & Post for Transactions is on, and Enable Posting is on for this document type. |
| On save | The document and its accounting entry are written together. | The document is saved as a draft with no accounting entry, so a receipt cannot settle it yet. |
| Posting | Nothing more to do. | Open the draft and click Post. This needs the Post right on that document type. |
| Editing afterwards | Stays editable until a receipt is allocated against it or it is submitted for e-invoicing. | Closed once posted. Cancel it and raise a new one. |
Enable Posting is greyed out, with a note, until Save & Post for Transactions has been saved. A draft left behind after the draft step is switched off posts when it is next saved, or with Post.
From a job you can print the transport paperwork — Bill of Lading, Airway Bill, Cargo Arrival Notice, Delivery Order, Pre-Alert, Manifest and more — each rendered from a Report Template you can customise (Tools → Report Templates). A print preview opens with a Print / Close toolbar.
Delivery Order numbers. On a Sea Import, Air Import or Miscellaneous job, a house with no DO No is asked whether to generate one the first time its Delivery Order is printed. Click Generate and the house gets the next Delivery Order number, and today’s date as the DO date if none was entered. A number you typed yourself is kept. Save the job before printing its first Delivery Order.
In the template Design panel you can tailor the header without touching any HTML: toggle the title, company name, address and VAT number, adjust colours and columns, and set the logo. Leave the logo empty and the template prints your company logo (the one set under Tools → System Settings) automatically; upload one only if this template needs its own. Use Company Logo copies today’s company logo into the template. A Custom document title box lets you override the document’s default heading (for example, print “Commercial Invoice” instead of “Tax Invoice”); leave it blank to keep the built-in title.
Every document prints in the shared Ritzy look — letterhead with your logo, boxed customer details and a total band. Bills of Lading and Air Waybills keep the standard trade layout, in the same colours, with your logo in the title box. See Printed Documents & Reports.
Set up the reference data once under Masters: Consignee/Shipper, Agents, Ports, Airports, Vessels, Airlines, Charge, Job Category, Commodities, UOMs, Packages and Container Types. Milestone and Milestone Template are under Others.
Cargo, Liner, Transport and Shipchandling share one list of charges, but each module’s Masters → Charge shows only the charges ticked for it under Applicable To. Cargo’s list shows the Sea, Air, Miscellaneous and Land charges, plus any charge not yet ticked for any module, so nothing is out of reach. A charge ticked for several modules appears in each of their lists. A new company’s starter charges come already ticked for their modules, so the job screens offer them from the first job.
A consignee or shipper you also bill can be made an accounting customer without re-typing it. Open the saved Consignee/Shipper and click Create Customer. Choose the Customer group and the Currency (your base currency is filled in) and, if the group uses lettered account codes, type the letter to get the next Account code. Click Create: the customer is added to the chart of accounts and the Customer master with the consignee’s name, address, contact details and business number. The link shows only if you have the New right on the Customer master.
A new company does not start empty. It comes with short lists of common sea ports, airports, airlines, service types, commodities, package types and container types, and a Currency master of 40 common currencies, so a first job can be raised straight away. They are ordinary records you can edit or delete. A new company’s Bank Account in Cargo Settings starts empty: choose it once you have created the account.
A Container Type needs a Size Code, and a Milestone needs its Code; the form asks for them before saving.
A master record still used by a job or other transaction cannot be deleted. One used nowhere can be, including a Milestone or a Container Type, and an airport is not blocked by a sea port that happens to share its code.
Any of these lists can be loaded from a spreadsheet with Import CSV on its screen, or from Tools → Import (CSV) — see Importing Masters from CSV.
Under Reports you’ll find the operational and sales reports — Job Register, Jobs Not Invoiced, Sales Register, Sales Ranking and Job Profitability — each viewable on screen, exportable and printable.
The sales figures count only live documents. Sales Register, Sales Ranking, Tonnage and Charges Analysis leave cancelled billing documents out, and in Sales Register and Sales Ranking a Credit Note reduces the sales instead of adding to them.
Job Control is on the Accounts → Reports page, under Job & Cost Reports beside the Cost Sheets, while Cargo or Liner is installed. A Cargo user without the Accounts menu finds it on the Cargo reports page. Its Back arrow returns to the page you opened it from.
The report shows what each job holds on the job control accounts, as on a date or for a period. These are the accounts in the same group as the Accrued Expense Account in Cargo Settings. The balance tells you where the job stands:
Choose how to read it: By job, Job and account (one row per job and control account) or By account. Click a row to drill down from the job to its control accounts and then to the voucher lines. Click a voucher number to open that voucher in a new tab.
Click a job number to see all of that job’s control account transactions and its Accounts posting: the credits and debits the job has posted, and its Job Control Amount.
The search box finds a job by its number, customer, BL or AWB number, shipper, consignee, vessel or control account, and the totals follow what is shown. Balance > 0 and Balance < 0 test the balance rounded to a whole unit, so a leftover below 0.5 is treated as settled; All still shows it.
On a saved import job, Move to Warehouse opens a Goods Receipt pre-filled with the consignee and cargo lines — see the Warehousing manual.
New jobs get their milestones from the job type’s template (Others → Milestone Template), and the Milestones button on the job shows them. Saving the job or raising an invoice keeps them up to date, and you can share a tracking link with the customer. The milestones of a cancelled job can no longer be changed. The overdue milestones on the Cargo dashboard list each milestone once, however many houses the job has. See the Milestone manual.
Job lists and numbering follow the financial year in the top bar — switch it to see or open jobs in another year.