Part 1 · Set up your account

By the end: the right people invited, freight split the way your desk works, and your own carrier vetting still in charge.

1. One menu, behind your profile picture

Ten minutes of setup saves hours of chasing later, and nearly all of it lives in one place: your profile picture, bottom left.

• The top half of that menu is your company — members, teams, workspaces and billing.
• The bottom half is you — the languages you work in, miles or kilometers, and how alerts reach you.

Turn on the alerts you will actually read

Bids, chats and posting updates can reach you by email, WhatsApp or push. Our most responsive customers turn WhatsApp on, so a bid never waits for someone to get back to their desk.

2. Invite your team

Every plan includes unlimited users, so invite everyone who touches cross-border freight. Organization → Members → Invite a member. Name, email, role and language.

The two roles

• Member — post freight, answer bids, use Market Rates.
• Admin — all of that, plus manage people, teams and settings.

Most customers name two or three admins. One is a single point of failure the first time that person is on a plane.

3. Teams and workspaces

Bigger brokerages split the work two ways. They are not the same thing:

• A team holds people — everyone who works Laredo, say.
• A workspace holds freight — one per office, or one per agent.

Make a workspace private when an office's freight should stay separate from the rest of the company.

4. Your vetting stays in charge

Cargado vets every carrier before it can bid. Your own rules sit on top of that — through three settings your success manager turns on with you.

1. Send us your carrier onboarding link. Every match then tells the carrier to onboard with you first — Highway, RMIS, MyCarrierPackets or your own form.
2. Send us your do-not-use list. Those carriers never see your freight.
3. On a lane, hide it from the carrier who already has it. The incumbent does not see you shopping their lane.

Cargado finds the carrier. Your onboarding approves it. Our vetting is a floor, not a replacement for yours.

Common mistakes in part 1

• Rationing invites. Users are unlimited on every plan. An office where only two people have logins answers bids slowly.
• Naming one admin. Two or three keeps people, teams and settings moving when one of them is out.
• Leaving alerts on email only. A bid that waits for someone to get back to their desk is a bid a faster broker already answered.
• Assuming our vetting replaces yours. It does not, and it is not meant to — your onboarding still runs on every match, but only if we have your link.
• Reaching for a team when you needed a workspace. A team groups people. A workspace holds freight.

Next: Part 2 · Price it first