AsiaCalculator News

Put your freight on a map!

We've added a new feature to AsiaCalculator's import pricing form: you can now visualize online the freight route you've searched for, with both sea and air routes mapped.

This comes as an additional, side feature - probably not as critical to importers as were the addition of shipping schedules, or the possibility to add several references in calculations.

However we believe this still helps making our service as a whole stickier and always more relevant to importers.

See you on AsiaCalculator.com!

 

Add several products in your import budget!

And another new feature released these days, after the online shipping schedules we published last week.

This time again, we heard our users' feedbacks, arguing that quite often shipments are consolidated with several references.

So we changed the import cost calculation form, and included an option to add up to 10 different products in that calculation.

This allows buyers to get individual import costing for each product (with different buying prices, import duties) while merging all shipped items into one freight budget.

We hope this will add stickiness to AsiaCalculator, and make it even more useful when it comes to import budgeting from Asia!

   

 
 

NEW: get real-time shipping schedules on AsiaCalculator!

We're excited to launch a new feature today: buyers can now access real-time shipping schedules from their AsiaCalculator.com import cost calculation files!

In 2 clicks, importers can now check when the next ships from Asia to their destination are planned for departure, accessing schedules from more than 25 carriers (including Maersk, CMA-CGM, APL, Hapag Lloyd, K Line, MOL, etc).

We tried to make the feature as simple as possible and are eager for feedbacks!

  

Freight forwarders: manage your inquiries settings

New feature on AsiaCalculator.com, this time for our freight forwarders members: they can now set up how / which inquiries they want to receive from our buyers. This was a feedback we received often, and we decided to implement it.

The idea is for our freight forwarders members to be able to filter which inquiries they want to receive, wether by freight mode (air, sea, sea&air) or geographical destination.

We believe this will allow a better stickiness and relevancy of both inquiries received by forwarders, and rates consulted by buyers.

 

AsiaCalculator introduces its new instant freight rates estimator

A limitation to AsiaCalculator service was that it relied solely on the routes quoted by its freight forwarders members (more than 3,000 routes to date); this meant that for some specific searches, buyers could find no result and had to send an inquiry.

This has been addressed by the service’s latest release: an exclusive rates estimator engine which relies on actual freight quotations from AsiaCalculator freight forwarders members, as well as carriers’ information and data intelligence, to return instantly complete, reliable freight rates to any destination worldwide – for sea (LCL, FCL) and air shipments.

Click to enlarge preview 

 

This unprecedented feature allows buyers to:

• find instantly the cost for shipping their cargo from Asia
• build budgets and sales quotations in minutes, with no need to wait for replies from third parties
• compare, challenge, benchmark rates from existing freight forwarders

The estimator is built on sophisticated statistical algorithms which update estimations in real time, and constantly test their accuracy.

This is a breakthrough in the freight rates jungle, where shippers have traditionally low visibility on the pricing of their freight projects.

Details on the freight rates estimator here.

 

Big push from down under - new Oz freight rates!

This one is for our Australian users: with the help of our freight forwarders members, we just got dozens of fresh freight rates from China to Oz posted on AsiaCalculator.com!

So if you're planning imports in Australia, don't wait: sign in now and get your import costing estimates instantly online!

Latest quotes include : from Hong Kong, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Ningbo, Guangzhou, to Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney...

2,500 freight routes quoted on AsiaCalculator.com !

We were all happy and excited, early November, when we crossed the 500 freight routes milestone...

Well, just a little more than a month later, we've multiply this figure by 5 !

To make it clear, this means that 2,500 different freight routes, from Asia to the rest of the world, now have been priced by our freight forwarders members.

This is a critical info for our Buyers / Importers members, considering that a good part of AsiaCalculator.com's added value is to provide online, instant freight rates on searched routes.

So we'll continue pushing for more freight routes prices available, to serve you better.

A few of the latest freight routes priced to this day: Shanghai - Turin by Sea, Guangzhou - Belfast by Air, Shanghai - Ahmedabad by Sea, Guangzhou - Melbourne by Sea...

Find more freight rates on AsiaCalculator.com !

New feature for Forwarders: batch prices update

Again we heard our Freight Forwarders members, who asked for an easy, 1-click way to update their freight rates on the platform, especially useful in these times of troubled freight market prices.

Now, forwarders can easily select one or several rates, and apply a fixed price increase (or decrease) to the selection.

We believe this should make the AsiaCalculator.com platform even more user-friendly, and allow a better accuracy of published freight rates.

Freight rates posting made easier for Forwarders

Following our users feedbacks, we have ugraded some features of the AsiaCalculator.com forwarders accounts, to improve the Freight Rates input grids.

Posting Freight Rates online has never been easier and quicker !

You will find below a short description of these new features.

1. Sea freight grids:

- forwarders can now input prices for the container types they ship only - for ex. if they only do LCL, they can just un-tick the FCL columns and we'll only show their rates to Buyers looking for LCL.

This ensures a better match between their offer and the Buyers inquiries.

2. Air freight grids:

- forwarders can now customize the weight ranges to better fit with their actual tarifs

- we have implemented a 'minimum charge' for Air freight rates, allowing forwarders to reflect the minimum costs charged by air cargo companies.

3. All grids:

- using the new "Apply to all" link allows to quickly duplicate one currency to all costs sections
- new Freight quotes examples have been published to guide forwarders through the posting  of their tariffs

New : buyers can now set a buffer margin on AsiaCalculator.com

This one was requested by our users (who always give the most valuable feedbacks and ideas).

Buyers members with Supervisor rights can now set for their account on AsiaCalculator.com a buffer margin, that will be applied on top of all the cost calculations done by their users.

This is to be used for extra security, to cover for unplanned charges that may occur during the import project (ex: fuel cost or raw material costs rise).

The feature can be activated from the "Account" tab, and Supervisors can chose to have it publicized to their users, or hidden (in which case the users won't know that an extra 2% was added to their costing calculation).

See a few screenshots below :