Multi-leg shipments as tasks and subtasks
How the Logistics pack keeps a multi-leg shipment on one record, with tasks and subtasks for each leg, stage gates and overdue work on the home page.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Logistics businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.
A container lands at Durban, goes by rail to an inland depot, crosses into Botswana on a subcontracted truck and finishes on a local delivery van. A consignment of machinery leaves Apapa by road for Kano, waits at a bonded warehouse, then moves on to the buyer's site. A shipment from Mombasa runs to Nairobi and on across the Malaba border into Uganda. Each of those is one booking for the shipper and three or four separate jobs for the forwarder, with different carriers, different documents and a different person chasing each part.
When the legs live in separate e-mail threads, the handovers are where things break: a truck is booked for a container that has not yet been released, or nobody notices that the second carrier never collected. The Logistics & freight pack in Achekam's Industry CRM keeps the whole movement on one shipment record and breaks the work into tasks for each leg. This article explains how to use that structure well.
One shipment, moved leg by leg
In the Logistics pack, customers are Shippers, priced work starts as a Spot quote request priced lane by lane, and each booked movement becomes a Shipment that moves leg by leg. The shipment is the single place the shipper's question "where is my cargo?" gets answered, however many carriers touch it.
Keeping one record matters for more than tidiness. The shipper is invoiced for the shipment, the margin is judged on the shipment, and any claim for damage or delay is made against the shipment. If each leg were its own record, the full picture would have to be stitched together by hand every time.
Tasks and subtasks per leg
Work on a shipment is done through tasks. In the Industry CRM, a workflow creates its tasks stage by stage, so the team is not handed every task for the whole journey on the first morning; the work for the next stage appears as the shipment reaches it.
Tasks can have subtasks, up to three levels deep. For a multi-leg movement, that depth maps neatly onto how a forwarder actually thinks:
| Level | Example |
|---|---|
| Task | Leg two: rail from port to inland depot |
| Subtask | Book rail slot and confirm with the depot |
| Sub-subtask | Send release documents to the rail operator |
Three levels is enough to split a leg into its bookings and each booking into its paperwork, without the list turning into a maze. A useful rule of thumb: if a subtask has its own owner and its own deadline, it deserves its own line; if it is simply a note, put it in the task's description.
Naming tasks so handovers are visible
Name every leg's task with its start and end points and its carrier, for example "Leg three: depot to border, subcontracted haulier". Then add a final subtask on each leg for the handover itself: the confirmation that the next carrier has the cargo. That one line is the most useful thing on the shipment, because it is the moment responsibility changes hands.
Stages and what they need
Alongside its tasks, every shipment passes through fixed stages: Booked, Collected, In transit, At customs and Delivered. The stage tells anyone looking at the record where the cargo is in its journey as a whole; the tasks tell them what is being done about it.
The last stage has a firm condition. A shipment is marked Delivered only with a delivery date and the name of whoever signed the proof of delivery. On a multi-leg movement, that means the final carrier's paperwork must be in hand before the shipment can close, not just a phone call saying the truck has arrived. How the stages work from booking to signed delivery is set out in shipments leg by leg to signed proof of delivery.
The stages are moved by people. The pack has no tracking feed, so a dispatcher updates the stage when a carrier confirms a collection or a border crossing; statuses and customs entries without live feeds covers keeping those updates honest.
Overdue tasks on the home page
The Industry CRM home page shows counts built from records, tasks and the ledger, and none of them is typed in by hand. Among them are overdue tasks and tasks due today.
For a multi-leg operation, those two counts are the early warning. An overdue task on leg two usually means leg three is about to go wrong: the truck for the border run is booked for tomorrow, but the depot has not received the container. Because the count comes from the tasks themselves, it cannot be optimistic. If a dispatcher has not ticked the handover, the task stays overdue and the count says so.
A short daily habit works well:
- Open the home page and look at overdue tasks first.
- For each, open the shipment and check which leg it belongs to.
- Decide whether the next leg's booking needs to move, and tell the next carrier now rather than at the gate.
- Work through tasks due today, handovers first.
Handovers between legs
Most of the cost on a multi-leg shipment is incurred at the joins: storage while cargo waits for the next carrier, a truck charging waiting time because the container is not ready, a missed rail slot. A few practices keep the joins tight:
- Book the next leg against a confirmed handover, not an expected one. Use the handover subtask as the trigger.
- Pass the documents with the cargo. Each carrier needs the transport document for its leg. Investopedia's explainer on the bill of lading describes how that document works as a receipt, a contract of carriage and a document of title, which is why the right copy has to reach the right carrier before the cargo moves.
- Record who has the cargo. Each leg's task should name the carrier and the person who confirmed collection.
- Close a leg only when the next one has started. A leg marked done while the cargo sits unclaimed at a depot is the most common blind spot.
Setting up your first multi-leg shipment
Take one regular multi-leg route and write down every leg, every booking within it and every document each carrier needs. That list becomes your task and subtask structure. Run a few shipments through it, look at which handover subtasks go overdue most often, and fix those joins first.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
