Rating Consignments

Using the Admin Portal's Finance functions to confirm consignment pricing

Before a customer can be invoiced, their consignments must be priced and have their prices confirmed. This process is known in Hitrak as Rating. 

This article is a guide for Admin Portal users responsible for: 

-> Confirming that consignments have been accurately priced.

-> Making manual price adjustments.

-> Creating and Sending customer Invoices.

The Invoicing process is detailed separately in Creating and Managing Invoices.

In this article:

Organisation Setup

Understanding Automatic Pricing & Rating

Manual Price Edits & Rating

Organisation Setup

Several steps in a customer's Organisation setup are required to ensure their consignments can be rated, and then invoiced, as intended.

1. Rates and Pricing Setup

Provide Rates and complete Pricing Setup for the customer. If you haven't done this already, please refer to the relevant article for your chosen Pricing Model to get started:

-> Zone Pricing
-> Site Group Pricing
-> Distance Pricing

2. Service Type Settings

Update the Organisation's Service Type Settings to choose whether consignments will be Auto-Rated, i.e. have their pricing confirmed automatically (This is only required if the setting should be different to your system default).

To change this setting from the default:

• In the Organisation's Settings page, click the Rating line.

• This will open the Rating Service Type Setting dialog. Here, you can set a True or False value for auto-confirming the consignment pricing for each Service Type.
• For any Service Types where the system default is preferred, leave the Use system default value box checked.
• To change from the default value, uncheck this box, and select the preferred value from the dropdown.
  

3. Invoice Accounts

For invoicing purposes, the customer Organisation must have at least one Account configured as an Invoice Account, i.e.

• The To be included in invoices box must be checked:

• When the customer's consignments are created, the correct Account for the consignment who manually create and edit consignments are aware of this. 

For details on how consignments are created and managed in Hitrak, see our articles on Understanding, Creating and Editing Consignments.

 

Once the above Setup steps have been completed, the customer's consignments can be rated to prepare for invoicing🎉

In the following sections, learn how our automatic pricing and rating functions work, and how to manage consignment rating manually.  

Understanding Automatic Pricing and Rating

Hitrak automatically prices consignments based on your system and customer setup. The Auto-Rating feature then automatically confirms this pricing, meaning you only need to manually rate consignments which could not be priced. 

The Pricing and Auto-Rating processes are triggered as soon as a consignment has been delivered. 

In this section:

Consignment Pricing

Consignment Auto-Rating

Consignment Pricing

Automatic consignment pricing relies on correctly configured Rates and Pricing Setup for each component in the consignment. E.g.,

Consignments will not be priced in cases where:

-> There is no price for the Freight Item Type in the customer's Rate Card.

-> There is no price for the Delivery Site or Zone in the customer's Rate Card.

-> There is no price corresponding to the Delivery date in the customer's Rate Card.

-> The Charge Type has not been configured in the customer's Pricing Setup.

-> The Delivery Site does not belong to a Pricing Area (Zone Pricing) or Site Group (Site Group Pricing).

Consignment Auto-Rating

Consignments for customers with Auto-Rating enabled have their pricing confirmed automatically on delivery. Your system has a default setting configured for Auto-Rating, but individual customers can be set up with a value other than the default (see Service Type Settings above). 

Consignments will not be Auto-Rated in cases where:

-> The consignment has a Delivery Exception.

-> The Do not auto-rate box in the consignment's Pricing and Rating tab has been checked.

-> Any Pricing Notes have been entered in the Pricing and Rating tab.

The following section details how to manage pricing changes and rating confirmation manually, in bulk and on individual consignments. 

Manual Price Changes and Rating

Consignment repricing and rating can be managed in bulk using the Rating page.

The consignment page Pricing and Rating tab allows for changes to the prices and rating status of individual consignments. 

This section details how to view and edit consignment pricing and rating using each page.

In this section:

Rating Page Overview

Pricing & Rating in Bulk

Pricing and Rating Individual Consignments

Rating Page Overview

The Rating page provides a list of Delivered consignments, organised into 3 tabs:

-> Unrated: Consignments with unconfirmed pricing, or no pricing.

-> Rated: Consignments with confirmed pricing.

-> Invoiced: Consignments with confirmed pricing which are already on an Invoice.

Each tab provides a snapshot of the consignments' information, including the Invoice Account, Service Type and a summary of its Freight Details.

The Invoiced tab also provides a link to the consignment's associated Invoice.

Filtering and Sorting

Using the Search function to the top of the page, consignment data can be filtered by Customer, Requesting Site, Account and Delivery Date Range.

In the tabs below the Search fields, data can be sorted by any column other than Account, Type, Freight Details or Invoice. 

Bulk Pricing and Rating

Most consignment pricing is confirmed in the Rating page, with several bulk actions available to facilitate an efficient rating process. The Rating page allows you to:

-> Confirm and Unconfirm prices in bulk.

-> Reprice in bulk, e.g. in the case of recent rate changes.
-> Create automatic Invoices.
-> Create manual Invoices.

-> Add to existing Invoices.
-> Export a csv file of Rated, Unrated or Invoiced consignments.  

Confirm Pricing

Price Confirmation (aka Rating) can be done at any time that works best for your operation based on your consignment volumes, invoicing timeframes, team resources and other factors. E.g., some Hitrak users confirm prices on a customer-by-customer basis, as the first step in their Invoicing process; others choose to confirm pricing for all customers at once on a daily or weekly basis.

