For forwarders who also run the warehouse
Freight forwarders running 3PL warehousing buy software twice. One system for the floor, one for the freight. Neither answers the customer.
Every email your company receives is read, understood and turned into a task for the right person, with the answer already drafted. Your team approves. Nobody lives in the inbox any more.
Your warehouse system keeps the stock. FreighAI takes the conversation around it.
- 01You run two businesses in one building. A freight desk and a warehouse floor. Customers email both, often in one sentence.
- 02Your warehouse system keeps the stock. Receiving, putaway, picking, the count and the billing run stay where they are.
- 03FreighAI takes the email around that work: the storage quote, the release, the stock question, the tracking reply, the invoice query.
- 04If your floor runs on Binsy, the FreighAI family warehouse product, the two are one company’s software and the charge lines already match.
- 05If it runs on something else, that system keeps the floor. What crosses the boundary is decided in scope.
Two businesses, one inbox
Most 3PL warehousing software for freight forwarders is built for the floor. It tells you what is in bin 14 and what shipped yesterday. What it was never built for is the twenty conversations a day the floor generates, and those land on the people who are also quoting freight.
An advance notice arrives as a line in an email with a packing list attached. A truck is at the gate. A customer wants to know how many blue cartons are left. In a bigger company those are three departments. In yours it is one coordinator, on the floor with a phone in her hand. She answers the easy ones and promises to check the rest. The promise is what gets lost.
A freight job ends. A storage account does not. You price it once and it bills every month for as long as the pallets sit there, and every month somebody explains a line on the invoice. The warehouse is where your recurring revenue lives, and the recurring email with it.
The floor system knows where every pallet is. It does not know the customer asked about them on Tuesday and nobody replied.
What changes when FreighAI is added
The first workflow here is usually not a freight quotation. It is the email a warehouse customer sends about their own stock, and it is the one nobody has time to answer properly.
FreighAI takes over the inbox. It watches every company mailbox, pricing, operations, tracking and accounts, and follows each conversation from start to finish, not one message at a time. It works out what each email is and what it needs. It writes the reply, creates the task, and puts it in front of the right person in the right department. That person reads it beside the original conversation and approves. They do not compose, forward, file or chase. The reply goes out in their name. The follow-ups happen on their own.
In a warehouse account the legwork has a different shape. What gets looked up is the customer’s own stock, the receipt raised against it, and this month’s charges. FreighAI pulls your rate cards, checks the carrier, looks up the customer’s history, reads the shipment status, and talks to your TMS or accounting system.
The release instruction
“Release 40 cartons Thursday and book the transport” is two jobs in one sentence. FreighAI reads PDF, Excel, Word, forwarded email, WhatsApp messages, photos and scans. It writes the reply, creates the task, and puts it in front of the right person in the right department, beside the original conversation. It spots what is missing in an enquiry and drafts the email asking for it. So the delivery address is asked for on Monday, not discovered on Thursday morning.
The stock question and the tracking reply
“How much of mine is left?” and “where is my container?” are one question about two places. FreighAI answers “where is my cargo?” on the customer’s own thread, from carrier status, for approval. The stock number comes from your warehouse system and stays that system’s. FreighAI talks to carriers, portals, your TMS and your accounting system itself. Nobody hops between websites to put an answer together.
The invoice, and the argument after it
Storage billing is where a warehouse account is quietly lost. FreighAI reads a carrier bill and matches every airway bill back to its job, checking line by line before it is booked. Follow-ups, chasers and reminders happen on their own, on the same conversation. The invoice sent on the first is not still unacknowledged on the twentieth.
Your people work in FreighAI. Not in the inbox. Not in five browser tabs.
One line in an email. A job order already filled in.
Your people work in FreighAI, not in the inbox. Your team approves. They do not compose, forward, file or chase. The reply goes out in their name.
- Read from whatever they sentFreighAI reads PDF, Excel, Word, forwarded email, WhatsApp messages, photos and scans.
- The gaps asked onceFreighAI spots what is missing in an enquiry and drafts the email asking for it.
- On the right desk, not forwardedFreighAI writes the reply, creates the task, and puts it in front of the right person in the right department, beside the original conversation.
Which parts of FreighAI would you use first?
Start with the conversation that costs you most, not with the product list.
Booking and Job Orders Agent
The usual first choice. Releases, inbound notices and collection requests arrive as sentences and have to become orders. A won quote becomes a job on its own, fully filled in. Work passes from pricing to operations to accounts with the email and everything it found attached. Nobody forwards it, re-keys it or asks for an update.
Quotation Agent
For the storage enquiry, priced from your own tariff and usually needing a freight leg you do not hold. FreighAI spots what is missing in an enquiry and drafts the email asking for it. It emails all your agents for a lane in one go, with the route and charge lines filled in, then chases the ones who do not reply. It suggests a price from what that customer paid on that lane before, within your margin rules. Quotes expire on their own and can be revived if you want.
