Free template
Free freight quotation template for Excel
A working spreadsheet for pricing a freight quote: internal costing with buy and sell rates, margin and currency conversion on one sheet, and a clean customer quotation on another that never shows your costs.
What is in the workbook
- Read me — instructions and the calculation rules.
- Example costing and Example quotation — a filled, fictional ocean quote you can study or overwrite.
- Costing and Quotation — the same layout, empty, for your own quotes.
The costing sheets are internal: they hold buy rates, sell rates and margin, and carry a red banner saying so. The quotation sheets read only the customer-facing columns — charge, basis, quantity, currency, sell rate and amount — and the template generator checks that no quotation cell refers to a cost column.
Fields and calculations
| Area | What you enter | What is calculated |
|---|---|---|
| Quote details | Quote number, date, valid-until date, customer, contact, quote currency, mode, service or equipment, Incoterm, origin, destination, commodity | Copied onto the quotation sheet |
| Cargo | Pieces, gross weight (kg), volume (CBM) | Air chargeable weight (1 CBM = 167 kg) and sea LCL revenue tons (1 tonne or 1 CBM, whichever is greater) |
| Charge lines (up to 20) | Section, charge, basis or unit, quantity, line currency, FX rate, buy rate, sell rate, show on quote (Y/N), optional (Y/N) | Buy and sell totals in the line currency and the quote currency, margin and margin % per line |
| Totals | — | Firm buy, sell and margin excluding optional charges; optional charges separately; the total the customer will see |
| Checks | — | Flags a missing FX rate, a sell price without a cost, a visible line without a sell rate, and a hidden line that still carries a sell value |
Amounts are rounded to two decimals at each step — quantity × rate, then × FX — so the quotation adds up to exactly the total shown. Margin % is margin divided by sell, and is left blank when sell is zero rather than showing a misleading 0%.
The worked example
A fictional ocean import: one 40' high-cube of flat-packed furniture, FOB Ningbo, delivered to a warehouse in Tilburg, quoted in euros. Ocean freight and the bunker surcharge are bought and sold in US dollars and converted at an illustrative 0.92; destination charges are in euros. One origin agent fee is absorbed — hidden from the customer, but still counted against margin — and cargo insurance is offered as an optional extra.
| Buy | Sell | Margin | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Firm charges | 2,320.60 | 2,777.40 | 456.80 (16.4%) |
| Optional insurance | 120.00 | 144.00 | 24.00 |
| Customer sees | — | 2,777.40 + 144.00 optional | — |
How to use it
- Open the Costing sheet and fill in the quote details and cargo.
- Add one row per charge with quantity, currency, buy rate and sell rate. If the line currency differs from the quote currency, enter the FX rate — the number of quote-currency units one unit of the line currency buys.
- Set Show on quote to N for costs you absorb, and Optional to Y for charges the customer may decline.
- Clear every message in the Check column and the warning under the totals.
- Open the Quotation sheet, replace the company placeholder, adjust the terms, and export that sheet to PDF.
Keep your costs private
Every rate, FX rate and term in the example is illustrative. Use your own buy rates, check chargeable-weight rules with each carrier, and have your terms reviewed for your market.
Where a spreadsheet stops
A template makes each quote consistent. It cannot tell you which version the customer accepted, carry the accepted quote into a shipment, or show the margin changing when the real supplier invoice arrives. If those are the gaps you feel, read Excel vs freight forwarding software, see how freight quoting in Tranvoro works, or compare pricing.
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