A freight forwarder’s numbers live in two places: what actually happened (the shipment log) and what it means (on-time rate, margin, volume). Most small forwarders only keep the first and guess at the second.
How the two sheets work together
Shipments Log is where you enter every shipment: ID, date, origin, destination, carrier, whether it was on time, revenue, and cost. Margin per shipment calculates itself from revenue minus cost.
KPI Dashboard pulls from the log automatically: total shipments, on-time count and percentage, total revenue, total cost, total margin, and margin percentage. You never touch the dashboard sheet directly, it just reads the log.
Why on-time % is the number that matters most
Revenue tells you volume. Margin tells you profitability. On-time percentage tells you whether you have a business a shipper will come back to. A forwarder running 90%+ on-time delivery can charge a premium over one running 70%, because reliability is the actual product being sold in freight forwarding, not just capacity.
Track it from day one, even with a handful of shipments, so you have a real number to show a prospective client instead of a guess.
Feed the log from the shipment tracking spreadsheet if you’re already using that to track status day to day.