Rate Shop for Booking - Transportation Smartbench

Use this page to view tariff/service combinations identified by the route, rate and schedule (or route and rate) process and optionally select one of these combinations for a Booking. You can access this page only when Monetary Information Control is set to All Monetary Values from the List of Users page and the Rate Shop operation is authorized by an Administrator.

Note: When you are on the Rate Shop for Booking page, you cannot perform any action on the main Transportation Smartbench (TSB) frame.

The Rate Shop page is displayed even if there are no eligible tariff/service combinations. However, if the booking is not currently eligible (that is, undergoing re-planning) or no longer eligible for rating updates (that is, Financial Status in greater than Voucher Pending), the operation will be halted with an appropriate error message.

By selecting the applicable columns for display on this page:

  • Cost can be displayed in one or more of these currencies:
    • Base System Currency
    • User's Currency
    • Tariff Rating Currency (potentially different for each tariff/service combination)
    • Tariff Payment Currency (potentially different for each tariff/service combination)
  • Distances can be displayed in one or both of these units of measure:
    • Base System Distance Unit of Measure
    • User's Distance Unit of Measure
  • Calendar date fields can be displayed in date/time and date only formats.
  • Duration values can be displayed in measures of ‘Hours’ and ‘Days’.
Initially load the screen

When the Rate Shop page for bookings is first displayed, tariff/service combinations are selected for display based on the setting of the Direct Rate Shop Default Constraint Level flag in the Global Settings:

  • Soft Committed: The Rate Shop list initially includes just the tariff/service combinations that are compatible with the current hard and soft commitments for carrier, service, primary schedule (that is, booking service type, voyage, vessel arrival and departure dates and locations).
  • Tendered or Manual Input: Only hard commitments will be honored.
  • Confirm or Shipment: Hard commitments will be honored only if they are based on shipment requirements, plus carrier will be locked if any load on the booking is in an operational status of Confirming, or higher.

If scheduling has been deactivated for any loads on the booking or associated loads, only routing and rating will be performed for the booking. The sequence will be established based on the Carrier Selection setting from Global Settings:

  • Cost: Sequencing will be based on computed cost.
  • Performance: Sequencing will be based on costs that have been adjusted to reflect relative differences in Carrier Performance (Grade). For bookings, routing will add the divergence from 100 for each load on the booking to get the sum of the rated costs in order to compare different tariff/service combinations.

When multiple services for a single tariff meet the routing, rating and scheduling requirements for a booking, the Rate Shop page displays a separate row for each qualifying tariff/service combination. While there could potentially be multiple voyages and/or itineraries for each tariff/service combination, the Rate Shop page initially displays the preferred itinerary/voyage combination, where the selection within each tariff/service combination will be the one that finishes earlier, with a tie-breaker of leaving later. The relative costs for different combinations of itineraries for a given tariff/service combination are not considered but the applicable cost for each sailing will be presented.

Note: Once scheduling is disabled for the booking or for a related load, routing/rating for the booking will be successful only if the primary schedule is hard committed. A related load would be one of the loads on the booking or any load that contains one of the other shipment legs for the shipments that are associated with the booking.

Booking Rate Shop will only consider tariff/service combinations where Assign to Booking is selected.

When scheduling is active for a booking and for all related loads, routing, rating and scheduling must be successful for every load on the booking and every load must use the same itinerary sequence and all loads must use the same timetable entry for the primary itinerary.

Options section

Use the following controls to change the selection criteria for the Rate Shop list. Use the Refresh icon in the Rating Results section header to reload the Rate Shop page after modifying one or more of these selection criteria:

  • Remove Commitment Constraints: If the Direct Rate Shop Default Constraint Level flag in Global Settings is not Confirm or Shipment and the booking does not contain any loads where scheduling has been disabled and scheduling has not been disabled for any dependent loads, use this check box to remove existing constraints for carrier, service and primary schedule. If selected, all hard and soft commitments will be lifted (excluding commitments based on requirements for attached shipments or loads and also excluding commitments for carrier if the operational status for any load on the booking is Confirming, or higher).
  • Note: If Remove Rate Shop Resource Constraints by Default flag in the Global Settings is checked, then the Remove Commitment Constraints check box will be set when the page is initially accessed.

  • Voyage Selections: Use the drop-down list to view other eligible itinerary and/or voyage combinations for a given tariff/service combination:
    • Best Voyages: By default, this value is selected. This mode will select the best itinerary/voyage combination for each qualifying tariff/service combination.
    • Applicable Voyages: This mode will select all eligible itinerary and/or voyage combinations for each qualifying tariff/service combination.
  • Apply Resource Constraints: Indicates whether resource constraints such as lane constraints and equipment availability are applied. If this flag is selected and Transportation Planner configuration is also set to "True", then resource constraints will be considered when selecting a carrier/tariff/service combination. If this flag is deselected, regardless of the Transportation Planner configuration, resource constraints will not be honored.
  • Scheduling Active: This read only element displays the booking’s Scheduling Active flag.
  • Note: Scheduling Active is an editable element on the Booking entity grid.

Shipment Legs section

This section displays the list of shipments assigned to all loads on a booking. Use this section to modify the shipment pickup and/or delivery horizons and generate rating results based on new shipment horizons during the rate shop process.

The ability to modify shipment horizons is controlled by Allow Change Shipment Horizon From Rate Shop on the List of User Groups page. See “User Group fields”. Users are allowed to view the impact of potential changes to the shipment date horizon even if they are not allowed to update the shipment dates.

When the Scheduling Active flag for the booking is set to “True”, you can modify the shipment pickup and/or delivery horizons for each shipment that has not yet been confirmed. However, if the booking becomes scheduling disabled as a result of the rate shop process, then none of the changed shipment horizons can be saved. When Scheduling Active for the load is “False”, shipment horizons cannot be changed. Use the Refresh icon in the Rating Results section header to reload the Rate Shop page after modifying one or more of the following fields:

  • Override Pickup From Date/Time
  • Override Pickup To Date/Time
  • Override Delivery From Date/Time
  • Override Delivery To Date/Time

Any change in the date/time values for a shipment is identified with a pink background. The modified values will be saved only when the rate shop result is committed.

The overridden shipment horizons will be used throughout the operational lifecycle of the affected shipments.

Selecting a tariff/service combination

When a tariff/service combination is selected from the Rate Shop page and if the Hard Commit check box is selected (in the Submit Options section), the carrier, service and primary schedule for the booking will be hard committed based on the chosen tariff/service combination. Otherwise, any of the values associated with the selected route that are not hard committed will become soft committed.

In this section

Task

Display the Rate Shop screen for bookings (Employee)

See Also

Carrier Selection – Cost vs. Performance
Commit Status
Global Settings – Controls – Rating and Scheduling tab fields
Route, Rate and Schedule – Loads (Employee)
Routing/rating/scheduling topics