Your ERP books the demurrage but never the chassis that caused it
A custom ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) build for a Savannah operator runs $90k to $220k over 5 to 9 months. You go custom when NetSuite or Dynamics treats a container, a chassis, and a demurrage charge as three unrelated records, so nobody at your Pooler warehouse can trace why a $4,200 detention bill exists. Off-the-shelf is right for plain GL and AP; custom earns its cost the day it ties a Garden City gate appointment to the invoice line.
You bought NetSuite to run the books and it does that fine. Then a container sits at Garden City Terminal an extra two days, the chassis pool bills you, the steamship line bills demurrage, and the customer disputes the accessorial three weeks later. Your ERP has the invoice but not the gate timestamp, not the chassis ID, not the appointment that got bumped. The story lives in email and a dispatcher's memory.
SAP and Microsoft Dynamics can be bent toward this with enough consultants, but their freight modules assume a tidy world of POs and ASNs, not the messy reality of drayage near the Port of Savannah where one missed gate move snowballs into charges from four parties. You end up paying for a platform whose data model fights the actual unit of work you bill on: the container move.
- You bill on container moves or production jobs, not catalog SKUs the ERP was designed for
- Demurrage and accessorial disputes cost you real money and you can't trace them in your current system
- You run two systems (port ops and manufacturing) that finance reconciles by hand
- Your close takes a week longer than it should because revenue is reconstructed after the fact
- Your accounting is standard GL, AP, and AR with no container-move complexity
- You're under roughly $15M revenue and can't staff ongoing ERP maintenance
- NetSuite or Dynamics with a freight add-on already covers 80% of your workflow
- You need certified statutory and tax reporting more than container-level traceability
- Container-level P&L: every demurrage and chassis charge traces to the gate event that triggered it
- Accessorial reconciliation that matches line, pool, and terminal bills automatically instead of by spreadsheet
- Job costing for manufacturing suppliers that reconciles labor and material against the same GL the port side uses
- Quarter-close in days not weeks because revenue is captured at the move, not rebuilt from email
- One system finance, dispatch, and the warehouse floor in Pooler actually share instead of three islands
- You inherit accounting logic that an off-the-shelf vendor would have certified and audited for you
- Tax, FX, and statutory reporting you'd get free from NetSuite now become line items in your build
- A custom ERP is a multi-year commitment; the team that built it has to stay reachable or you're stranded
- If your move volume is low, the per-transaction savings may never cover the build cost
ERP pricing in Savannah: the real numbers
| Project scope | Typical cost | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Freight-ops module on top of existing GL | $60k to $110k | 4 to 6 months |
| Full custom ERP (ops + finance + job costing) | $120k to $220k | 7 to 9 months |
| Integration layer linking ERP to terminal and chassis-pool feeds | $30k to $55k | 2 to 3 months |
The features that matter for Savannah
ERP services we deliver in Savannah
Digital Heroes builds the full ERP stack for Savannah teams. Typical engagements cover ERP integration, NetSuite customization, SAP integration, Odoo development and Microsoft Dynamics 365.
Exactly what you get
A system where the container move is the unit of truth. Finance opens an invoice and clicks straight to the gate appointment, chassis ID, and detention clock behind every charge. The Pooler warehouse, dispatch, and accounting work from one ledger instead of three. Manufacturing job costing reconciles against the same GL, so a Gulfstream-tier supplier line and a drayage settlement live in one close. You also get a demurrage engine that warns you before free time expires, not after the $4,200 bill arrives.
How to choose a developer in Savannah
Hire a team that can talk fluently about Garden City Terminal gate windows, chassis pools, and accessorial disputes without you explaining them. Ask to walk one stuck gate move end to end in a system they built. Insist they name which statutory and tax pieces they integrate versus build, because that line is where ERP projects quietly double in cost. A local or regionally present partner who can sit with your dispatchers beats a cheaper remote shop that models freight like retail. Adjacent systems worth scoping together: a custom CRM (Customer Relationship Management), a warehouse management system, and business intelligence dashboards.
From kickoff to launch: the schedule
- !They quote a fixed ERP price before seeing your accessorial and demurrage workflow; ask how they model a stuck gate move
- !They've only done retail or SaaS ERP and have never touched drayage; ask for a port or freight reference
- !No plan for statutory and tax reporting; ask which parts they build versus integrate
- !They promise to 'configure NetSuite to do it'; ask to see the exact gate-to-invoice trace they'll deliver
- !No data-migration plan from your current GL; ask how historical container revenue moves over
Teams investing in erp in Savannah usually scope it next to internal tools, shopify, inventory management, since these systems share data and budgets.
Rohan advises mid-market and enterprise teams on ERP, CRM and custom software, and has led delivery on dozens of business-software builds.
Writes for Digital Heroes, shipping business software for 2,000+ brands across 55+ countries since 2017.
Frequently asked questions
How is a custom ERP different from configuring NetSuite for our freight business?
NetSuite models the invoice; a custom ERP models the container move underneath it. Configuration can bolt freight fields onto NetSuite, but the accessorial three-way match and gate-to-invoice traceability that Savannah drayage needs usually fight the underlying data model. Custom makes the move the core record, which is the entire reason demurrage becomes traceable.
What does an ERP build cost for a Savannah port-logistics company?
Expect $90k to $220k over 5 to 9 months. A freight-ops module on top of your existing GL lands around $60k to $110k; a full ERP with finance and manufacturing job costing reaches $120k to $220k. Terminal and chassis-pool integrations add $30k to $55k.
Can it handle both our port logistics and our manufacturing job costing?
Yes, and that's often the strongest case for going custom. One GL that reconciles drayage settlements and manufacturing WIP in the same close removes the hand reconciliation that currently lives in a spreadsheet one person owns.
Will it integrate with the terminal and chassis-pool systems?
It should. A clean integration layer pulls gate events and chassis assignments so detention clocks update automatically. Budget $30k to $55k for those feeds and confirm the vendor has connected to terminal or pool data before, not just generic EDI.
How long before our first live quarter-close on the new system?
Plan on 5 to 9 months to a live close. Discovery and the container-move data model take the longest because they decide whether traceability actually works. Rushing that phase is how ERP projects end up rebuilding revenue from email all over again.