Invoice Reconciliation and Payment Collection
For bills landing against a warehouse account, and storage invoices that age because they are small. FreighAI reads a carrier bill and matches every airway bill back to its job, checking line by line before it is booked. Follow-ups, chasers and reminders happen on their own, on the same conversation. Chasing, tracking checks, quote expiry and follow-ups run on their own. Nobody has to remember.
Most implementations start with the first two. The rest join when the next conversation is worth taking over.
What happens to one storage and handling enquiry
A storage enquiry and a freight enquiry usually arrive in the same email. This is where the two halves meet.
An enquiry arrives. FreighAI reads it, notices the weight is missing and asks for it. It pulls your rate cards, checks the carrier for a live rate, and emails your agents for the lanes you do not hold, then chases them until they reply. It drafts the quote with your margin rules and what that customer paid on that lane last time. Your pricer approves and it goes. It follows up. When the customer pushes back, the counter-offer is already drafted. When the quote is old, it expires. When it is won, the job is created.
Where the rate can be fetched without waiting on a person — a carrier API, a portal read in the background, or your own uploaded rate cards — a priced quote goes out in 10–15 minutes instead of 1–2 hours. That holds for ocean and air just as it does for express; the mode does not change it. Where a lane has to be priced by another agent or over the phone, the wait belongs to whoever is answering — not to the software. FreighAI still writes the RFQ, chases the reply, and turns whatever comes back into a priced, margin-checked quote the moment it lands.
Nothing on the floor changed to make that happen. The warehouse system was told once, at the end.
need DHL quote Gurugram → Ajman, 72kg, by Friday. urgent pls 🙏
Hi Marco — DHL Express, AED 425 + AED 35 handling. ETA Thu·18:00, valid 24h. PDF attached.
- 01Enquiry arrivesPallets, dwell time, in and out
- 02Missing detail askedCargo type and duration
- 03Tariff and rates gatheredRate card, agents for the leg
- 04Storage and handling priced
- GATEYour pricer approves
- 06Sent and followed up
- 07Account won
- 08Space and receiptThe floor takes over
At Infinity Logistics, average response time fell from more than 60 minutes to about 15 minutes, and the win rate rose from 35% to 73%. That is one customer’s measured result on quotations, not a warehouse benchmark.
What stays on the floor, and what FreighAI adds
Full warehouse management stays in the system you run it on, Binsy or otherwise.
| The work | Stays in your warehouse system | What FreighAI adds | Scoped with your team |
|---|---|---|---|
| Receiving and putaway | Every receipt, bin and label. The floor decides what happened. | The advance notice read out of the customer’s email, the receipt confirmation drafted. | Which fields cross over, and by whose hand. |
| The stock record | The count is that system’s number. Nothing else is authoritative. | The answer to “how much of mine is left?” drafted on the customer’s own thread. | Which stock views may be read, and how often. |
| Picking, packing and dispatch | Pick lists, packing and loading stay on the floor. | The release turned into a job order with the customer’s reference on it. | How a released order reaches the floor. |
| Charges and the monthly billing run | The service catalogue, the charge lines and the run itself. | The quote before the work, the covering email, the query and the chase. | Which charge type maps to which quoted line. |
| Customs and bonded status | Filing stays with your broker or your own system, and so do classification and duty. | Reads the correspondence and hands the task to whoever files, papers attached. | What may be stated about status, and by whom. |
- Receiving and putaway
- Stays in your warehouse system
- Every receipt, bin and label. The floor decides what happened.
- What FreighAI adds
- The advance notice read out of the customer’s email, the receipt confirmation drafted.
- Scoped with your team
- Which fields cross over, and by whose hand.
- The stock record
- Stays in your warehouse system
- The count is that system’s number. Nothing else is authoritative.
- What FreighAI adds
- The answer to “how much of mine is left?” drafted on the customer’s own thread.
- Scoped with your team
- Which stock views may be read, and how often.
- Picking, packing and dispatch
- Stays in your warehouse system
- Pick lists, packing and loading stay on the floor.
- What FreighAI adds
- The release turned into a job order with the customer’s reference on it.
- Scoped with your team
- How a released order reaches the floor.
- Charges and the monthly billing run
- Stays in your warehouse system
- The service catalogue, the charge lines and the run itself.
- What FreighAI adds
- The quote before the work, the covering email, the query and the chase.
- Scoped with your team
- Which charge type maps to which quoted line.
- Customs and bonded status
- Stays in your warehouse system
- Filing stays with your broker or your own system, and so do classification and duty.
- What FreighAI adds
- Reads the correspondence and hands the task to whoever files, papers attached.
- Scoped with your team
- What may be stated about status, and by whom.
Vendors describe their own side of this line. Blue Yonder lists warehouse operations, execution, slotting, labour, yard and returns. Extensiv describes orders “from receiving, through picking and packing, to printing labels and shipping”, plus its own customer billing. Customer email handling is not described in Blue Yonder’s published material, checked September 2026. A self-service portal, if you run one, also stays where it is.
