A Carrier Portal is a tool that allows you to provide your Carriers with limited visibility to the parts of your Tailwind database that directly relate to your business with them: available loads, Shipments you have Dispatched to them, and active and historical information concerning any Bills owed to them. An active Carrier Portal allows for quicker communication between you and your most trusted Carriers, building stronger and more efficient business relationships.

You can provide a Carrier Portal login to any contact associated with any Vendor recordset to type ‘Carrier’ in your database. This means that a carrier could have more than one login, allowing each contact to log in separately.

To create a login for one of your Carriers, start by navigating to the Carrier record in question via the Vendors list.

Once you have opened the Vendor record, please find the contact you want to create a login for and open their record. Next, click on the 'Full Details,' then the 'Edit Record' button.

In the Contact record, fill in the 'Portal Username' and 'Portal Password' fields with the login information for your portal user. Remember that no two contacts can have the same portal username throughout your entire database. Click “Save” when you are done.

(Note that if there is no Contact record for the Vendor, you will have to create one.)

[fig 3. Email Portal Credentials]

Now that the portal login credentials have been saved, you will see the “Email Portal Credentials” option at the top of the contact record. Provided the contact has a valid email address, this button will allow you to send them the login information to access the carrier portal and log in using your credentials.

Once a portal user has been created, they will then have access to the following areas within the Carrier Portal:

The Available Loads section lists all advertised quotes and orders from your Tailwind database, where the pickup date has yet to pass. In addition, this section allows portal users to reach out to you with their rate on that freight movement.

The Active Dispatches section shows all dispatches assigned to the portal user’s carrier record. This is where the user can print load confirmations and upload PODs once the freight has been delivered.

The My Receivables section lists all bills from your Tailwind database owed to the Carrier in question. This is where they can reconcile their accounting information to see what is still owed to them by your company and view historical Tailwind bills that have been paid. They can also view any payments that have been made towards these Bills.

We have also created an article for your Carriers about using their portal. We recommend you read the article as well, so you can better assist them with any questions they have about the portal.