Sharing rates with other agents or freight forwarders is a great way to secure more quotations, which means more sales.
Establishing a process to share rates vastly improves the communication flow between different parties in different regions and even allows you to manage custom settings to add profits to these shared rates.
This tool is available for Professional and Enterprise pack types.
Watch the below video, or continue reading this article to find out how you can get configured with rate sharing and start using this tool today.
Important: You must be a Super Admin user in order to set up rate sharing with offices or agents in another country.
1. Choose the recipient of the shared rates
Firstly head to the Tools tab, then Directories, then select Forwarders from the dropdown menu.
Underneath the Forwarders heading, select the Country to see all available freight forwarders in that particular country, or if you know the Company add the name and click Search.
Once you have found the freight forwarder you want to assign as your agent, click on the star symbol located to the right of the details.
The freight forwarding company will be added to a section called Your Agents. This means that this customer is now set up to receive shared static rates.
If at any point you want to remove the freight forwarder as an agent, simply click on the highlighted star and it’ll be removed from the list.
2. Configure Your Rate Sharing Filters
Next to the star under My agent, there’s another option under Actions to Share rates. Click on this to add the rate information you want to share.
You’ll now need to set up the corresponding filters, based on how rates are to be shared, with whom, if they are local or international, what the agent should be able to see, and any profit for weight breaks that should be added to rates shared.
Important: numerous combinations of conditions and criteria can be applied, so make sure that they align with established business practices.
Find explanations of what each section means below.
Basic Information
Share: choose what kinds of rates to share (General, Promo, Contract etc).
What to include: decide whether or not to share "all surcharges and fees", only Freight + Fuel + Risk, or another combination available in the respective country of origin or destination.
Airlines: choose which airlines’ rates you allow to be shared, including if you have added rules for preferred carriers.
Share with: choose whether you want the rates shared to specific people within the company, or to everyone.
Airlines to share/block: enter the name of airlines you do or do not want appearing when rates are shared.
Geographic Restrictions
This section allows you to configure restrictions and access to rates by origin, destination, airport, or country.
Profit: Under the profit section you can choose to add profits per weight breaks. Leave the fields blank if you want to share your net rates. You can add a mark-up using these boxes to add the value to be applied to the shared rate.
Important: Your agent will NOT see the mark-ups applied. They will only see the final sum of the rate + any profits added.
Other data
Contact Person: select the person to appear as the primary contact on these rates for your agent.
Local Charge Profile: leave this blank if you do not wish to provide with the rates (Handlings, Docs, DG Fees, etc).
Terms and Conditions: If you have any specific terms and conditions when sharing rates, make sure to add them here.
3. Share your rates
When you’ve checked all of the information for the customer you want to share the rates to, click Share.
You will see the agent you’re sharing rates with within a new list called Your agents.
Important: the configuration will not come into effect immediately. A member of the WebCargo team will receive an alert indicating that a share request has been initiated. We will then reach out to the person who has shared to check all is correct and enable the sharing option.
If you click on the pencil and paper symbol underneath the Actions column which says Edit sharing options you’ll be able to see the status of the sharing.
If your rates are still awaiting confirmation, you’ll be able to see this here.
Once we have activated the rate to be shared, we’ll contact you to let you know you’re ready to start sharing your rates.
Once activated, you can make any changes to the sharing options at any time, including stopping the option to share. In order to do this, click on the Tools menu, then Rate Sharing, and then select Static Rates from the drop-down.
4. How to edit or stop sharing rates
In order to edit or stop sharing rates with a particular agent click on the Tools menu, then Rate Sharing, and then select Static Rates. You’ll find lie rate sharings in the section Foreign agents with whom you share rates. Click on the pencil and paper symbol located to the right of the user information.
You will be able to see an option to Stop sharing the rates with the freight forwarder. Click on this button and the freight forwarder will be removed from the list.
Important: if you choose to stop sharing rates with a freight forwarder and later choose to re-establish the connection, this will again need to be approved by WebCargo.
Editing rate sharing information
If you make any changes to the rate information, access the sharing options the same way shown above. Make sure to click Save once any changes have been made. You will not have to wait for confirmation from WebCargo to save any changes you make to the rates being shared.