Rating the Consolidated Shipment

Rating for A/R Consolidation purposes will be performed for a "shipment" that combines the attributes of the various shipments that are eligible to be rated for consolidation. The group of compatible shipments is called a Rating Consolidation Group.

For Charge Codes based on weight, volume, pieces, pallets, order value or declared value, the values from the individual shipments will be summarized.

Rating will be performed for Charge Codes defined at Container Level just as it would be performed when shipments are rated separately. If three shipments each had two containers, the consolidated rating would simulate a single shipment with six containers.

For Charge Codes where the Input Units are "Manually Input" the values associated with the Charge Overrides for each of the Shipments in the Rating Consolidation Group will be aggregated.

If one or more of the Conditions configured for the Tariff Service used to rate a shipment use distance as either the Rating Units or Look-up Units, rating consolidation will be allowed only for shipments going from exactly the same origin point to exactly the same destination point. This would supersede other rules based on destination location. If multiple shipments are moving from and to the same locations, the values for Charge Codes based on distance will not be accumulated for consolidated rating purposes. Given that by definition the lanes followed by all shipments being consolidated must be equal, the distances associated with each shipment should therefore also be equal. Therefore, when consolidated rating is performed, the highest distance encountered will be used as a basis for rating the consolidated shipment. Note that this restriction applies even in the case where a condition has been activated for the Tariff Service but was not ultimately used to rate any of the shipments being considered for consolidation. The restriction also applies for options, but only if the option was requested for one or more of the shipments being consolidated.

Routing restrictions will not be enforced when performing consolidated rating. Even if a Tariff Service has a maximum weight of 40,000 pounds for an individual shipment, this limit will not be enforced when performing consolidated rating. However, the rating process will require the existence of a valid range break. For example, if the highest range break for the Weight condition was also 40,000 pounds and a Rating Consolidation Group of 45,000 pounds was considered, the rating process would fail for this Tariff Charge. If the Tariff Charge was configured with Mandatory Rate flag set to True, then the consolidated rating process would also be deemed to have failed. Conversely, if the highest range break for the Weight condition is the highest possible value (that is, maximum for field size), then the consolidated rating of 45,000 pounds would result in the consolidated rating being considered successful.

Optimization will not be performed when attempting to take advantage of consolidation discounts. Suppose the range breaks for the Weight condition were set at the following levels: 10,000 pounds, 20,000 pounds, 30,000 pounds and 40,000 pounds. If three shipments qualified for consolidation, each of 15,000 pounds, consolidated rating would fail even though consolidated rating for any two of the three shipments may have produced a lower overall total.

When consolidated rating is requested, the following parameters will be filled using data from the first shipment selected into the Rating Consolidation Group:

Tariff
Service
Customer
Division
Commodity
Equipment Type
Voucher Effective Date
Full Origin Address
Full Destination Address

By definition, the first six values will be equal for every shipment in the Rating Consolidation Group.

Although the dates for each of the shipments in the Rating Consolidation Group could be different, the dates associated with each of the shipments must have previously qualified for the range of Effective and Expiration Dates defined for the tariff. Since the only requirement is that the date passed to the process is valid for the tariff specified, using the date for any of the shipments in the group will ensure that a valid date is supplied. Therefore, the date passed to routing will be the date that is being assigned as the Voucher Effective Date for the voucher corresponding to the first shipment selected into the Rating Consolidation Group. If any of the Tariff Charges for the Tariff Service use Rates by Date, it is recommended that the Consolidated Rating Control for the Tariff Service be set to one of the values that require shipments to be shipped on the same date unless the A/R Voucher Generation request is created using a date range which does not span date ranges for any of the Tariff Charges for the customer's tariffs.

The origin and destination address for each of the shipments in the Rating Consolidation Group will not necessarily be equal. However, one factor that controls consolidation is the requirement that the Lane for all shipments in the Rating Consolidation Group be equal. Therefore, the same pair of zones and/or hubs that define the lane should be found using the addresses for any of the shipments in the Rating Consolidation Group.