Surcharge Sets

The base price for an order will be determined by your price lists in one of three ways (flat rate, zone table, or mileage). Once the base price has been calculated, surcharge sets give you a lot of extra flexibility to add additional charges and otherwise modify the price. They work very similar to price lists: you can create as many surcharge sets as you want, and each customer will be assigned a default surcharge set to be charged from. Just make sure you assign the surcharge set to the customer, otherwise they won't be calculated. You can assign price and surcharge lists in the customer details window.

To create a surcharge set, navigate to 'Settings', 'Pricing', and 'Surcharge Sets'. Select 'Add Surcharge Set' and pick a name to create your set. From here, we'll break down surcharges by type and show you how to customize the surcharges to your liking.

Weight Charges
Select 'Add Charge' to create a weight price list. If you're going to have different rates for different service types or package types, you'll need to add multiple charges. Otherwise, you can create all of your ranges within one charge. There are two different ways to create weight charges, and one important option that you may find useful.

-If you're going to be charging per pound, say 10¢ for example, you would create a weight range from 0-10000 lbs at .10 per 1 lb. You can create multiple ranges at different rates, but it's important to note that these ranges are cumulative by default. That is, it will calculate each range separately according to the rates that you've set, and add them together at the end. More on this below.

-If you have ranges, for example 0-100 lbs is $10 flat, 100-200 lbs is $15, and 200-300 is $18, you would create the ranges as follows
a) from '1 to 1 lbs', '10 per 1 lb'
b) from '101 to 101 lbs', '5 per 1 lb'
c) from '201 to 201 lbs', '3 per 1 lb'
This may seem a little confusing. What we're actually doing here is setting it up so that as soon as a package exceeds one lb, it will be calculated at $10 once. When the package weight hits 101 lbs, the system will add on $5, one time, so that the total surcharge will give the correct value of $15. Similarly, once the package weight exceeds 200, the system will add on an additional $3 to give you the correct rate of $18.

-You can combine these rates into a single pricing scheme. For example, if you created two ranges:
a) from '1 to 1 lbs', '20 per 1 lb'
b) from '100 to 10000 lbs',  '.10 per 1 lb'
The surcharge set would charge a flat rate of $20 for the first 100 lbs, and then add on 10¢ per pound after that.

-It's important to understand the 'Apply Charge For Entire Order' option, as it can completely change your pricing. Normally, weight ranges are cumulative; that is, they're calculated separately and added together at the end. So if your ranges were 0-100 lbs at 20¢ per lb, 100-200 lbs at 15¢ per lb, and 200-300 lbs at 10¢ per lb, a 300 lb order would have a $45 dollar charge. The system gets $20 for the first 100 lbs, $15 for the next 100 and $10 for the final 100 and adds them together. However, if you check 'Apply Charge For Entire Order', the current weight range will override all the others. So in this case, a 300 lb order would be charged at 10¢ per lb for the entire order, giving you a total of $30 (instead of $45).

Piece Charges
Piece charges work the same as weight charges: you create ranges using the two methods outlined above, and you can use a price override by checking the 'Apply Charge For Entire Order' option.

Fuel Surcharges
Fuel surcharges can be calculated as a charge per mile, a percentage of base price, or a percentage of total price. Once again, you can create different fuel surcharges for different service/package types. The 'Driver Commission Override' allows you to exclude a driver from receiving fuel surcharges as part of his commission (0%), give the driver the full surcharge (100%), or anything in between. Otherwise he will use his standard commission percentage. One thing to note about fuel surcharges (and all other surcharges, for that matter): changing the rate won't retroactively adjust previous orders unless you recalculate. So if you change the fuel surcharge percentage every week to account for gas prices, your old orders from last week will still keep the proper charge from that week, as long as you don't 'Recalculate' the price in the price window.

Package Type Charges
Package type charges allow you add an additional flat rate for any combination of package and service types. Usually we try to integrate these differences into the base price list, but package type charges give you an easy and flexible way to add and change flat charges at any time.

Miscellaneous Charges
Miscellaneous charges are anything else that might be added on to an order. This might include wait time, extra manpower, oversized package, frozen goods, or whatever other additional charges your courier company use. These charges are added manually after the order has been placed, and are different from all the other surcharge types listed above, which are added automatically at the time the order is placed. To create a charge, just pick a name and enter in the value. To add this charge to the order, highlight the order and click on the order price in the bottom right of the dispatch window. Select the plus ('+') button in that window to pull up a list of miscellaneous charges. You can add any of these charges, at any time, in any quantity. For example, if your wait time charges were 50¢ a minute, you could add a 'Wait Time (per minute)' charge and change the quantity to 20 for 20 minutes of waiting. Just click 'Save and Close' when you've added all of your charges. You can also change the name, quantity, and price for any of the price components manually at any time by clicking on that field.