To confirm pricing in the Rating page:

• Ensure the correct filters have been applied to view the consignments for your preferred Delivery date range, and other criteria. 
  
• View the list of consignments in the Unrated tab. 
• Select all consignments to be rated. The Action buttons will show a count of your selected consignments.
• Click Confirm Price. 
  

  
• Click Start to perform the action on the eligible consignments.
  
   
• This dialog will show a progress bar as the system attempts to confirm each consignment's price, along with a count of the consignments which have completed successfully, completed with warnings, or any errors where the action could not be completed.
   
•  Additional information on each consignment's completion status is available in the Details tab.
• All of the 'Completed' consignments will be rated, and move to the Rated tab.

Unconfirm Pricing

This function is useful for consignments which have had pricing confirmed in error, or need to be repriced to reflect new customer rates. 

To unconfirm pricing from the Rating page:

• View the list of consignments in the Rated tab. 
• Select all consignments to be unconfirmed.
• Click Unconfirm Price. 
• Click Start to complete the action on the selected consignments. As per the Confirm Price action, this dialog provides a progress bar and additional information on each consignment's completion status.
• All of the 'Completed' consignments will have their prices unconfirmed, and will move to the Unrated tab.

Reprice

This function is useful for cases where a customer Rate Card has been updated in Hitrak - e.g., to add pricing for items which were not previously configured, or a new pricing date range - since the consignment was delivered and priced.

To reprice consignments in bulk:

• View the list of consignments in the Unrated tab. 
• Select all consignments to be repriced.
• Click Reprice. 
• A dialog will appear requesting confirmation of the action. Click Yes.
• Click Start to confirm the action on the selected consignments.
• This dialog will show a progress bar as the system attempts to reprice each consignment, along with a count of the consignments which have completed successfully, completed with warnings, or any errors where the action could not be completed.
•  Additional information on each consignment's completion status can be viewed in the Details tab.
  
• Successfully priced consignments can now be confirmed.

 

Export Data

An Export button is available on each tab in the Rating page, allowing a csv download of all data related to the consignments' pricing at that time. This can be useful if you require consignment pricing information for inclusion in company reporting.

To Export consignment data from any Rating Page tab:

• Use the checkboxes to select specific consignment data to be exported. To export all data in the tab, leave the boxes unchecked (the Export button will show as Export (All)).
• Click Export.
• A csv file with the consignments' details and pricing information will be available in your device Downloads folder.

Pricing & Rating Individual Consignments

The consignment Pricing and Rating tab allows an individual consignment's prices to be confirmed, unconfirmed and refreshed. Additionally, a consignment's price can be manually changed here, using the Price Override function. 

-> The top left section provides the consignment's Pricing Model, Charge Type and a Summary of Freight Details.

-> Directly below this is a Price Breakdown, which provides the total charges for Freight, Extras and Surcharges. 

-> The right section provides a text box for notes related to the consignment's pricing. 

-> If a consignment has been priced but not rated (confirmed), the Price Breakdown section will present 3 action buttons: Refresh, Set Price and Confirm.

-> If a consignment has been rated (priced and confirmed), the Price Breakdown section will present 2 action buttons: Set Price and Unconfirm.

Confirm Price

To confirm a consignment's calculated price:

• Click Confirm. 
• The consignment Price Breakdown section will reflect this change, and the action buttons will change to Set Price and Unconfirm.
• In the Rating page, the consignment will now appear in the Rated tab until it has been added to an Invoice.

Refresh Price 

The Refresh button performs a similar function to the Rating page Reprice button. This allows a consignment to be repriced due to new rates being implemented. This function can also be used to restore a price to the system's calculation, in the case of a manual Price Override which needs to be reverted. 

To reprice an individual consignment:

• Click Refresh.
• Any change caused by this action will be reflected in the Price Breakdown section. 
• Click Confirm to confirm the new price, or leave it unconfirmed, to be rated later. 

Unconfirm Price

This may be required in the case of an error in price confirmation, or a reprice being required.

To unconfirm a consignment's confirmed price:

• Click Unconfirm. 
• The consignment Price Breakdown section will reflect the change, and display the Refresh, Set Price and Confirm action buttons again. 

Set Price (aka Price Override)

Prices are applied based on the rates defined for each of its components, i.e. Freight, any Delivery Extras performed, Inter Region rates (Zone Pricing only), and Surcharges. The Price Override function allows for a manual edit of each of the consignment's pricing components. This is useful in cases where, e.g.:

-> The consignment could not be priced, as there was no current rate available for one or more components

-> A discount has been offered on its Freight or Extras. 

 

To override a consignment's price:

• Click Set Price.
• Edit the prices for each priced component as required.
• Enter a reason for the override, and click Save. This confirms the new price automatically.
• If you make a mistake and need to restore the calculated price, these changes can be reverted:
  • First, click Unconfirm.
  • Click Refresh to return to the previous price.
  • Click Confirm to confirm the price, or leave it unconfirmed, to be rated later.

 

Prevent Auto-Rating

If a consignment meets criteria for auto-rating, but the price should not be confirmed, auto-rating can be prevented. This may be required in cases where, e.g.,

-> A special price outside of the standard rates has been agreed for this specific consignment, but the user does not have access to set or confirm the pricing.

-> It has been advised that a special price will be applied to the consignment, but the details of the special price are not yet known. 

To prevent a consignment from auto-rating:

• Check the Do not auto-rate checkbox, and/or 
• Add a note into the Pricing Notes box. 
• When it has been priced, the consignment will appear in the Unrated tab of the Rating page.