Two ways this lands, depending on what runs your floor
Binsy is the FreighAI family warehouse product, built inside a forwarding company for forwarders running 3PL. It owns the floor: receiving, putaway, picking, the goods receipt note and the billing run. What matters here is the join. Binsy’s services were designed against FreighAI charge types, so the line you quoted and the line you bill are one line.
If your floor runs on something else, it keeps the floor and nothing has to move. Keep your TMS for the records. FreighAI runs the work around them. Manhattan Associates lists warehouse management, labour management and yard management as its product set. That is work FreighAI is not asking for. What it asks for is narrower: permission to read what it needs, and a way to hand a result back.
Stock questions, releases, receipt disputes and invoice queries.
Reads each thread start to finish and hands a finished task to the person who owns it.
Receiving, putaway, bins, picking, packing, the count and the billing run.
Stock that is not free to move
Customs and Border Protection publishes the shape of it plainly. Imported dutiable goods may sit in a bonded warehouse for up to five years from importation without duty paid, and on entry the proprietor takes on a liability under a warehouse bond. One of the eleven classes under 19 CFR 19.1 holds General Order goods: anything not claimed or entered fifteen days after arrival.
Each of those is a deadline, and a deadline is email. The withdrawal request, the broker’s question, the notice that a bond period is running down. FreighAI reads those threads, raises the task with the papers attached, and chases what has not come back.
Those are CBP’s published rules for the United States, checked in September 2026. Every regime you store under has its own clock, and this page is not legal advice.
How to test this on your own warehouse account
We scope the first workflow, integration requirements and implementation plan with your team. For a warehouse account that scope answers one question a freight-only implementation never asks: what is the warehouse system told, when, and by whom.
- 01Count last week’s warehouse-desk messages and see how many were about stock you hold rather than freight you move.
- 02Pick the ugliest one and ask to see it read, drafted and put on a named person’s desk, with the missing detail asked out loud.
- 03Then ask what your warehouse system was told, when, and who carried it. Judge that answer harder than the draft.
FreighAI is an AI-first freight operations platform that can run standalone or work alongside an existing TMS or ERP. It does not require a forced replacement. The same holds for the warehouse system underneath it.
The objections we hear most
Is this a second warehouse system we have to run?
No. FreighAI does not hold stock, allocate bins or decide what gets picked. Your warehouse system keeps all of that and stays the only place the count is true. FreighAI takes the conversation around it, which today lives in somebody’s inbox and memory.
Our floor does not run on Binsy. Does this still work?
Yes. Binsy is a sibling product, not a prerequisite. Another system keeps the floor, and the boundary is agreed in scope: what may be read, what comes back, who carries it. With Binsy the charge lines were designed against each other, so nothing has to be mapped.
Will it change our stock numbers?
No. The number your warehouse system holds is the number. FreighAI quotes it in a drafted reply and the reply waits for a person. If the two ever disagree, that is an exception for somebody to settle, not something smoothed over in a draft.
Will anything reach our customer without us seeing it?
Your team approves every reply before it sends. That posture is the same on the warehouse side as on the freight side.
Warehouse margins are thin. Is this justified on that side?
Judge it on one account: what it costs today to answer that customer properly, and what a churned storage account is worth over a year. Storage revenue recurs, so losing one is not like losing a job. Same team. 5x more business.
Common questions
Does FreighAI manage the warehouse?
No. Full warehouse management stays in your own system. FreighAI runs the email, quoting, booking, tracking and billing conversation around the work.
What is Binsy, and do we have to buy it?
Binsy is the FreighAI family warehouse product, in production at Infinity Logistics. It owns receiving, putaway, picking and the billing run. You do not have to buy it.
What happens to the monthly storage invoice run?
The run stays where it is. FreighAI takes what surrounds it: the covering email, the query on a handling line, the chase and the payment follow-up.
Do you file customs entries for bonded stock?
No. Filing stays with your broker or your own system, and so do classification and duty. FreighAI reads the correspondence around it.
Which workflow should we start with?
Usually the release instruction. It is high frequency, it has a clear input and output, and it crosses both halves of your business.
- U.S. Customs and Border Protection — “Bonded Warehouse” fact sheet (five years, warehouse bond, eleven classes, General Order)verified 2026-09-03
- Blue Yonder — “Warehouse Management” (operations, execution, slotting, labour, yard, returns)verified 2026-09-03
- Extensiv — “3PL Warehouse Manager” (receiving through picking, packing and shipping, plus customer billing)verified 2026-09-03
- Manhattan Associates — warehouse management, labour management and yard managementverified 2026-09-03
Warehouse capabilities are quoted from each vendor’s own published pages, checked on 3 September 2026, only to show which side of the boundary that work sits on. No pricing, market share or customer list is repeated. Binsy’s own figures live on the Binsy page, and the only customer results here are Infinity Logistics’.
Two businesses. One inbox. Start with one customer.
Pick one warehouse customer and bring last week’s thread with them: the stock question, the release that changed, the argument about a handling line. We will show you which part becomes a task, whose desk it lands on, and what your warehouse system still owns.