Requesting and approving carrier shipment costs

Unforeseen costs may arise as carriers transport shipments from origin to destination. Luckily, Turvo’s collaboration features can be leveraged to allow your carriers to request the addition of costs onto your shipments while leaving the final decision up to you on whether the costs are added to the shipment or if your customer is charged for those costs.

This article covers:

• Tenant setup
• Requesting costs as a carrier
  • Updating a rejected request
• Manually approving and rejected requested carrier costs as an approving customer
  
  • Utilize Autopilot for automatic approvals and rejections
  • Payable discrepancies

Tenant Setup

Your Turvo tenant can be configured for one of three methods of carrier cost requests:

1. By default, a carrier can only request the addition of accessorial costs to your shipment, which requires a manual response or an Autopilot rule for automatic approval. These rules do not include an automatic rejection setting.
2. Another option allows carriers to add cost items to the shipment from all cost categories, not only accessorial costs. These cost requests also require a manual or automatic response, configured via Autopilot.
   1. Note: This feature is currently in limited beta. Contact your Turvo representative to discuss adding this feature to your tenant.
3. Your tenant can be updated by Turvo to not require the cost request process when carriers add costs to a shipment.
   1. Note: If your tenant is configured to allow carriers to add costs without approval, the processes described in this article do not apply. Costs are simply saved to a shipment’s costs. By default, the ability to add costs without customer approval is not enabled for carriers. If you would like to allow carriers in your tenant to add costs without approval, reach out to your Turvo representative.

Requesting costs as a carrier

If you are a carrier user that needs to request the addition of a cost to a shipment from your customer, use the steps below. This process is the same whether your customer allows you to request any type of cost category or only accessorials:

1. Request a carrier cost on the shipment, first navigate to the Details tab of the shipment and click the Costs segment of the Customers block.
   1. Note: If your organization is carrying the shipment on behalf of a broker for their customer, the broker appears as your customer on the shipment.
2. Use the blank fields provided or click +Add Item if no blank fields are available.

3. This step varies depending on what cost types your tenant allows carriers to request :
   1. If you can only request the addition of accessorials, use the Item drop-down to select the type of accessorial cost item that you need to add to the shipment. Cost items in the accessorial category begin with “Accessorial -”.
   2. If you can request any type of cost item on the shipment, use the Item drop-down to select the requested cost item type.

4. Update the Quantity field, if needed, and add a Price.
   1. The Amount field populates with the price multiplied by the quantity.
5. By default, the Payable checkbox is checked. This indicates that the requested cost is charged to the customer that you are submitting it to.
   1. Uncheck the box if you do not intend to charge your customer for the requested cost.
6. Use the Description to add a description of the charge, if necessary.
7. Click the Lock icon on the left side of the Description field to select which tenants (besides your own) can view and update the description of the requested cost.
   1. A small modal appears. Click on a tenant name to select which tenant(s) are able to see the description. A checkmark appears next to the selected tenant(s).
   2. Click APPLY to finalize the selection.
   3. The Lock icon thens change to the People icon.

8. Once the fields are filled in, click SAVE.

9. The Requesting costs? modal appears. Use this modal to confirm the details of the requested cost, then click REQUEST to submit the request to your customer for approval.

10. Once requested, the requested cost’s status changes to Pending until the approver has approved or rejected the request.
    1. Shipments with a pending requested cost have the #ChargeRequest tag added to them. This tag is automatically removed once the request is approved or rejected. An approved request is added to the shipment and becomes read-only.

Updating a rejected request

If the request is rejected and you would like to update it:

1. Return to the Details tab of the shipment and click the Costs segment of the Customer block.
   1. The requested cost’s status is Rejected.

2. Update the information and then click SAVE.
3. The Request accessorial? modal appears.

4. Click SAVE & SEND to resubmit. The accessorial status returns to Pending and the #ChargeRequest tag is added back to the shipment.

Manually approving and rejecting costs as an approving customer

As an authorized user on the broker/customer tenant from which the carrier is requesting costs, you can quickly find shipments in need of requested carrier cost approval by utilizing filters.

1. Navigate to Shipments using the left navigation bar, and then click My filters or the Filters icon to select or create a filter showing shipments with the #ChargeRequest tag.
   1. Note: See our article, Using filters to quickly find information, to learn more about utilizing filters.

Protip: Like any tag, you can utilize the Rules tab of your user profile to create notification rules for the #ChargeRequest tag. This can be useful if you are an approver who needs to be alerted of new carrier cost requests in a timely manner. Check out our article on How to manage and configure notification rules to learn more.

2. Once the filter is applied, click on the shipment that needs an approval.
3. Then navigate to the Details tab and open the Costs segment of the Carriers block.
4. Review the carrier's request cost(s) and click REJECT or ACCEPT.

If you select REJECT, the status of the accessorial changes to Rejected and the #ChargeRequest tag is removed from the shipment. The requester can then modify and resubmit the request, if needed.

If you click ACCEPT, the Accept cost? modal appears, displaying the accessorial request’s information. Use the Copy the cost to customer block checkbox to determine whether these charges from your carrier are passed on to your customer. If the box is checked, use the provided field to add the customer(s) that receives the charges, then click ACCEPT.

Note: If the checkbox is checked, the ACCEPT button is locked until a customer is chosen. If the box is not checked, the ACCEPT button immediately becomes available.

Once accepted, the accessorial becomes read-only, and the costs are added to the shipment’s documentation. The status changes to Accepted and the #ChargeRequest tag is removed from the shipment.

Utilize Autopilot for automatic approvals and rejections

Do you have accessorial requests coming in after hours, or agreements with carriers to automatically accept accessorials of a certain type? Check out our article, Autopilot: Automatic accessorial acceptance/rejection rules, to learn more about creating automatic accessorial rules.

Payable discrepancies

Autopilot also provides the ability to set payable discrepancy rules for costs added by carriers during the Shipment phase that exceed a set limit. Payable discrepancy rules can be used to add the #PayableDiscrepancy tag, which highlights shipments that have a payable discrepancy that is in need of review. These rules can be set up for accessorial costs. However, they do not interrupt the accessorial workflow aside from adding a tag and warning the reviewer that the cost has breached a payable discrepancy rule. 

If the accessorial request is accepted the #PayableDiscrepancy tag is added to the shipment.

See our article, Autopilot: Payable discrepancy rules, to learn more about creating, reviewing, and resolving payable discrepancies.