Entities Overview

About Entities

Entities contain information about companies, carriers, suppliers, and more. The information and categories contained in the Entities database allow Optimiz to automatically perform various tasks, such as load entry and accounting functions. Entity information is used in all areas of the application, serving as a single source for all the contact information used in Optimiz.

An entity is any company with which ProTrans conducts business. Optimiz stores information about entities, such as business hours, mailing and email addresses, contact names, and telephone numbers, and creates relationships between entities. Relationships between entities are created to auto-populate various fields within Optimiz.

Optimiz supports the following entity types:

Entity Type	Description
Bill To	Party responsible for payment of services rendered. (can only be created by Accounting users or the Accounting Manager)
Ship From	Sender of the freight from its first stop or origin. In ProTrack, this entity type is referred to as the shipper.
Ship To	Receiver of the freight at its final destination. In ProTrack, this entity type is referred to as the consignee.
Carrier	Transports the freight from its original location to its final stop.
Hub	ProTrans freight consolidation center. Also referred to as a dock.
Payment Party	Provides payment for services billed by ProTrans.
Broker	Facilitates transportation of freight across national borders.
Miscellaneous Vendor	Third-party business service provider that does not fit in other categories.

By creating associations between entities, Optimiz automates much of shipment entry and logistics planning, resulting in reduced errors, increased quality, and increased response speed.

Example:

After a Customer entity is created, supporting entities are created and associated with the Customer. The Bill To entity is the entity responsible for payment of services provided to the Customer. The ShipFrom entity is the origin of the shipment, and the ShipTo is the destination of the shipment. When these entities are associated with each other, fields in Shipment Entry and Logistics Plans autopopulate, reducing the need for manual entry of data.