Multi Carrier Shadow Rates

TransVirtual supports Shadow Rate cards, which are alternate rate cards that a customer can acquire prices from in addition to their own dedicated rate card.

Freight Managers and Warehouses — businesses that coordinate freight movement without performing deliveries themselves — use shadow rates to offer customers pricing from multiple carriers.

How to set up shadow rates

Before creating shadow rates, ensure all relevant customers and agents/carriers have been set up. See Creating a customer or agent card for instructions.

Also ensure agent rate cards are in place for each carrier. See rate card setup for details (the same process applies to agent rate cards).

1. Go to Finance > Rate Cards > Customer Rate Cards and click New Rate.
   
2. Select the relevant customer and click Create.
   
3. The rate card appears in orange in the list. Click it and the settings appear on the right.
   
4. Click the Shadow Rates tab at the bottom of the rate card page.
   
5. Click the green plus icon and add the relevant agent rate cards as shadow rate options.
   
6. To add a margin or markup, expand the dropdown next to each shadow rate and enter a number or percentage. This markup is added on top of the existing rate card prices.
   
7. Enable the rate card.

What customers see

Customer users can log in, fill out consignment details, then click Calc Price Estimate to see pricing from all applicable rate cards, including shadow rate cards.

Clicking the plus icon next to a price shows how it was calculated.

Selecting a price and saving the consignment assigns it to the agent/carrier for that price, typically triggering EDI rules to send data to that agent's system.

To require customers to select a price before saving, open their customer card, go to Consignment Related Rules, and enable the price selection setting. This can also be configured globally in Global Setup > Consignment Related Rules.

Extra information

Prices display as agent name — service level type, derived from the service level names in the rate card.

The recommended naming convention for agent service levels is Agent Name — Service Level (e.g., TNT — Express). This makes it clear to customers which carrier is providing each price.

If you prefer not to expose carrier names, you can name service levels generically (e.g., General, Express).

Other considerations

When setting up an account for a Freight Manager or Warehouse, also consider configuring Transit Times and Auto-Assignment.