Overview: Managing the financials on freight shipments and services is an important aspect of Shipwell’s product offering. This includes managing financials from the shipper, carrier, and customer’s perspective. Once a freight shipment or service is booked there is an agreed upon amount within Shipwell. However, Shipwell supports the need for financial adjustments that occur on shipments and services after they are booked. The Shipwell platform provides the ability for users to be able to both understand the initial financials but also modified financials after the original tender.

To document how financials can be leveraged within Shipwell we will be covering an example of how you would book a shipment, view financials once booked, adjust financials during the shipment, and eventually capture your shipment’s financials via an invoice and bill in your financial management system, if connected to Shipwell. If you have any follow-up questions do not hesitate to reach out to your Shipwell Customer Service Representative or Integration Solutions Consultant.

Entering Financials as Part of a New Shipment Creation Process

Let’s walk through a common Full Truckload shipment, but the functionality is similar with other Shipments. There are multiple ways that shipment financials can be added to a shipment:

For this case we are going to show Assign to Carrier and Tender to Carrier (via Contract or Spot). We are not going through the other processes as those are separate processes that lead to an eventual similar destination of an agreed upon financial transaction for a shipment. Think of these other processes to have the financials function very similar to ‘Tender to Carrier’.

Now let’s start building our shipment stage where we will add financials. For this Shipment Stage creation, we first go to the ‘New’ > ‘Shipment’ > ‘FULL TRUCKLOAD’.

This results in the ‘New Shipment’ creation screen to populate. In our example we are going to include a ‘Customer Account’ because we have a customer that we want to track financials on.

Assign to Carrier

One approach for tendering a shipment is assigning a carrier directly. This process does not require the carrier to approve the tender and will immediately capture shipment financials.

Farther down on the new shipment page we see the Financials section where we have options that include entering the ‘Book Now’ and ‘Max Buy’ options. These are used when you are requesting bids. However, there is also the option to simply enter the financials for this Full Truckload shipment stage by pressing the ‘+ Add Line Item’ option.This approach is used if you are direct assigning a carrier. Note this is the case if you don’t need a carrier to approve the tender.

This will display the ability to add one or more line items. The line item ‘Category’ defaults as ‘Line Haul’ but allows you to change it to one of the following line-item categories:

After selecting your ‘Category’ then you enter a ‘Description’ to provide a more detailed description of what this category is intended. Then, you select the ‘Rate’ which is the amount you are paying for this shipment/service line item. Lastly, you can change the ‘Quantity’ which as a default is 1. The ‘Rate’ will be multiplied by what value you place in ‘Quantity’. Note these financials that we are adding up to this point are simply the financials that we anticipate paying the full truckload carrier in this case.

When we have a ‘Customer’ on a shipment then we may want to markup freight shipments or services from what we are paying the carrier or service provider. We can do this using the ‘% Margin’ or the ‘$ Markup’ options under ‘Markup’. Whatever you enter in one of these will result in that amount being updated in the ‘Customer’ financials of the shipment.

In this shipment we are only anticipating paying for line haul and have an agreed upon rate for our lane of $2,650 and have entered this here. We also can add a customer markup based on a percentage (%) or based on a dollar ($) amount. In this case we do a 10% markup on full truckload shipments for our customers and enter ‘10’ in ‘% Margin’ and then the markup is auto populated as $265.

You will not always understand your financials when creating a shipment stage because you may not know the carrier you are going to use yet. In a case like this you will not complete the Financials section of the new shipment creation process. However, at some point you will need to enter in financials. This process will be like the process of updating financials on a shipment that you had already booked, and we will go through that later under the ‘Editing Financials Once a Shipment has Been Created’ section below.

In addition to the financials themselves, there is the need to identify a ‘Bill-To’ party. This ‘Bill-To’ party is generally the tariff holder as respects the carrier and a specific quote or rating being used. If the tariff holder is through ‘Shipwell Logistics’ then that is what you would expect to see as the ‘Bill-To’ party assuming that the option is ‘Prepaid’. Most frequently the shipper booking the freight will choose ‘Prepaid’ and the information below it will auto-populate from information that is stored within Shipwell for the shipping company. However, for Less Than Truckload (LTL) and Volume Less Than Truckload (VLTL) shipments where instant rates are sought then this ‘Bill-To’ section should be left blank in new shipment creation as it will be completed once the ‘Instant Rate’ carrier is chosen and then it will be auto-populated assuming that the shipment is not being done on a ‘Collect’ basis.

