Beyond Shipping: Ten Modules, One Core

When we launched Ritzy for the web, we described it as a module for every line of the shipping business. That was accurate at the time and it is now too small a description. The platform has ten operating modules, and two of the newest — Real Estate and Payroll — have nothing to do with freight.

So the product is Ritzy ERP, not Ritzy Shipping. The shipping lines are all still there, unchanged and still the deepest part of the system. They are simply no longer the whole of it.

What Actually Changed

Very little, if you are a freight forwarder. Rather more, if you are not.

The architecture was always modular: Accounts is the core every installation runs on, and each operating line sits on top of it with its own entry screens, masters, dashboard and report pack. Nothing about that assumed ocean freight. What assumed ocean freight was the range of modules we had built — and the marketing that followed from it.

The ten lines you can licence today:

• Shipping and logistics — Cargo (freight forwarding), Liner, Marine Agency, Container Tracking, Warehousing, Inland Transport and Shipchandling.
• Property — Real Estate.
• Sales — CRM.
• People — Payroll.

The Accounts core comes with whichever of those you choose, and everything posts into it as you work. Almost nobody runs all ten — most customers run two or three — and the ones you do not licence are simply not in your menu.

Real Estate, Now in the Browser

Ritzy Real Estate has been a Windows product for years. It now runs on the web platform, against the same ledger as everything else.

It covers the letting cycle rather than a slice of it: properties and the units inside them, tenancy contracts with their own lifecycle, and rent invoicing generated on schedule instead of typed every month. Receipts and allocation, credit notes, accrued income. Electricity, maintenance and amenity charges, which are the part that usually leaks into a spreadsheet. A Property View that shows you what is vacant and what is occupied, with dashboards, reports and expiry alerts behind it.

Because it is on the shared core, a tenant is a customer in the same customer master your other lines use, and rent lands in the same multi-currency ledger as a freight invoice. For a group that runs both — and several of our customers do — that is the whole point.

Photographs a Prospect Can Actually See

The newest piece of Real Estate is the one we would have wanted first. You can photograph a property or an individual unit — several shots at a time, straight off a phone, shrunk in your browser before they are sent — then caption them, order them, and star one as the cover. The cover is what appears on the unit's tile in Property View.

Then you can send them to somebody.

A share link is built as a shortlist, because that is how a viewing actually works. You tick across every property and unit that has photos — three flats in two different buildings, if that is what you are showing this prospect — and each one opens for you to choose which photos go on the link. Add a headline and the contact details you want them to call, set how many days it should last, and you get a web address and a QR code. Paste the address into WhatsApp, or let somebody scan the code off your screen.

What they open is a plain photo page: what you ticked and nothing else. The property, the unit's size and layout, the facilities, your contact details, and an index at the top if the link carries more than one. They need no login, and they see no tenant, no contract and no balance. The rent appears only if you ticked it.

Each link is a snapshot of what you picked, so a photo you add next week does not quietly appear on a link you sent today. Every link expires on its date, and any link can be revoked on the spot for everyone holding it. The list keeps each one's view count and when it was last opened — including after it has been revoked — which turns out to be the most useful column on the page, because it tells you which property is actually getting interest.

One caveat worth stating plainly: a prospect's phone has to be able to reach your Ritzy server. If your installation only lives on the office network, the link will open in the office and nowhere else. Ask your administrator whether the server is published to the internet before you send one to a customer.

CRM and Payroll Stand on Their Own

Both used to be described as things that came with an operating module. That undersold them.

Payroll is a line in its own right: employees, positions, documents and pay components; salary processing that posts its own journal; loans, leave and balances; payslips printed or emailed, with the statutory reports behind them.

CRM is a sales pipeline over your real customer master — a board you drag deals across, a timeline of what was said, tasks and reminders that actually fire. It will read a lead off an enquiry email, draft the follow-up, brief you on an account before you call it, and scan for deals going quiet. On the phone app it will read a visiting card and file the contact, which is roughly why anyone takes a card.

A business that wants a pipeline, quotations and a ledger — and no jobs of any kind — has a complete system on day one.

Quotations and Purchase Orders, For Anyone

The quotation screen used to be a shipping quotation. There is now a general, letter-style one, and a purchase order that mirrors it.

Both print from real Word templates with PDF output, take AI paste from an enquiry or a supplier's offer, will draft a covering letter, keep a revision history, and email themselves. A quotation converts into an Accounts invoice or a shipping job; a purchase order converts into a purchase voucher. Neither assumes you move cargo.

The Part That Does Not Change

Everything that made the shipping platform worth using applies to the new lines, because it was never line-specific:

• One customer, one ledger. Job costing and profitability are a by-product of entry, not a month-end reconstruction.
• A support assistant in the top bar of every screen, answering from Ritzy's own manuals — and tickets to your own administrators when the answer is not in a manual.
• AI paste on every entry screen, with CSV import behind the same window. Tenancy contracts and payroll runs, not just job cards.
• Seven phone apps, installed from a QR code.
• Your documents, your layout — invoices, bills of lading, tenancy schedules and the rest print from templates you can edit yourself.
• Role-based rights, two-factor login, and a financial-year selector that filters every screen and report.

If You Run Shipping, Nothing Moves

The freight, liner, marine, container, warehouse, transport and chandling modules are untouched by any of this. No screen has moved, no report has changed, and the depth in them — thirty years of it — is exactly where it was. If you licence those lines, the only thing you will notice is a different name on the login screen.

What you gain is the option. A forwarder who buys a building, or a group that runs an agency and a property portfolio out of one office, no longer needs a second system and a bridge between them.

What Is Next

Inventory and trading — Ritzy Comfort on the desktop — is the line being ported next. As with Real Estate, it will arrive as a module on the same core rather than as a separate product with its own ledger.

See It Against Your Own Data

The quickest way to judge any of this is with your own properties, your own jobs and your own questions. Tell us which lines you operate and we will show you a build with those modules switched on, and nothing else in the way.