Afodel.com Beginner - Afodel.com Explained !
Description
Begining on Afodel.com !
Afodel is Africa and world shipping marketplace. A shipping marketplace is where people who would like to ship goods meet transporters, forwarders, couriers, clearing agents, and many other logistics providers in the Africa supply chain. For a example, if you own a recovery van/truck in London and you can facilitate a customer to move his or her car to the port for shipment to Africa, then please welcome to Afodel.com.
Registration
Customer Registration: A customer is the job giver who posted a shipping job on Afodel.com for a transporter to bid on or provide a quote. A customer should sign up using the customer sign up link https://afodel.com/join-as-customer. A customer sign up is easy and not as complicated as a transporter signup. It is easy, it is free, a customer can even post a job and be signed in automatically. To manage your post and enjoy other benefits we will encourage customers to register first or provide a password while posting a shipment job.
Freight Agent Registration: A transporter registration is easy also but more complicated than a customer registration, A typical transporter sign up will involve the following process;
1. Use the transport Signup form to register (it is important to follow format as shown on the form)
2. Confirming your email through the link sent to your email.
3. Verify your business by clicking on the verify mobile on the profile area, then verify address through the same means, the difference here is mobile verification is instant while address verification can take bteween 1 day to 2 weeks depending on when the post arrives at your address. Both mobile and address verifications would require codes to be confirmed in your profile area.
once a transporter has succesfuly gone through verification, a verified member logo will appear on their profile and they can copy the logo to use on their websites.
Email verification : We have stressed email verification here again because without clicking the verification link sent to your email by afodel.com you wont have access to your account. Please always check the junk folder if you cant find the email in your inbox, if you still cant find the mail, alternatively you can use this link to request a new verification email https://afodel.com/users/resendVerificationEmail .
Your Dashboard Explained
Your Dashboard is your member area where you can enjoy the features Afodel offers , this gives you control to do as please .
Customer Dashboard
A customer dashboard will comprise of the Profile picture(if any) and menus on the left. The Menus are described as;
My Profile: Once you are logged in as a customer, you are logged into my profile automatically which will display all your shipments (Since our currency is in USD, on your far right you will see a currency converter widget that can help you compare your currency to USD before you quote)
Edit profile: Edit your details here and also add profile picture if possible. Please note that adding profile pictures less than 240 x 260 pixel would produce an error alert, add profile images of 300 x 300 or anything above .
Change Password: Allows a customer to change password, you must know your old password to be able to change the new password.
My Enquiry list: A customer can view all the recent and past enquires, using the icons on the right side of the quote will give access to view details, quotes, edit enquiry etc.
Inbox: Inbox is where all messages with transporters can be viewed and replied to
My Notifications: If you have any messages or alerts from a transporter, you can view them in your notifications
Payment History: This will give a customer a total view of the bid payment history that has been done , customer can also download and print each invoice by clicking on the print icon on the right of every transaction
Log Out: Use the log out link to leave your account, you will need to log in again to access your account.
Freight Agent's Dashboard
A freight agent's dashboard has one or two similar menus to customer's dashboard but with more feature like verification, subscription etc. Let us look at them one after the other . Once an agent is logged in , Menus like Add journey (tell customer where you are heading to and see if they have something along the way for you or to know exactly where you operate), Add vehicle (what vehicle type do you operate, If you are a freight forwarder you may be working with Aircraft) , Add contact( Who is the major contact to reach at any time ), my quote list (list of your current quotes) and verification logo that can be copied and pasted on their own websites are available (verified member logo is only available to verified members and should not be used by non verified members).
Edit profile: Edit your details here and also add profile picture if possible. Please note that adding profile pictures less than 240 x 260 pixel would produce an error alert, please add profile images of 300 x 300 or anything above .
Change Password: Allows a customer to change password, you must know your old password to be able to change the new password
My Journeys : A customer can view all the recent and past enquires, using the icons on the right side of the quote will give access to view details, quotes, edit enquiry etc.
My Quote lists: Agents can view their quote lists and take other actions like sending messages to the customer - Please note that messages are monitored for any violation of our messaging policy. See the notice highlighted in red.
My Saved Search
Inbox: Inbox is where all messages with customers can be viewed and replied to, See the notice highlighted in red.
My Notifications: If you have any messages or alerts from a customers , you can view them in your notifications
Subscription payment List : Bidding for a job is now 100% free on Afodel.com
Bid payment History: The bid payment history is where an agent can view the whole bid fees paid on their behalf by the customer , please note the VAT refund for this bid amount can only be claimed back by the payer(customer) as part of the total payment made to Transporter. When a customer accepts a quote from a customer, the customer will pay 5% commission + VAT on the total amount of the quote, That is the customer paying the 5% + VAT commission to be paid by the Transporter to Afodel on behalf of the transporter, now making the remaining the balance to be paid to the transporter to be 95% since 5% commision has been paid.
A transporter / agent can print their invoices by clicking on the print icon on the right of the transaction.
Subscription Plan: No subscription to bid for a job . Bidding for a job is now 100% free on Afodel.com
log Out: Use the log out button to leave your profile, you need to log back in to access your profile again.
Building Your Profile
Building a very good profile should not be a hardwork, we have put up the a description here for you https://afodel.com/blogs/detail/how-to-create-a-solid-profile-on-afodel-com
Extended Profile Plan:
This can be found on the edit menu link and allows a transporter to input all contact details and other information to extend their profiles. This will come at a yearly cost of $50/year. If a customer prefers to contact you privately to deal with you , this is not possible as Afodel does not allow any contact exchange till the job is won . This can be overcome by having an extended profile system.
Afodel.com is also a directory for African agents and brings up your profile in the search engines of which any customer can contact you directly.
If you are not a verified member of Afodel, it will show on your profile and customer may not consider contacting you , being a verified member is also very important.
Account verification: Verifying your business on Afodel is one of the most important process a freight agent would have to go through. Customers use Afodel to find transporters/ agents because of the strict verification system our transporters have to go through before being a verified member, and not only that there are constant checks to control dodgy agents by our dedicated team. Before verification, please have the following handy;
1. Your mobile Phone (this should be the same as the one registered on the site)
2. A verifiable business address (this should be the same as the one registered on the site)
3. Your ID and business registration details
Subscription:
A subscription is needed to place any bid on Afodel, our subscriptions starts from $2 for 2 bids to maximum of $45 for 60 bids and works on monthly Pay As You GO basis starting from the subscription date to 1 month or if the purchased bid has been used up. After filling up a fanstastic profile, the next step is to use the free 2 bids offer to bid and win a job or purchase more bids as required by a transporter. Without the subscription, a job cannot be quoted for .
Commission fees
The standard commission fee on Afodel for a job won by a transporter/agent is 5% + VAT which will be paid by the customer as a commitment for the job to be undertaken by the agent and then will balance 95% to the agent as agreed between parties. At this stage it is the responsibility of the agent to apply VAT to charge or not.
Note: This has to be explained to the customer before job is awarded or put that into consideration when quoting for a job.
Bidding for a job: If a customer post a shipment in a category, an email will go to all transporters that added that category as part of the services they provide., If you downloaded our APP, A push notification will come through to your phone. You can log in through the website or the APP to view and bid for the job, also ask questions about the job before bidding. A transporter can bid first and after talking to the customer may decide to review the price on the quote, this is no problem and can be done as much as possible, the only thing here is a bid credit is taken off anytime a bid is reviewed.
Note: A transporter must not be verified to bid for a job but a transporter must be subscribed and verified for the customer to accept his or her bid.
