CarrierPoint: Creating Customer-Specific Tendering Rules

There are often cases where loads going to a specific customer location need to be handled differently. It may be that the customer has requested only a specific carrier be assigned to their loads or perhaps your traffic department has put agreements in place with a few carriers for special handling.

CarrierPoint gives us the ability to put special handling in place for the given customer location. This does require that the customer ship-to number is part of the information that your ERP systems ends to CarrierPoint to build the load.

More detailed instructions are outlined below, but here is a quick reference on how to add a customer-specific rule

Find or create a Partner List which includes the required carrier(s)
Find or create a dispatch template that outlines the desired tendering steps
Find or create a customer record for the specified customer ship-to number
Create the Tender and Rating Rule that will instruct CarrierPoint to use the new dispatch template for the carriers

To create a customer-specific tendering rule:

Find or create a Partner List which includes the required carrier(s).
- Go to Setup ... Operations Setup ... Partner lists
- Review existing partner lists to be sure one doesn't already exist that meets the need. If it does, skip down to step #2. If it does not, a new partner list must be created.
  - Click the "New" button at the bottom of the page to add a new partner list
  - Enter the header information for the partner list, then click Save Changes
  - Click the "Add Companies" button to add carriers to the list.
  - Search for the carrier(s) you will be using in the search box on the right. Find the carrier location that your division uses and click the "add" link on the right.
    - If the carrier is entirely new to your division, see separate instructions on how to add a new carrier to your partner lists.
  - Once all needed carriers have been added, click the "Set All Preassigned" link. If this is not done, the carriers will not be able to be assigned to the loads.
Find or create a dispatch template that outlines the desired tendering steps.
- Go to Setup ... Company Setup ... Locations
- Click on the arrow on the left to expand the row, then click the "Dispatch Templates" button
- Review existing dispatch templates to be sure one doesn't already exist that meets the need. If it does, skip down to step #3. If it does not, a new dispatch template must be created.
  - Click the "+" button to add a new template
  - Enter the header information for the dispatch template. We recommend that the name be descriptive of the carriers included, rather than the specific customer. This will help prevent creating multiple dispatch templates that do the same thing.
  - Set up the tender "tiers" as required
  - Click the Save button
Find or create a customer record for the specified customer ship-to number.
- Go to Setup ... Company Setup ... Customers
- Search for the customer number to determine whether the customer ship-to has already been entered in CarrierPoint. You can find the required customer number by looking in the delivery section of the load in CarrierPoint.
- If the customer ship-to already exists, skip down to step #4.... If not, a new customer record must be created.
Create the Tender and Rating Rule that will instruct CarrierPoint to use the new dispatch template for the carriers.
NOTE: This should be done using CarrierPoint's Classic user interface. This can be changed by updating the Theme setting on your My Profile page.
- Go to Setup ... Company Setup ... Locations
- Click on "view/edit" for your location
- Click on the "Rules Engine Setup" link in the Common/Required Configuration section
- In the Criteria section at the bottom of the page, enter the customer number to identify which loads the rule should be applied to. If the rule should only apply to specific a freight term, be sure to set this as well.
- In the Assignable Fields section, select the desired Dispatch Template
Click the "Add" button. This will add the rule to the bottom of your tendering and rating rules. In this location, the rule will have no effect!
Use the "up" and "down" links in the Move column of the Rules section at the top of the page to move the rule you just created to the correct level.
- Rules are evaluated from the top down, so you need to ensure the new rule is moved up enough that a prior rule would not over-ride the one you are setting. The recommended best practice is to group all rules related to specific customer numbers together.
Once the rule is placed in the correct sequence, click the Finished button at the bottom of the screen to complete updating the rules.

Once in place, this will be considered as any new loads are created.