ERP Promises, Operational Headaches: What UK Forwarders Regret Post-Go-Live

When a UK freight forwarder signs up for an ERP, it’s usually with good intentions: streamline operations, improve visibility, and eliminate inefficiencies. On paper, the promises sound great. The demo shows clean job creation. The salesperson nods confidently when you ask about VAT. The pitch sounds like this time, it’ll all just work.

But fast-forward six months, and the reality feels different.

The system’s too rigid. Your team still uses spreadsheets. Finance is still chasing operations for numbers. You’ve paid for a “freight ERP,” but you’re managing workarounds instead of workflows.

So what happened?

Let’s talk about the real post-go-live regrets UK forwarders face—and what your ERP should have delivered in the first place.

1. We Still Can’t See What’s Going Wrong—Until It’s Too Late.

ERP systems often promise visibility. But many only deliver dashboards full of outdated, disconnected data. For freight forwarders, that’s fatal. You don’t need pretty graphs—you need job-level margin alerts, live shipment statuses, and SLA exception tracking.

A true freight management system gives you early warnings, not post-mortems. It connects quotes to jobs, jobs to invoices, and shipments to margin in real time.

Logi-Sys, for example, gives UK forwarders live profitability tracking, delayed milestone alerts, and performance dashboards at the branch, job, and user level. That’s visibility that prevents failure—not just reports on it.

2. It Works for Finance. Operations Still Fends for Itself.

Here’s what many freight ERP vendors won’t tell you: most systems are just rebranded accounting software.

They handle invoicing. Maybe a balance sheet. But they can’t track a rolled container, split a consolidation, or connect a quote to an AWB. So ops teams are back in spreadsheets—cutting, pasting, manually updating milestones.

That’s not digital transformation. That’s digital gaslighting.

Logi-Sys was built as an ERP for freight forwarders, not finance-first businesses. It handles air, sea, and road jobs natively—direct, back-to-back, or consolidated. Freight comes first. Finance follows automatically.

3. We’re Still Chasing Spreadsheets for VAT.

VAT is not optional. But many forwarders still handle it like it is—on disconnected Excel sheets, with last-minute reconciliations and tax-time panic.

That’s because most systems bolt VAT on as an afterthought.

Logi-Sys doesn’t. It provides UK-ready VAT handling, including:

• Automated tax application at job and invoice level

• HMRC-ready VAT reports

• Period locking to prevent post-close edits

• Audit trails that stand up to scrutiny

No rekeying. No surprises. Just tax compliance built in from day one.

4. We Bought a System. We Didn’t Get Support.

Implementation always sounds smooth during sales. But when real problems show up—like mismatched ledgers, customs logic failures, or user confusion—most vendors disappear behind a ticketing system or outsourced helpdesk.

UK forwarders don’t need help lines. They need helpful people—who understand freight.

Logi-Sys provides in-house support from domain experts. That means logistics professionals, not general tech reps. If you’re managing multiple branches, or automating customs with carbon emissions tracking—you're speaking to someone who’s done it before.

5. It Still Doesn’t Do What Our Forwarding Business Actually Needs.

The biggest regret? Buying ERP that wasn’t built for you. Generic ERP can’t understand:

• Carbon emissions reporting for sustainability compliance

• Consolidated job cost control across branches

• Customer portals that show more than a tracking number

• Real-time SLA tracking across modes

Logi-Sys does. It’s freight ERP software—designed with the operational reality of UK forwarders in mind. That includes features like carbon emission tracking for shipments (by mode, weight, and routing), and VAT-integrated billing.

It doesn’t ask your business to adapt to the software. It adapts to how freight actually works.

Final Word: You Didn’t Fail. The System Did.

If you’ve bought ERP that your team doesn’t use, that doesn’t give you answers, and that still relies on spreadsheets—it’s not your fault.

It was never freight ERP to begin with. It was accounting in disguise.

UK forwarders don’t need more broken promises. They need infrastructure that can actually run freight. The kind that connects jobs, teams, modes, customers, and cashflows—without adding complexity.

That’s what Logi-Sys delivers. Not just ERP. Freight-first clarity.