Salta al contenuto principale

Clients Overview

The Clients section is the directory of your shippers: the companies for which you organise transport, to whom you invoice your forwarding service, and which you can attach to loads to enable automated pickup and delivery notifications. From here you add a new client, browse their company data, decide which operational notifications they should receive via email/SMS/WhatsApp, and — when they want to actively collaborate on the platform — you send them an invitation to register on Truckscanner.

Forwarder

Where the section lives

From the left-hand menu of the platform, under the "Operational & Transport" group, click on "Clients" (building icon). The direct URL is /company/{companyId}/trading-partners.

The page title at the top reads "Business partners" — the technical name of the section, but throughout the rest of the platform and these guides we just call them "Clients", which also matches the menu entry.

The clients table

The table lists every client of your forwarder company. Each row is clickable: clicking it opens the detail drawer on the right with the full company data.

Always-visible columns:

  • Name — the client's company name. The only sortable column (click the header to flip A→Z / Z→A).
  • VAT — VAT number prefixed by the country code (e.g. IT03031930354).
  • City — the client's registered city, formatted City, Province (e.g. Milan, MI).
  • Contact — the contact person at the client, if filled in.
  • Truckscanner — the client's status on the platform:
    • if they have never been invited you see the "Collaborate on Truckscanner" button (the shortcut to invite them);
    • if they were invited and completed registration, you see the "Registered" badge;
    • if invited but the invitation is still pending, you see the "Invited" badge with three small icons next to it: copy invitation link, resend invitation, cancel invitation.
  • Status — "Active" or "Inactive" badge, referring to the directory record (not to the platform).
  • Actions — three icons at the end of the row: pencil (edit), power-off (deactivate), trash (delete).

To the right of the filter bar there's a column-customizer icon: clicking it lets you show/hide additional optional columns — Phone, Email, Email Notifications, SMS Notifications, Country, Notes, Created at.

At the bottom you have pagination: a "Results N of M" counter, a "Rows per page" selector (default 10), and four navigation buttons.

The filters

Above the table there's a two-level bar that helps you narrow the list down.

Platform status

The four tabs at the top filter on the client's Truckscanner status. Each tab has a counter next to it showing the matching number of clients:

  • All — the entire directory, regardless of platform status.
  • Registered — only clients who accepted the invitation and are active on Truckscanner.
  • Invited — only clients with a pending invitation that hasn't been accepted yet.
  • Not invited — only clients in the directory you haven't sent an invitation to yet (partners you only use for your internal operational notifications).

The active tab is highlighted and its counter turns lime.

Search

The "Search" field below the tabs lets you filter by name or VAT. The placeholder reads "Search by name or VAT…" — the table updates live as you type (no Enter required). Clearing the text restores the full list.

Show inactive

The "Show inactive" toggle, off by default, hides deactivated clients. Turning it on includes them in the list (you'll recognise them by the "Inactive" badge in the Status column).

Active filters appear as chips below the bar: clicking the X on a chip removes that filter; when there are two or more, a "Clear all" link appears to wipe everything in one click.

The client detail drawer

Clicking a row opens a panel on the right showing the full company record. At the top you always see:

  • the company name in large type,
  • the "Active" or "Inactive" badge,
  • the VAT number with country prefix (e.g. IT09876543210),
  • if the VAT is Italian or European and we verified it on VIES, a small green "VIES" badge appears next to it (tooltip: "VAT verified via VIES, the official European Union system…"). If VIES reports the VAT as invalid, the badge is red.

The drawer has three tabs: "Registry" (identifying data and contacts), "Commercial" (company data, e-invoicing, documents) and "Notifications" (channel preferences and the history of messages sent to the client).

"Registry" tab

The tab is organised in blocks:

  • Company data — VAT, fiscal code, legal form, sector code + description, activity status, incorporation date.
  • Addresses — the Registered office is highlighted with a lime label. Below it you find any Local units (warehouses, depots, branches) with full address and optional description.
  • Contact — name, phone (clickable, opens the OS dialer), email (clickable, opens the email client).
  • Notes — free-text notes you wrote on the client record, if any.
  • At the bottom, system dates: Created on and Updated on.

"Commercial" tab

The Commercial tab gathers the engagement data of the client: public company information, e-invoicing details, contacts and contractual documents.

  • Commercial data — annual turnover, employee count, enterprise size. They only appear if data enrichment found something publicly; otherwise you see the message "No commercial data available".
  • E-invoicing — PEC (certified email) and SDI code when available. The PEC is clickable and opens a new email.
  • Company contacts — website, company phone and email (in addition to the individual contact in the Registry tab).
  • Documents — "+ UPLOAD DOCUMENT" button in the top right. When there are no documents the area shows the message "No documents uploaded — Upload contracts, price lists or other documents for this client". Supported file types are PDF, Excel and images, up to 20 MB per file. Document types available on upload are Contract (PDF), Contract (Excel), Price list, Other.