Once this has been completed then we can look how things appear in the ‘Viewing Financials Once a Shipment has Been Created’ section below.

Tender to Carrier (Not Via Rating)

Another approach for tendering a shipment is tendering a shipment to a carrier. This process requires the carrier to approve the tender. Until the carrier has accepted the tender there will not be anything recorded in a shipment’s financials.

In this case we will build a shipment similar as before but we will not enter the shipment financials in the the ‘Financials’ box. Instead when we are done with entering the rest of our new shipment creation items and select ‘Tender to Carrier’ then it will have a popup where we can enter financials.

In this case we have a flat rate for this lane and so we search for that contract under ‘Tender from Contract’ and choose ‘DaveCustomerCarrierFlat’ contract.

Although if we didn’t have a contract then we could have entered a rate on either a ‘Flat Rate’ basis or a ‘Per Mile’ basis.

Once we press ‘Save’ then it takes us to the Shipment Stage Details page and remember that we won’t see the financials yet under ‘Financials’.

However, if we go to the ‘Bids’ tab we see the tender request listed under ‘Tenders’. We could also revoke this at any time up to be accepted.

A carrier on the other hand will receive an email notification that they received a tender request. They can within the email ‘Accept Tender Request’ or ‘Reject the Tender Request’.

In addition to receiving an email, carriers will see the shipment stage that was tendered to them on their ‘Load Board’ and they can ‘Accept Tender’ from there.

Once they accept the tender request then the shipment stage’s financials will be displayed in the ‘Financials’ tab of the Shipment Stage Details page for both the Shipper and the Carrier.

When utilizing ‘Tender to Carrier’ you will need to update the financials for the Customer Card separately. This cane be done before or after a carrier has been tendered or accepted.

Tender to Carrier (Via Rating)

Another approach for tendering a shipment is tendering a shipment to a carrier via instant rates. Most common this is for LTL and VLTL shipments but with Shipwell’s Digital Freight Management options there are FTL options here as well. This process is more like our ‘Assign to Carrier’ process in that after choosing an instant rate there is near real-time confirmation so it results in the financials being displayed in the shipment instead of having to wait some period of time for tender acceptance by a carrier.

In this case we will build a shipment similar as before but we will not enter the shipment financials in the the ‘Financials’ box. Note we will also not fill out the ‘Bill-to’ information here. This is important because the ‘Bill-to’ information should be populated off the instant rate selected.

When we are done with entering the rest of our new shipment creation items and select ‘Get Quotes’ then it will have a popup where we can enter financials.

We select the instant rate of the carrier and delivery time that we desire.

Once we make our selection then we go to a confirm shipment details page where it will display the carrier financial information along with the bill-to information. We can also identify a customer markup if there is one. In this case we have chosen a 20% markup.

Viewing Financials Once a Shipment Has Been Created

Once a shipment has been created there are a couple ways that you might seek to view financials of shipments. The most common approach is going into an individual shipment and viewing the Shipment Details page. You can access this by selecting on the Shipment ID on the Shipments Dashboard.

Once in the Shipment Details page then you select the ‘Financials’ tab.

The ‘Financials’ tab of the Shipment Stage details page will differ depending on if you are a shipper, carrier, or customer.

Shipper Perspective

A. Carrier Financials Card: The Carrier Financials Card at the top which is the entity you engaged to transport or service the freight. In the middle of the card, you see ‘DAVE’STESTCARRIER’ and under it the originally agreed upon financials of the shipment will be displayed.

The column on the right indicating ‘Shipwell, Inc.’ which is the shipper in this case. This column will change if the financials get updated on a shipment. We will cover updating financials in the ‘Updating Shipment Financials’ section.

Note if you contracted with a 3PL as a shipper then the 3PL would be represented as the Carrier.

B. Customer Financials Card: The Customer Financials Card is at the bottom which is the customer you are shipping or servicing the freight on behalf of. In the middle of the card, you see ‘DAVE’SCUSTOMERSHOP’ who is our customer and under it is the originally agreed upon financials of the shipment will be displayed.

The column on the right indicating ‘Shipwell, Inc.’ which again is the shipper in this case. This column will change if the financials get updated on a shipment. We will cover updating financials in the ‘Updating Shipment Financials’ section. This card will display the markup as ‘Total Markup’ in dollars and a percentage. In this case, it is $265.00 markup which is 10.00%.

Carrier Perspective

A. Carrier Financials Card: The Carrier Financials Card will be blank unless the original Carrier on the shipment was a 3PL or a Carrier that licenses Shipwell and books their shipments on Shipwell and adds a carrier for this shipment in question.

