Automate Warehouse and Transport Rate Cards to never miss a charge

Imagine capturing every service charge accurately without lifting a finger. With transport and warehouse rate card automation — you can make manual data entry a thing of the past! 

Whether you have multi-tiered rates, special and ad hoc charges, or offer premium services — automated rate cards make handling complex rates a breeze. See how you can reduce admin time, increase invoice and accounting accuracy, and invoice faster for consistent cash flow in your transport and warehouse business. 

Take a deeper look inside CartonCloud’s automated rate card system. Designed by logistics industry experts, specifically for the day-to-day operations and charges specific to our industry, with CartonCloud’s automated warehouse and transport rates, the heavy lifting is done for you. 

How do automated warehouse and transport rates work? CartonCloud calculates charges automatically for each service with pinpoint accuracy, no matter the complexity. You can assign unique rates by customer or service, with multi-tiered rates, ad hoc or other special rules — and assign triggers based on your operations to streamline rate calculations and make sure you never miss a charge — while offering more flexible invoicing to your customers. 🤗

What is a rate card in logistics? Rate cards provide a clear breakdown of billable services by warehousing and transportation companies, so 3PL, Public Warehousing, and freight companies can accurately calculate charges for their clients. 

Setting up your rate cards in CartonCloud is simple and tailored to fit your unique operations and services.

You can customize your rate cards to be for:

• Customer-specific rates,
• Different service types,
• Storage duration or conditions,
• Premium handling options,
• Transport locations,
• Or any other charges relevant to your business needs.

Charging by Clients

Freight and 3PLs work with a variety of clients, each with unique inventory and specific needs. By charging clients individually, you can list each customer along with their service requirements and customized pricing structures, ensuring everything is automatically calculated for seamless and accurate billing.

Charging by Service

You may wish to offer the same rates to all customers, depending on their chosen services. These charges may relate to transport zones or service types, warehouse storage length or conditions, inventory handling changers for pick and pack, or additional services like customer packaging, label printing, or delivery specifics.

Automating Rate Card Calculations

As you can imagine, this can get pretty complex, especially with a manual rating system, and it gets worse if you have a paper-based system or rely on an Excel spreadsheet to track services and charges. The calculations can get pretty detailed and tie up a lot of your administration resources, and often you will end up missing chargeable rates, resulting in revenue leak. 

Rate Card scenario: You might have one client who is charged on a total weight basis of their goods in storage, and another who is charged on how many pallet spaces they occupy, with handling, pick/pack, and additional services added on top depending on the order. Add on transport costs per weight or volume, for varying distances and zones, express delivery or regular — and you've got a pretty complex calculation for each and every order that is processed through your business.  

Solution: With CartonCloud, you can build these rate cards to automate all of these calculations and produce an invoice that covers all charges, including picking and packing, storage and handling, and any other ad hoc charges that apply. 

Designed to simplify complex logistics, and give small-medium logistics companies the tools to take on more business with ease; CartonCloud's Logistics Management Software for 3PLs automatically calculates the rates you have pre-loaded for each client and eliminates any manual work in producing the invoice. 

Having an automated rate calculation and invoicing feature is critical for any transport management system or warehouse management system.

5 ways To Simplify Your Warehouse & Transport Rate Card

1. Be Clear and Concise

Have your cards and rates clearly named and identified. This will eliminate confusion for operators entering data as to what charges they are allocating. You can set rate cards for a single customer, multiple customers or all of them – just ensure they are clearly labelled for easy identification. 

2. Consolidate similar items under a single rate

Consider consolidating similar charges under a single rate charge. This will reduce complexity and make inputting data easier and more accurate. Having many different charges with various names for what is essentially the same charge can cause confusion for both staff and customers alike. (Are you using CartonCloud already and want to know more about consolidating rates? Book a CartonCloud health check with our friendly service team to ensure you're getting the most from your system.)

3. Ditch your spreadsheet

Getting rid of the spreadsheet and other manual methods is one of the best ways to take charge of your rate cards. By keeping things simple and with secure back-up in the cloud, CartonCloud packs many powerful features to fine-tune your warehouse management.

See how TNS switched from using Excel spreadsheets to CartonCloud’s integrated WMS & TMS, so they can easily capture their client’s charges and ad hoc charges.

4. Know your costs

Cost management is vital for an efficient warehouse management & transport management system. Understanding them and ensuring they are accounted for will improve profitability. Ensure that charges are clearly outlined in your terms and contracts and that they are clearly replicated in your invoices.

5. Invoice regularly

Cash flow is the lifeblood of any business. Reducing complexity with rate cards and ensuring the correct charges are allocated to each job with CartonCloud will allow you to issue invoices accurately as soon as the job is completed.

Why Choose CartonCloud?

CartonCloud's leading warehouse management  & transport management software is made for logistics people, by logistics people. 

To learn more about rate cards using CartonCloud, visit our Knowledge Base article here or book your free demo to see the software in action!

Updated December 2024