Hourly Rating for Customers

In TransVirtual there is the ability to charge a Customer hourly for any point to point consignments they create, charging for the time between pickup and delivery.

A point to point job is a pickup and delivery type consignment; one where the pickup is performed and the driver immediately performs the delivery afterwards, rather than taking the pickup back to a depot or shed as would happen with a non-point to point type consignment.

This article will explain what needs to be setup and configured for this process to work.

How to

To start with, you will need to either setup or amend the appropriate customer rate card.
Click here for further information on this.

Once in the rate card, apply the appropriate Service Level in Step 1 of the rate card - this can be whatever you deem suitable; General, Express, etc:

Step 2 of the rate card MUST contain freight items starting with either Hour, Hourly, hours or hrs :

You don't have to set the freight items listed here as default but if you are wanting to always charge hourly for this rate card and customer it may be a good idea to set a default:

Step 3 of the rate card should be set as required; add in the relevant routes that will apply for this rate card and customer:


Set the sending zone as a default if freight should always price as if it was from that sending location.

Step 4 of the rate card should specify quantity rates. These values will be what is used to calculate the hourly rate:


The rate card setup is now complete.

What next?

Once the rate card has been configured you now need to create the consignments ensuring that the point to point flag is enabled.
Click here for further information on consignment creation.

The reason that the point to point flag needs to be enabled is because the system calculates the time between the pickup and delivery completion date times and uses this as the hourly figure to charge the customer for.

The reason that this process only works with point point enabled is because it does not typically make sense to charge a customer an hourly rate for any jobs that are not point to point. The reason for this is that non-point to point jobs are usually processed at a depot or shed first before they are delivered; with a standard pickup you would go and collect from the sender and then bring back to the depot for processing. Any jobs that are processed at your depots are not usually charged hourly because it might take a day or two to process these consignments. 

The below is an example of what your point to point consignment may look like:


In the above you can see that the point to point flag is enabled.

You will also notice that the Consignment Items Description starts with Hourly. This should start with with either Hour, Hourly, hours or hrs for this process to work.

It is a good idea to limit customer descriptions for any customers you charge hourly to start with Hourly.

Click here for more information on how to limit customer descriptions - simply go into the relevant customer card and enter the consignment related rules tab.

It is also a good idea to make the customer descriptions match exactly the freight item names in the rate card where possible:


Vs:

It is also recommended that the pickup and delivery date times be filled out, but this is not a requirement.
Fill out the relevant details such as Service Level and Consignment Items; in the above you can see that this consignment is for 2 pallets.
Click save to create the consignment.

Once the consignment has been created, it will appear as a pickup.
Assign this to the relevant driver via the history tab or the pickup allocation screen.

Once the driver completes both the pickup and the delivery, you will notice that the rate calculated is actually the number of hours taken between pickup and delivery completion:

You can see that the quantity has changed to be 0.5 (it was originally set as 1). The system has worked out that there is roughly 30 minutes or half an hour between the pickup completion time and delivery completion time ( 11:14am and 11:40am).

As a result of the consignment item description and rate card freight item both starting with Hourly, the system has priced this point to point job for the time taken rather than the physical quantity on the consignment.

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