B. Customer Financials Card: The Customer Financials Card for a carrier represents the shipper so in this case displays ‘Shipwell, Inc.’ In the middle of the card, you see ‘SHIPWELL, INC.’ and under it is the originally agreed upon financials of the shipment will be displayed.

The column on the left indicating ‘SHIPWELL, INC.’ which is the carrier in this case. This column will change if the financials get updated on a shipment. We will cover updating financials in the ‘Updating Shipment Financials’ section.

Customer Perspective

A. Carrier Financials Card: The Carrier Financials Card at the top which is the entity the customer engaged to transport or service the freight which is ‘Shipwell, Inc’ in this case. In the middle of the card, you see ‘SHIPWELL, INC.’ and under it the originally agreed upon financials of the shipment will be displayed.

The column on the right indicating ‘DAVE’SCUSTOMERSHOP’ which is the customer on the original shipment in this case. This column will change if the financials get updated on a shipment. We will cover updating financials in the ‘Updating Shipment Financials’ section.

B. Customer Financials Card: The Customer Financials Card is at the bottom which is the customer you are shipping or servicing the freight on behalf of. However, since we are looking at the original customer on the shipment’s perspective here, the Customer Card reflects ‘DAVE’SCUSTOMERSHOP’ and the financials per the original amount.

There can be changes to a shipment’s financials both throughout the shipment process and even after the shipment has been delivered. These changes occur due to unplanned accessorials or other charges based on changes in the actual versus planned shipping parameters. Sometimes these changes will happen based on an agreed-upon rate schedule for accessorials and fuel surcharges. Sometimes these changes will happen in a back-and-forth process that results in an updated shipment agreement.

The process for creating/editing/deleting financials depends on the access of each Shipwell user and permissions. Generally speaking, the following capabilities are enabled per user:

· Shippers: Shippers can initiate and update the financials on a shipment directly.

· Carriers: Carriers by default cannot initiate the financials on a shipment directly.

· Customers: Customers can initiate the financials on a shipment directly.

Shipwell has a comprehensive version of a charge code standard which will be updated quarterly. The endpoint at {{baseUrl}}/reference-data/charge-codes/. Is now versioned based on a date. If you are using the new version charge codes versus the standard categories, you will now have an experience that will display charge codes, standard descriptions, and categories. The following documentation will show the old version as well as the new version.

As mentioned above, Shippers can initiate financial updates within Shipwell’s platform. This simply means Shippers have permission to go within Shipwell and create/edit financials. Oftentimes the origination of these financial updates is through an in-application message, email, routing guide, API call manually indicating there is some financial change or addition. This may be because of unforeseen or captured accessorials or for some other reason. Sometimes there may be agreed-upon rates prior when unforeseen accessorials arise, but oftentimes it is simply a back-and-forth dialogue that leads to an agreement on an action to take.

This section demonstrates how a Shipper can go in and update financials for both the Carrier and the Customer and what the resulting change looks like for the Carrier and Customer. Further, it goes into then what actions if any can a Carrier and Customer do afterwards.

If you navigate to a shipment and select financials, you will see carrier, customer, and invoice financial sections. The following provides an example of the previous interface and the new charge code interface
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The driver was supposed to drop off the shipment on August 11th, but he now needs to wait overnight and won’t be able to get out until the next day. The Carrier contacts the Shipper notifying them of the situation and that it will cost an additional $200 if their driver needs to wait overnight and can’t get out until August 12th. The Shipper now wants to update this shipment’s financials to align with this change. They go into the Shipment Details page and in the Financials tab they go to the Carrier Card and select the pencil button to edit the financials.

They select ‘+ Add Line Item’ and add a ‘Layover’ line item with a rate of $200. This is now added to the shipment for a total of $2,850.

We now see this $200 layover addition has been made under ‘SHIPWELL, INC.’ but is not reflected in the Carrier tenant’s financials yet. This is why the ‘Layover’ line is in red.

Once this change has been made then when the Carrier goes into Shipwell and views the shipment financials they will see a new line item in red that indicates something has changed with that line and in this case, it is a new line. It will stay red until each line item of both entities on a shipment stage’s card have the exact line-item total for the line.

In this case, the Carrier will see under ‘Shipwell, Inc.’ column that an additional $200.00 has been added to the shipment. This difference between the carrier and customer side will remain until the party not originating the change has agreed to this change by clicking on the ‘Copy financials from my [carrier/customer]” arrow is selected by the other party.

