In TransVirtual, customers have the option to bill hourly for any point-to-point consignments they created,
Charges are applied 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 explains what needs to be setup and configured for this process to work.
How to Setup Hourly Rating
To setup hourly rating, first you need to either setup or edit the appropriate customer rate card. To know more about customer rate card, click
here.
1. Once you select the applicable rate card, click on schedule rate card, the detail on how your rate card will function display.
2. Now, in step 1, select the appropriate service level of the rate card (Choose General, Express, etc:) as shown below.
2. In step 2, select the freight item as shown below.
Make sure 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.
3. In Step 3, add in the relevant routes that will apply for this rate card and customer as shown below.
Set the sending zone as a default if freight should always price as if it was from that sending location.
4. In Step 4, the rate card should specify quantity rates. These values will be what is used to calculate the hourly rate as shown below.
If quantity rates are not added them add them. To add them click on drop down button and then click on "+" icon, now manually enter the rate and then click on update button as shown below.
5. 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.
1. 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 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 is 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.
2. The below is an example of what your point-to-point consignment may look like:
Make sure that the Point-to-Point toggle is enabled as shown above.
3. You will also notice that the Consignment Items Description starts with Hourly. This should start 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:
V/S
4. It is also recommended that the pickup and delivery date times be filled out, but this is not a requirement.
5. 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 on Save button to create the consignment.
6. Once the consignment has been created, it will appear as a pickup. Now, assign this to the relevant driver via the history tab or the pickup allocation screen.
7. 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 as shown below.
8. 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).
9. 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.