nShift SmartRates: select the optimal delivery option by means of automatic rate calculation
21 Feb 2023
Do you recognise this?
The calculation of the correct transport costs in advance and checking the invoices of your carriers afterwards are difficult and labour intensive processes, also because the data of your shipments are difficult to match with the offers and invoices. Employees of the sales office staff, logistics and administration spend too much time on a weekly basis to coordinate all arrangements and to check these. Moreover, you often do not know exactly (and not fast enough) how many shipping costs can be passed on to your customer. This often leads to unexpected additional costs, declining margins or even lost orders.
Speed & transparency with SmartRates
In this process speed and transparency are desirable. Because it would be nice if you know the transport costs in advance in order that you can offer the correct costs to the customer and that they can easily be matched during the invoice check.
The advantages
- Automatic prediction of transport costs and lead-times in one overview.
- Easily pass on transport costs to your customers through a direct integration with your ERP system.
- Clear overview of incurred transport costs for invoice check or monthly closing (accrual).
- Transparency in your invoice check process.
- Perfect integration possible in the offering process, sales order process and/or shipping process of your ERP system.
The use of SmartRates
SmartRates can be used for various purposes, namely:
- The determination of the transport costs per shipment (including potential fuel surcharges, oversize surcharges, overweight surcharges and additional services like Saturday delivery, COD, etc.).
- The comparison of transport costs, for instance, what delivery option offers the lowest rates for a certain shipment or product to a certain destination?
- In combination with the lead-time of a delivery option the correct balance between speed and costs can be found. The one-on-one passing on of transport costs to your customers.
- The parallel calculation of transport (sales) prices that you want to pass on to your customers. For instance, on the basis of graduated scales, margins, purchase value, value of goods.
- Shipping the shipment on the account of the consignee (bill to receiver) or the invoice debtor (3rd party billing).
How does SmartRates work?
With SmartRates nShift predicts the transport costs per shipment on the basis of the contractual arrangements agreed on with your carriers. This proceeds as follows: on the basis of the available shipping information (destination, weight, volume and type of packaging) the transport price is calculated automatically, including a potential fuel surcharge. When you have placed all the bookings, you can download a report that shows the transport costs per shipment. You can easily manage the monthly update of fuel surcharges in our portal.
In addition, you can, before placing your booking, compare the transport costs of your carriers. Prior to the booking the different rates are retrieved in order that you can make a choice from this and you then decide with what carrier and service the shipment is sent (carrier select).
With SmartRates we also give you the possibility of calculating a transport sales price for your shipments. This sales price is calculated by means of a surcharge percentage on your purchase price or on the basis of a criterion determined by you.
This is partner content provided by nShift. For more information about the nShift integration in MultiPress, go here.