Once you click on this arrow, the editable version of the financials will open and you will click ‘Save’ if you agree with the other parties changes. If you disagree with some or all of the changes, you can modify those on your side of the financials and again it will show as a difference for the other party as displayed in red text until both parties agree to the same terms.

The resulting financials now display aligned as $2,850 for both parties.

As a shipper you may track your customer’s financials, and looking at the 'Customer' card at this point and you will notice nothing has changed based on changes made in the ‘Carrier’ card financials. It remains at $2,915 which was a 10% markup from the original $2,650 shipment. Depending on the agreement with your Customer you may wish to make an adjustment for them to account for this additional $200 layover cost. This doesn’t happen automatically because the Carrier and Customer cards are intentionally independent entities and not connected.

Let’s say you have an agreement that your Customer will indeed cover these extra charges. Additionally, this addition ‘Layover’ charge is covered by a preexisting rate table that you have agreed to with this customer.

Let’s add our rate table by clicking on the drop-down actions icon and select ‘Add Rate Table’.

An ‘Add Rate Table’ modal will pop up and you will select ‘Customer’ under ‘Financials’ since you are looking for a ‘Customer’ rate table. Then, you will select ‘Accessorial’ under ‘Rate Table Type’ since you are looking to add an accessorial rate table but if you had a fuel surcharge rate table you would choose that instead.

Now you need to add your specific saved accessorial table under ‘Accessorial Table’. Note you can start typing in the table name and it will filter and display the first results to make it easier to locate which in this case is ‘Dave’sCustomerShop Table’. Once you press ‘Add Table’ then you will not be able to leverage this rate table in your financials.

A new ‘Rate Table’ section has now been added and if you click on the arrow, it will expand and list rate tables that apply to this shipment. Note there is some cases based on specific carrier, customer, shipment modes, and shipment lanes where you can have a rate table automatically added to a shipment.

In this case we are going to click on the ‘DAVE’SCUSTOMERSHOP TABLE’ in blue and the choices provided in the rate table will be provided. Since we are concerned with layover, we are going to select that line item by pressing ‘Add as Line Item’.

Now we can see that an ‘Accessorial’ for layover (i.e., ‘LYOVR’) has been added. Then, we can press ‘Save’.

Taking a look at the Shipper’s view of the Customer Financials card we can see that a new ‘Accessorials’ line has been added with $0.00 under ‘DAVE’SCUSTOMERSHOP’ and with $250.00 under ‘SHIPWELL, INC.’ This new line is in red because the difference between the $0 and the $250 in the ‘Accessorials’ row. Now let’s take a look at the Customer’s view of the financials.

As the Customer, we look at the Carrier Financials card representing the charges by the service provider. In this case we see the new line in red with $250.00 under ‘SHIPWELL, INC.’ and with $0.00 under ‘DAVE’SCUSTOMERSHOP’. As a customer if they login and they are in an agreement with this charge, they can select the grey arrow and it will push the current financials that are under ‘SHIPWELL, INC.’ column and transfer them to ‘DAVE’SCUSTOMERSHOP’ column.

Now the ‘Accessorials’ row that was red is now black and both columns reflect the updated $250.00 for Accessorials. This financials update process was really a two-step process:

This is a normal process that Shippers and Customers may do and is similar to what we demonstrated above for Shippers and Carriers.

The Customer then presses ‘Save’ and the updated financials are populated wherein all the rows are black and both the ‘SHIPWELL, INC.’ and ‘DAVE’SCUSTOMERSHOP’ values are in agreement line-by-line.

This back-and-forth request process to modify financials by one party and approval of the change can go on repeatedly both during and after a shipment. The only limitation is that generally only a party that is not a Carrier can currently be able to initiate a change or be able to copy over financials from other party as an approval flow.

If the new charge code capability is enabled you will now see the following capabilities enabled. First the financial interface for carrier, customer, and invoice allows you to select from the charge codes that are defined in the charge code standard which is versioned by date. Any API, EDI or carrier portal access will automatically be mapped to this standard. We’ve now added a “CHARGE ITEM” column which has the format Charge Code - Charge Code Description (Charge Code Category). The description field will automatically default to the Charge Code Description but you can overwrite or change this field.

In the edit modal, you will see the ability to add a new line item. When a new line item is first added, you can see the various categories and the associated charge code under each category:

Simply clicking the item will add that line item to the shipment. In this instance I am searching for all the codes that contain the string or code “det”. You will see a box that shows the search results

In this case I am adding DTB or Detention associated with labor. You can search by code, description, or category.

