Shipping CRM

The Backstory

Ibuiltthisprojectduringa2026summerinternship,foraMoroccanlogisticscompany,anditwasthefirsttimeIworkedfromsomeoneelse'srulesinsteadofmyown.Theruleswerespecificinthewayrealbusinesstendstobe.Aclientcancreateashipmentbutcanneverchangeitsstatus.Everyaccountgetsitsownsix-digitnumber.InvoiceshavetocarryICEandotherfiscalfields.Andyoudon'tdeleteamistakeonaninvoice,youissueacreditnotetocorrectit.Noneofthatisthekindofthingyou'dthinktoinventonapersonalproject,andworkingthroughittaughtmemorethanatutorialwould.

Theapphasfourkindsofusers,allservedfromonecodebase.Thecompanyhandlesdaytodayoperations,accountclientsmanagetheirownshipmentsandinvoices,guestscanrequestaquickquotewithoutsigningup,andanyoneatallcanfollowaparcelonapublicpagewithnologin.BehinditisaLaravelAPI,aReactfrontend,andPostgreSQL.Idesignedthedatabaseschemafirstinthe'CahierdesCharges',beforewritinganyapplicationcode.

Ialsomademockupsbeforebuilding.Makingsurethattheappfeltnaturalforitsintendedusers.IwireframedeveryscreeninplainHTMLfirst,thedashboards,theinvoicebuilder,theshipmentforms,thetrackingpage,andIspentrealtimestudyinghowothercompanieslayouttheirownsites.

Shippingitwasitsownlesson.Therewasnoserverlessplatformdoingtheworkformethistime,itwentonarealVPSandIdeployeditbyhand.SSHingintotheserver,settingupnginx,wiringupthedatabase,handlingenvironmentvariablesandthebuild,andfixingwhateverbrokeonceitwasactuallylive.Thatsideofittaughtmewhatamanagedhostquietlyhidesfromyou,allthesmallthingsthathavetobetrueforanapptostayuponamachineyouactuallyown.It'sfinishednow,andit'stheprojectthathasfeltclosesttorealsoftware.Lessclevercode,moregettingthedetailsexactlyright.

— walid, 2026

Under the Hood

One app, four roles
The company and it's employees, its account clients, guests asking for a quote, and a public tracking page. Each role gets exactly the access it needs.
Real Professional Document and Shipment Workflow
Quotes turn into shipments, shipments turn into invoices, and when something is wrong you fix it with a credit note instead of an edit. The server builds the PDFs itself, including shipping labels with real barcodes.
Enforced Real Rules
A shipment is tied to the client's account number for good, only the company can move a shipment's status, and the Moroccan fiscal fields (ICE, RC, IF...) are built into the data model from the start.
Designed, then built
HTML wireframes for every screen came before any real code. By the time I started building, I already knew exactly what I was building toward, and knew the end users would find it natural to use.
Deployed by hand on a real VPS
No managed platform this time. It runs on a VPS I set up and deploy to myself, over SSH, with nginx in front, the database and environment configured on the box, and every release pushed out by hand.