Scope and limits
We hold no trucks, ships, aircraft or warehouses and no brokerage licence. We replace none of your systems, issue no GTINs, and earn nothing on transport.
Next Horizon is software, and these are the lines it does not cross.
Transport and liability
We own no vehicles, no aircraft, no vessels and no warehouses, and we hold no brokerage licence. The partners hold the trucks, the ships and the sites; we hold the negotiated rates and the item identity. We do arrange freight through contracted partners and we do introduce partner fulfilment sites, but in every case you stay the principal on the transport contract. When a parcel is lost, damaged or late, that sits with the carrier under the carrier's terms, and where we administer the carrier account we file the claim in your name with the evidence attached. We provide no transport insurance; insuring goods in transit is your decision and your cover. Our own liability is for the software, and it is capped at twelve months of software fees, excluding any transport we rebilled.
Our revenue
We are paid for the software: a subscription, a per-label fee and a per-passport fee past the plan allowance. None of it is a commission, a margin or a transport price. Where we hold negotiated rates, shipping is rebilled at the carrier price with zero markup, lane by lane, and the money you pay for transport through us is collected and passed on for you; it never becomes our revenue. That is why a carrier suggestion is only a suggestion: the choice of carrier and the transport contract are yours, and we earn nothing from it either way.
A carrier suggestion earns us nothing, whichever carrier you choose.
Your existing systems
Your store, your ERP, your warehouse system and your carrier accounts stay in place. They are read through one shared item identity, and we connect your ERP to your account, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics 365 and NetSuite included. You do not need a separate tracking aggregator, because consolidated tracking on your own domain is included, and if you already run one it is fed rather than replaced. If a tool holds data you would lose by switching it off, we connect to it and leave it running.
GTINs and serials
We never generate a GTIN. The GTIN is licensed to your brand by your GS1 member organisation, one per SKU, and we allocate serial numbers on your own GTIN under a written delegation with an agreed allocation rule, so that serials never collide with ones issued by another party on your behalf. The identity on the label is yours; we keep the serial register for it.
Standards and legal reading
The passport rests on open specifications: the W3C community work on the product passport, ISO/IEC 15459, EPCIS and the GS1 identifiers. We are a member of the W3C CE-DPP Community Group and of the CIRPASS-2 Community of Practice, which keeps us close to specifications that are still moving. We follow that work as members, without writing the standards or certifying against them, and where a guide on this site interprets a regulation, it is our reading and should not be relied on as legal advice.
Sign-up and plans
Free, Starter and Growth open from the sign-up page, and Starter and Growth are billed monthly by card. Scale and Enterprise start with a 30-minute demo, and shipping on our negotiated rates is quoted on your own lanes. The Free plan is 0 euros for 20 labels and 20 passports a month on your own carrier contracts, for as long as you want it. Starter comes with a 30-day trial, with the card taken at sign-up; Growth, Scale and Enterprise have none. There is no complimentary audit of your invoices; the invoice audit is included from Growth up and runs on your own shipments once you are on one of those plans.
Questions we get asked.
If you are not a carrier, who do I have a contract with?
The carrier. You accept each carrier's terms in your account when you activate it and you remain the shipper. We hold the item identity, and we file claims in your name where we administer the carrier account.
Do you make money when you recommend a cheaper carrier?
No. We are paid for the software only, and transport is rebilled at the carrier's price. A suggestion is decision support, and the choice is yours.
Do I have to leave my ERP or my warehouse system?
No. They stay in place, connect to your account and are read through the shared item identity.
Do you insure my parcels?
No. Loss and damage sit with the carrier under its terms, and insuring goods in transit is your decision and your cover.
Related pages.
See it on your own orders.
A 30-minute call on your own flows, with a clear answer at the end.