You will see this line item added to the modal.

Simply click save and you have now added an item.

Many times businesses use the same charge code from the standard but might name or describe it as something different. For example, a common charge is a Truck Order But Not Used (TONU). You can search for TONU but this code will be aliased to the actual standard code which is (VOR) or Vehicle Ordered But Not Used. The description will be set to “Truck Order But Not Used” but the charge code will be set to “VOR.” When a carrier sends an invoice or edi for a TONU. This will also be normalized to VOR allowing for proper first pass match. We can add multiple aliases to a specific code which will allows additional flexibility.

This section is about leveraging Shipwell to generate Customer invoices and Carrier bills from your Shipwell shipments. This feature requires you have Shipwell connected to your financial management system. Read the section below on ‘Connecting to a Financial Management System’ to learn more about how to first integrate with your Financial Management System.

Once you select ‘Create Invoice’ you will get the following ‘Create Invoice’ modal. It will be prepopulated with the Customer name along with a default message with origin, destination, BOL #, and PRO #. Further, all financial line items will be pre-selected. There will be a display of the different shipment documents viewable and you can select which documents to attach to invoice. Once you select ‘Create Invoice’ then an invoice will be created and sent to your QuickBooks Online account that is connected to Shipwell.

The Invoice that was generated will then be displayed in the Customer card including the Invoice #, Amount, Balance, and Invoice Status. There is also the ability to ‘Email’ the invoice.

If you choose ‘Email’ invoice, then you can select the recipient parties (your email will be prepopulated as a recipient).

You will send an email with an attached invoice PDF along with all supporting documents attached to the invoice.

You cannot edit or delete invoices initiated within Shipwell triggering their creation in a financial management system. However, you can create multiple invoices.

Remember in this case we added a new ‘Layover’ line item. Further, this line item while added by the Shipper had not been able to have been transferred into the Carrier’s financials since they do not have permission to do this transfer generally. This does not matter though as when creating a bill it is based off the financials in the area of the organization producing the bill or invoice.

A couple differences in the ‘Create Bill’ modal is that it displays the Carrier name and a Bill Number and allows you to select a Due Date and an Approved Date. Again, you are able to choose which line items you want included. The other item of note is that since we are connected to TriumphPay there is an additional payment party authorization that has been made here.

The Bill that was generated will then be displayed in the Carrier card including the Bill #, Amount, Balance, and Bill Status. There is not the ability to email the bill. Further, you are not able to cancel or edit the bill as they have been sent to your financial management system and should be managed there.

Shipwell currently supports being able to integrate with both NetSuite and QuickBooks Online financial management systems and can connect to Triumph Pay directly for a payment system. In order to add, view, or edit the integrations for your organization, a user must have the permissions to view and manage integrations. These integrations can either be setup by your Shipwell Customer Service Representative or Implementation Consultant.

Once you have these permissions if you go to ‘Manage’ > ‘Company’ > ‘Integrations’ you will see a list of available integrations along with a status of which integrations you have connected to Shipwell. Three of these potential integrations are QuickBooks, Triumph Pay, and NetSuite. In the screenshot below we are already connected to QuickBooks and Triumph Pay due to the green checkbox in the right-hand corner.

Let’s say you are a new Shipwell administrator for a Shipper. You go to the QuickBooks card and click on it and the following below will display.

This is a mapping guide for your different financial line items, and you can select the ‘Expense Account’ and ‘Expense Class’ that have been pulled from your QuickBooks integration. You can do this for both the Billing and Invoicing segments.

This allows you to match your General Liability codes to shipment line items. Doing this will mean that when a new invoice or a new bill are generated that they will be coded with the right GL data for accuracy within your financial management system. These configuration options are similar for NetSuite however there are some additional choices that can be made to code these by shipment mode for example.

Per Shipwell tenant you can only connect to one financial management system at a time. However, if you have multiple Shipwell tenants you can connect all or some of them into one QuickBooks Online or NetSuite account.

Now that we talked about the financial management systems and configuring them we can move on to the payment system integration we have with Triumph Pay. Going back to the ‘Integrations’ page if you select Triumph Pay then you will get the following options to select both the ‘Carrier Invoice Approved Date’ and the ‘Factor Invoice Approved Date’. These both can be either ‘BILL_CREATED_DATE’ OR ‘SHIPMENT_DELIVERY_DATE’.