Freight Manager/Broker - Finance setup and process (overview)

TransVirtual offers users the ability to price and invoice consignments within their account to assist with tracking business income and cost.
This article will detail the standard advised setup process for Freight Manager businesses to ensure all key elements are addressed.  

Step 1 - Customer/Agent Setup

The first step is to create your customer and agent/supplier card files and ensure each has appropriate invoicing terms attached.

If all customers have the same invoice terms, they can be applied globally from within the Global Setup page. Click here for further information on this.

Alternatively, if your customers all have unique invoice terms, you are able to configure this from within each applicable card file; this also applies to Agent/Suppliers. 

For help with creating customers and setting unique invoice terms, please click here. 

For help with creating agents and setting unique invoice terms, please click here.

Step 2 - Rate Setup

The next step following customer/agent card file creation is to create and assign rate cards to each applicable customer/agent that you wish to have prices for.
Generally, rate card setup for Freight Managers involves customers shadowing agent/supplier rate cards rather than having their own dedicated rates (ones you offer to them if you were to deliver their freight rather than an agent).
Click here for further information on this.

Step 3 - Account Packages

This step involves linking your accounting software of choice to your TransVirtual account.

For help with this, please click here. 

Note that per the above help link, you need to ensure that you have setup all components required here which includes linking your accounting software to your account; linking your customer/agent cards files to that accounting software, and then configuring an EDI Invoice export rule to send invoice data across to your accounting software (when appropriate), as well as an EDI Invoice export rule to send invoices out to customers or applicable agents. 

Regarding sending agent/supplier data across to Xero - card files are setup in Xero as contacts which means that a 'dummy' invoice will need to be created for each applicable invoice in Xero first so that both Xero and TransVirtual then know that the card file in question is an agent/supplier - else, any transfers to this agent contact in Xero will typically fail.

Step 4 - Invoice Layout

This is the penultimate step and involves configuring any PDF Invoice templates you may wish to send to customers or agents regarding their invoices.
Please click here for further information on this.

Be advised that modifying templates can be tricky and may require help from support@transvirtual.com
Feel free to send any request through that you need help with but please note that any report modifications incur premium support charges per our Support Policy and that not all requests can be actioned as some requests may go beyond the capabilities of the report designer used to build these report templates.

Step 5 - Invoicing

This the final step and involves you testing the above setup to ensure all works as expected.
Testing should involve:

1.  Creating consignments and assigning them prices and then adding those prices to invoices.
   
2. You should then finalize an invoice to ensure your Invoice EDI Export sends out the desired information - for this, it is a good idea to make your email the recipient of the Invoice EDI Export (if sending by email) so that you are able to view the exported information, and if happy, you can remove your email and add relevant customer emails to the export rule.
   
3. From here, you should also ensure that any export rules to send data across to your accounting software have worked and exported the desired information to the right accounts/locations in your accounting software.

You are able to test with real/live consignments if you wish but testing could also be performed with one or two 'test' consignments you create solely for the purpose of testing.

Related Articles

See below help links that relate to Finance setup in TransVirtual:

Customer Invoicing - this article provides more detail on customer invoices including how to approve them and identifying rating issues.

Invoice Mass Actions - this article explains features relevant to invoicing in bulk.  

• Related Articles

• Freight Manager/Broker - Operations setup and process (overview)

  Typical Process Customer creates consignment and selects from the available agent/carrier prices. Click here to view this from a customer's perspective. File import and integration options may be available. Contact our support team for advice. ...

• Finance/Invoice Setup Process

  Transvirtual has an optional add-on Finance module that allows you to add pricing to consignments and invoice out consignments to customers; as well as send these invoices across to your accounting software (Myob or Xero) so that you can keep track ...

• Finance Setup for Agents

  TransVirtual offers users the ability to price and invoice consignments within their account to assist with tracking business income and cost. This article will detail the standard advised setup process for Agent/'Last Mile' businesses to ensure all ...

• Standard Consignment Process

  This article will detail the standard process used from the point of consignment creation, up until consignment completion. If you are new to Transvirtual this article may help provide you with a better understanding of the best way to run your ...

• TMS Finance Process Overview

  Pricing Overview Each consignment can have many prices: One Customer Auto Price - Generated from the customer rate card and added to a customer invoice Up to two Agent/Supplier Auto Prices - one for pickup, one for delivery. Generated from the ...