What this portal is for
Glaube moves freight into and out of Saudi Arabia, and does it with forwarding partners all over the world. When two forwarders agree to work together, three promises always get made, and always verbally: we will not go around you and take your customer, we will pay your invoice on time, and we will keep you informed. Everyone makes those promises. Nobody can prove them.
This portal is where Glaube and its agents do the work between them, and it turns those three promises into things you can point at on a screen. Both sides read the same record, rather than two copies that drift apart and then get argued over.
One record, two views. An enquiry, a job, an invoice and a dispute each exist once. What you see depends on who you are, not on which copy you happened to open. When the other side changes something, your screen updates without a reload.
How it works, step by step
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You get access Agreement
Glaube invites you and generates an agency agreement from the rules of the network you share. Read it, then either accept it or raise an amendment against a numbered clause. Nothing is silently changed and every version is kept. Until you accept, the agreement is the only screen you can use.
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Glaube asks you to price something Requests from Glaube
A tender arrives with the lane, the cargo, the incoterm and the date the end customer needs an answer. You will usually be one of several agents asked. You cannot see who else was asked or what they quoted, and they cannot see yours.
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You price it, line by line
Ocean freight, bunker, terminal handling at each end, documentation, customs and delivery, plus transit time, how long the quote stands, and how many free days you are giving at origin and destination.
Quote the free days honestly. If the container comes back late, the overrun is measured against your figure and not the carrier's tariff. You can also decline: declining counts as a response, and going quiet does not.
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You win, or you are told why you lost
Glaube cannot award the business to someone else without recording a reason for everyone who quoted: rate too high, transit too long, answered too late, customer did not proceed. You see the reason, and the pattern of your reasons over time.
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The job opens Jobs
It carries your winning quote, the document checklist for that shipment type, and the five Saudi clearance deadlines: manifest and pre-arrival filing, BL draft approval, telex release, Bayan declaration, Fasah clearance. They date themselves from the arrival. Tick them off as you go and Glaube sees each one immediately.
A job cannot be marked Documented while a mandatory document is missing, which is what makes that state worth anything.
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The container comes back
Days used are recorded against the free days you quoted, so any overrun is arithmetic. If detention is charged, a cause has to be attributed, whether that is a customs hold, a customer delay, a documentation error or a carrier issue. It becomes a fact on the record instead of a month-long argument.
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You invoice Jobs, then Submit our invoice
The form is pre-filled from your own accepted quote, and every line you change is compared automatically. Two things are counted separately because they are different conversations: charges above what you quoted, and charges that were never quoted at all.
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You watch the money Finance
Five states, each stamped with a time and its evidence: submitted, under review, booked in Nexus, scheduled for a payment run, and paid with a remittance reference and value date. You can see exactly where your invoice is and whose action is outstanding, so there is nothing to chase.
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If an invoice is wrong Disputes
Raise the dispute against the invoice rather than by email. The subject and the amount fill themselves in from the lines that actually differ, both sides see the same record, and the days it stays open are counted.
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Ask a question Saudi desk
Ask anything about moving cargo into Saudi Arabia and Glaube answers in writing within one working day. Your own questions and their answers stay on the screen, and an answer worth sharing is published to every agent.
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What Glaube publishes Bulletins
Short notices when a Saudi rule changes, each dated and carrying the name of whoever owns it, and below them the documents behind them. Each document opens in a tab of its own in your browser's own reader.
What you can and cannot see
Yours
- Every enquiry, job, invoice and document that involves you
- Your own quote on any tender
- Your statement and credit position
- The audit trail of everything Glaube did to your records
Never
- Another agent's name, price, transit or line items on a tender
- Any record belonging to another agent, by any route
- Glaube's cost or margin on your shipments
The partition is applied in the database query and not hidden in the screen. Asking the system directly for another agent's data returns nothing.
How it works, step by step
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Onboard an agent Agents
Either you invite them or they register and you approve, and both paths land on one record. The contract is generated from the rules of the network you share, and payment terms and the credit limit are set by Finance only. That is deliberate: it is the control that makes growing the network safe. Portal access opens when the agent accepts, and the agent is created in Nexus at that moment.
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Put work out to tender Tenders to agents
One enquiry, several agents. The picker shows each agent's response rate, average reply time, win rate and how much they have historically billed above their own quote, at the one moment that information can change a decision.
