Configure business rules for customer accounts

To help streamline your organization’s Turvo experience, users with Admin level permissions and above can configure tenant level rules via the Admin Console. The below article describes how to configure Credit, Inactive customer, and Cost rules for the Customer accounts in your tenant.

Protip: Information on configuring the other business rules available in the Admin console can be found in the following articles:

• Locking shipments from changes
• Locking orders from changes
• Configure business rules for carrier accounts
• Configure business rules for payments
• Configure business rules for users
• Configure business rules for shipments
• Configure business rules for emails

Important note: We recommend updating rules during low-use hours, or when minimal users are using the system. Rules can be updated at any time, but low-traffic hours help ensure a low risk of rule implementation clash.

Business rule validations

The rules toggled using the Configurations section trigger Business rule validations. When an update is made to customer information in a shipment that corresponds to a business rule, Turvo will block the change if the rule is violated, an error message will appear, and a Business rule validation event will be added to the shipment’s Timeline tab.

Access Customer rules

Users with Admin-level access and above can update customer business rules via the Admin Console.

To access the Admin console:

1. Navigate to the Admin console by clicking on your profile icon in the top right corner of your dashboard.
2. Select Admin console from the drop-down menu.

3. Click the Rules card.

4. On the Rules page, click the Customer header in the column to the left, if not already selected.

Configure Customer rules

Customer tenant rules are split into the Configurations section, where you can configure rules for customer accounts, and the Thresholds section, where you can configure tenant-level Running Late and Approaching Late thresholds.

1. Click the Configurations section header to expand the section and begin configuring your customer account rules.
2. Click the Cost, Credit, or Inactive customer segment heads below the Configurations section header to expand the segment. Each segment is detailed in the sections below.

Important note: It can take up to 30 minutes for a rule to take effect in Turvo. Once a rule is enabled for your tenant, the rule will be locked from future changes up to 30 minutes. You can view whether a rule is locked by the notification to the right of the rule line. 

To unlock the rule, click the circular arrows to the right after the displayed time has passed.

Cost

The Check for customer cost updates rule prevents users from adding or updating customer costs after the customer’s set credit limit has been reached. 

To enable this rule for your tenant, toggle the Check for customer cost updates toggle to the blue ON position and click SAVE to save your changes.

Once the rule is configured for your tenant, users will not be able to add or update customer costs once the customer has reached their credit limit. If a user tries to update customer costs after the credit limit has been reached, they’ll receive the following error message and will not be able to proceed with the shipment update:

To continue with editing shipment, the customer must pay any outstanding invoices. As outstanding customer invoices are paid and money is collected from customers that have reached their credit limit, credit will be released and the customer costs can be added and/or updated again. 

Credit

The rule available under the Credit section header allows Turvo to automatically check a customer account’s credit limit.

Protip: Credit limits can be set by navigating to the customer's account > Details tab > Billing segment and filling in an amount in the Credit limit field.

To enable the rule for your tenant, turn the Check for customer credit limit toggle to the blue ON position.

Then, select when you’d like Turvo to check for a customer’s credit limit. You can choose one of the available options, or, if you’d like Turvo to check credit limit during multiple phases of the shipment, you can select more than one box. Options include:

• When a customer is being added to a shipment in Plan or Ship phase: The credit limit check is performed as soon as the customer is added to a shipment in Plan or Ship phase.
  • Protip: For more information on shipment phases and statuses, see our Shipment work phases: quote, tender, plan, ship, bill article.
• When a shipment status is updated to any Ship phase: The customer’s credit limit is checked when the shipment is updated to any status under the Ship phase.
• When a shipment status is updated from the Quote phase: The credit limit check is performed whenever the shipment status is moved out of the Quote phase into any other shipment phase/status.
• When a shipment is in the Tendered status and a user attempts to add a carrier (only if auto-update to Covered has been enabled: The customer’s credit limit is checked whenever a carrier is added to a shipment in any status under the Tendered status. Selecting this option will also automatically update the shipment’s status to Covered, if the customer’s credit limit has not been reached.
• When a shipment is being updated to a status in the Plan or Ship phase: The customer’s credit limit is checked whenever a user updates the shipment status to a status in the Plan or Ship phase.

Once you’ve made your selection, click SAVE to enable the rule. 

Note: After each configuration is saved, you’ll see the Update rules? pop up. It’s important to note any rules enabled or disabled will affect your entire tenant. You can choose to force all users in your tenant to refresh in order to apply the changes using the provided checkbox. We recommend forcing all users to refresh their browser to apply the changes to keep rule implementation consistent across users. To continue with the setup, click YES.

If a customer has met their credit limit after the rule has been enabled for your tenant, you’ll receive the “Credit limit has been reached” error message (pictured below) at the bottom of your screen and you will not be able to proceed with the changes to the shipment.

To continue with the shipment, the customer must pay any outstanding invoices. As outstanding customer invoices are paid and money is collected from customers that have reached their credit limit, credit will be released and the customer account can be assigned to shipments again. 

Protip: For more information on recording payments and creating customer invoices, see our Adding, creating, sharing, and sending a customer shipment invoice and Record payments on single or multiple shipments articles.

Inactive customer

The configurations available under the Inactive customer section allow Turvo to ensure a customer’s status is active prior to being added to a shipment or when a shipment is updated to a status in the Ship phase.

To enable either of these rules for your tenant, toggle the appropriate toggle to the blue ON position and click SAVE to save your changes.

Once any of the rules are configured for your tenant, an error message will display for the following scenarios:

Inactive customer check

Scenario: A shipment is updated to a status within the Ship phase, but the customer account assigned to the shipment is in a status other than Active. 

Error message:

Resolution: To continue with the shipment, navigate to the customer’s account by clicking Accounts > Customers in the left navigation bar or searching for the customer using global search. 

Then, in the Details tab of the customer account, click the General section to expand and show the Status segment. Click Status to update the status of the customer account and be sure to click SAVE to save your changes!

Protip: Need to update other customer account information? See our View and edit customer details article for more information.

You can also update a customer’s status by clicking the Fast Action Button at the bottom right corner of the customer card and selecting Account status.

Customer status check

Scenario: A customer is added to a quote/offer for a shipment, but their account status is not Active or Prospect.

Error message:

Resolution: See the Resolution steps outlined in the Inactive customer check scenario above.

Thresholds

Use the Thresholds section to set tenant-level Running Late and Approaching Late thresholds for your tenant. These serve as a default that is applied to all customers in your tenant. When combined with customer account-level thresholds, the customer account-level thresholds will override conflicting tenant-level thresholds that are configured here. This is useful if you have certain customers that require different thresholds from the default ones that you configure here in the Admin Console.

See our articles on Approaching late (#ApproachingLate) and running late (#RunningLate) tags and Manage and configure #ApproachingLate and #RunningLate threshold rules articles to learn more about Running Late and Approaching Late thresholds and how to configure them in the Admin Console and in customer accounts.