Contracts

Overview

A contract contains the financial details of ProTrans's business relationships. Contracts can be created to process carrier charges (cost rates) or billing charges (charge rates,) and can be defined as applying to a specific client (customer) or as a general contract.

A contact has several levels:

• At the top, or Contract, level are the defining characteristics of the contract itself, including the type of contract, the client and carrier to which it applies, the areas it covers, and any related accessorial charges.
• The second, or Strategy, level holds defining characteristics of the underlying rates, including such information as a specific origin and destination area, a transportation mode, a type of rate, and how mileage is calculated.
• The lowest, or Tier, level holds the rates themselves; the information included can vary drastically based upon the rate type selected in the related strategy.

A single contract can have many strategies, each with multiple tiers. As such, the contract entry process can be extensive.

Relationship with Optimiz

• During a rating call, Optimiz sends Contract Manager the customer display ID, the carrier SCAC, the origin and destination postal codes, and any associated accessorial codes.
• Contract Manager searches through all of its contracts to find any that match the provided information, and returns the lowest rate from each matching contract.
• It is important that the information used during contract creation in Contract Manager matches the information housed in Optimiz to ensure the two systems communicate properly with each other.