"Notifications" tab

The Notifications tab is where you decide which channels Truckscanner uses to communicate with this client when their loads move, and where you see the history of everything that's been sent to them.

At the top, always visible even while scrolling, are the two channel toggles:

  • Email notifications — Tracking, pickup/delivery confirmations, documents. On by default.
  • SMS / WhatsApp notifications — Real-time alerts. On by default. Truckscanner tries WhatsApp first and automatically falls back to SMS if the number doesn't have an active WA account.

Switching off either toggle disables that channel for all future loads of this client, both as sender and recipient. The change is immediate (no Save button). The client can also unsubscribe themselves by clicking the "Unsubscribe" link at the bottom of the emails they receive: the Email toggle then turns off automatically.

Below the toggles, the notifications history unrolls in chronological order from the most recent. Each entry shows:

  • channel icon on the left (envelope for email, speech bubble for SMS/WhatsApp);
  • notification title (e.g. Pickup completed — LD-ABC123, Goods delivered — LD-DEF456, Issue reported — LD-XYZ789);
  • date and time of the send and the recipient used (email or phone number);
  • status badge on the right:
    • SENT (green) — the notification went through correctly;
    • BLOCKED (orange) — Truckscanner blocked the send because the client had already received too many notifications of the same type in the last hour (anti-flooding, max 5/h);
    • ERROR (red) — the send failed; usually the recipient is invalid or unreachable;
    • QUEUED (grey) — the send is still being processed.

Clicking a history entry expands the row showing the message body summary, the actual channel used (e.g. "Sent via WhatsApp"), the load reference when present, and — if the status is BLOCKED or ERROR — an operational hint like "Send blocked: too many notifications in 1 hour." or "Send failed. Check the client's contact details.". Clicking again collapses it.

Row actions

At the end of every table row there are three small icons, each with a tooltip on hover:

  1. Pencil (Edit) — opens the drawer in edit mode: no tabs, just the fields Client name *, address (with autocomplete), contact name, contact phone and email, notes. At the bottom the buttons CANCEL and SAVE. The confirmation toast reads "Client updated".
  2. Power-off (Deactivate) — deactivates the client (still archived, but no longer appears in load selectors). Toast "Client deactivated". The icon is disabled if the client is already inactive. To reactivate, open the drawer and use the REACTIVATE button at the bottom.
  3. Trash (Delete) — opens a confirm dialog "Delete client — Are you sure you want to delete the client Acme S.r.l.? This action cannot be undone." (the client name is dynamic). Confirming with the red DELETE button, the client is removed permanently and you receive the toast Client "Acme S.r.l." deleted.

The same three actions — plus reactivation — are also available inside the drawer in view mode, at the bottom: EDIT (lime), DEACTIVATE (or REACTIVATE if inactive), DELETE (red).

Adding clients: single new or bulk import

Top right, in the page header, two entry points:

  • "+ NEW" (lime) — opens the "New client" dialog where you can search the client by VAT (with VIES verification and institutional data enrichment) or fill in the data manually. The dialog description reads: "Add a sender or recipient to the directory. You'll be able to attach them to loads for the automated pickup and delivery notifications."
  • "⤴ IMPORT CSV" (outline) — opens the bulk import dialog: you download a template_clients.csv template with pre-set columns (company name, VAT country, VAT number, address, city, province, ZIP, country, contact name, contact phone, contact email, notes), fill it in and upload it.

For a step-by-step walk-through of both flows see the dedicated guides linked at the bottom.

Truckscanner status: client "in directory" vs client "collaborator"

An important distinction that often confuses newcomers: a client in the directory is not automatically an active collaborator on Truckscanner.

  • In directory — the client record only exists in your forwarder company. You use it to attach to loads, to receive operational notifications on behalf of the end client, to archive contracts and price lists. The client knows nothing about Truckscanner: they just receive direct email/SMS/WhatsApp notifications when their loads move.
  • Active collaborator — when you want the client to have direct access to the platform to view their transports' status in real time and to provide their pickup/delivery availability, you invite them on Truckscanner by clicking the "Collaborate on Truckscanner" button on their row. They receive an invitation email; once they accept, the Truckscanner column status flips to "Registered" and the client sees their shipper dashboard with their shipments.

The two coexist: every client is first "in directory", then optionally also a "collaborator". The invitation can always be cancelled and resent from the icons next to the badge.

Common problems

See also