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Compare and award
Quotes come back priced line by line, so they can be read side by side with the cheapest highlighted and transit and free time alongside. Awarding one requires a reason for every other agent that answered. Agents who never replied are closed off as expired, and everyone is told the outcome.
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Run the job Jobs
Four states, not three. Documented means the paperwork is complete; Closed means the invoice is booked in Nexus and scheduled for payment. They are separated on purpose. Collapsed into one, an agent chasing payment cannot tell whether the delay is their missing document or your booking queue, and that ambiguity is where most agent relationships sour.
Set the sailing dates once and the five Saudi clearance deadlines date themselves. Record the container return and attribute any detention to a cause.
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Check the invoice against the promise Finance
Every line of the agent's invoice is compared to the quote that won the job. Charges over quote and charges never quoted are counted apart, because the first is a negotiation and the second is a trust problem. A dispute raised from a variance writes its own subject and amount.
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Move the payment clock
Each state demands its evidence: a Nexus booking reference to mark it booked, a payment run date to schedule it, a remittance reference and value date to mark it paid. The agent sees each step the moment you take it, which is what empties the accounts inbox.
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See what you currently cannot Dashboard
- Return by network. Gross profit against the fee for each membership. Glaube pays six a year and has no other way to prove which of them earn their cost.
- Why we lose. A rate problem and a sales problem need different answers, and this is the only place the difference shows.
- Agent performance by volume, margin, responsiveness and payment behaviour.
- Exposure and ageing by agent, with credit limit warnings.
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Answer what agents ask Saudi desk
The queue of questions from agents, with a one working day commitment. An answer can be published to every agent, without naming who asked.
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Publish to the network Bulletins
Notices pushed to every active agent when a rule changes, and a document library an administrator adds to, either by pasting a link or by uploading a file. Both carry a named owner and the date they were published. A library nobody maintains is worse than none, because it advertises neglect.
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Everything is on the record Audit trail
Every state change, document and approval is recorded with who did it, when, and what the value was beforehand. Agents can read the trail for their own records. Trust features that cannot be inspected are decoration.
One thing the system will refuse to let you do. You cannot award a tender without telling the agents who lost why. The refusal is deliberate, and it has no override.
The states, in order
An enquiry
Acknowledged and Quoted are separate on purpose. The gap between them is where enquiries actually die, and a follow-up only means something if you can see which of the two it is sitting in. Expiry is driven by the quotation's validity date rather than an arbitrary counter.
A job
An invoice, on the payment clock
Terms used here
- Tender
- One enquiry put to several agents at once. Each agent gets a quote record of its own, so an agent who never answers leaves a visible gap rather than being forgotten.
- Protected customer
- A consignee or shipper an agent has registered as theirs. Locked to that agent for a set period and enforced at the moment an enquiry is created, not overnight.
- Variance
- The line by line difference between an agent's invoice and the quote that won them the job.
- Free time and detention
- The days a quote allowed for using the container at each end, and the charge when that is exceeded. Every detention charge carries an attributed cause.
- Reciprocity
- The balance of business each side has given the other over the last twelve months. Shown to agents in both directions, honestly.
- Nexus
- Glaube's operating system, and the system of record for shipments and finance. This portal reads from it and writes to it, and holds no independent truth of its own.
Common questions
Is Glaube becoming a network, like WCA or JC trans?
No. A network is a membership club: it recruits forwarders, charges annual fees, introduces strangers and publishes a directory. Glaube is a member of six of them. This portal is bilateral and sits between Glaube and the agents it already works with. There is no membership, no fee and no matchmaking. Where it does overlap is credibility, because networks promise codes of conduct and payment protection while this proves the same promises instead of asserting them.
Does this replace Nexus, or my own system?
Neither. Nexus stays the system of record for shipments and money, and your own operating system stays yours. This is a shared layer for the part that happens between the two companies.
Who can see what I upload?
Documents attach to the record they belong to and are visible to both parties on that record. No other agent can reach them.
Something looks wrong on a record. What do I do?
Add a follow-up on the record itself rather than sending an email, because it stays attached and both sides see it. If it concerns money, raise a dispute against the invoice.
What is not built yet
Being straight about the edges. Documents are recorded by name rather than stored as files, notification emails are recorded but not sent, sign-in has no second factor yet, and writing back to Nexus is modelled with its exchange log rather than connected. The rate repository, two-way netting and the Arabic interface are later phases.