Most importers prepare their order in an Excel sheet: image, quantity, dimensions, by hand. It's slow, error-prone, and you end up paying for dead volume in the container. Here's how to go from photo to purchase order with no re-typing.
The problem with manual Excel
Back from a fair, Excel means: find the right photo, retype the negotiated price, count the cartons, sum the CBM, split by supplier… Every step is a chance to make a mistake. And nothing is reusable next trip.
The unbroken chain
When data is captured structured right at the booth, everything flows automatically:
- Capture → every product already has its photo, price, supplier and carton dimensions.
- Comparison → for a product seen at 3 suppliers, the best price at your target quantity surfaces on its own (tiers and MOQ included).
- Basket → you validate the chosen products with supplier and quantity.
- Order → cartons, CBM and weight compute automatically; a gauge shows container fill in real time.
Container math, automatic
No more adding up CBM by hand. The tool tells you:
- the fill rate by volume and by weight,
- whether you're limited by volume or by weight,
- the most economical container (20', 40', 40'HQ or LCL),
- what's left to load to complete it.
One document per supplier
A container order usually bundles several suppliers. The tool produces a sub-purchase-order per supplier — that bilingual English/Chinese document is what actually goes out on WeChat or by email.
Landed cost
Before confirming, you see your landed cost (freight, duties, VAT) and your margin at a target sale price. No more bad decisions based on FOB price alone.
In short: from booth to container, one continuous piece of data, zero re-typing. Discover Fairloop · Free trial.
Read also: capture a product in 15 seconds and how to calculate landed cost.