Content in this article:
- Introduction
- Rates in the booking response
-
Rates vs shipment options
- 3.1 Requesting rates
- 3.2 Using the rates response - The autobook feature
1 Introduction
Transsmart offers customers possibilities for uploading shipment rates. Your Transsmart contact will be able to upload these in close collaboration with you.
The Transsmart platform supports 2 kinds of rates:
- Buying rate: the rate the carrier will charge you for that shipment.
- Selling rate: the rate you can charge your customer for that shipment. It can be set in 3 different ways :
a. buying rate + fixed margin
b. fixed price
c. a rate sheet, in the same way as the buying rate
2 Rates in the booking response
If the Transsmart platform contains rates that match the shipment characteristics, the response to a booking request will contain the applicable buying and/or selling rate.
Different factors are taken into account for the rate calculation. The most obvious factors are:
- shipping address
- number of packages
- package dimensions
- carrier
- service level
- service level option
- weight
The response will only contain a rate if a rule matches the booking details. For that reason make sure to include as many shipment characteristics as possible. You can store the shipment rates in your backend system for further usage, e.g. carrier invoice verification.
3 Rates vs shipment options
The rates in the Transsmart platform can also be used before the actual booking, to help decide on the actual carrier, service level, etc. to use for the shipment. The request feedback includes information about the rates and expected transit times.
3.1 Requesting rates
Sending a rate request to v2/rates/{account} is a simple process. The request contains the same shipment details as the actual booking will contain.
3.2 Using the rates response
The response consists of two parts. The first part is the shipment details as you provided them. The second part is the different rate options with transit times that apply to your account.
As always the structure of the response is documented in the DevDocs.
It is important to note that the Price is the Buying price and the Salesprice is the selling rice, if there is any.
The description is a concatenation of the descriptive fields for the carrier, the servicelevel, the servicelevel other and the accountnumber.
The transit time is expressed either as a descriptive text or as the number of hours in the day following the pick-up day. In the below example, the transit time is 17 hours. This means the shipment will be delivered before 17.00h on the day after pick-up.
"description": "DHL Europlus EUROPLUS COD (account: 05680749)",
"currency": "EUR",
"salesPrice": 13.54,
"salesCurrency": "EUR",
"weight": 2,
"weightUom": "KG",
"calculatedWeight": 2,
"calculatedWeightType": "",
"calculatedWeightUom": "KG",
"executingCarrier": "",
"transitTimeDescription": "1 day(expected delivery date/time: 2024-03-15 17:00:00)",
"transitTimeHours": 17,
"carrier": "EEX",
"carrierDescription": "DHL Europlus",
"serviceLevelTime": "EUROPLUS",
"serviceLevelOther": "COD",
"serviceLevelTimeDescription": "Standaard levering volgende werkdag",
"serviceLevelOtherDescription": "Rembours",
"pickupDate": "2017-11-17",
"deliveryDate": "2017-12-08",
"price": 6.74,
"deliveryTime": "17:00:00"
In your backend system, you can show the rate options and have the user select the preferred option or – if there is only a single option – let the system decide automatically on the carrier, service level, and service level other to use in the actual booking.
4 The autobook feature
If you like, the Transsmart platform can decide itself on the preferred option to use, instead of using the rate request. Decision criteria include shipment cost and transit time. Please discuss this option in more detail with your Transsmart contact as some configuration is required before you can effectively start using the autobook feature.
As an illustration of the principle : when you book with carrier AUT and servicelevel CHEAPEST, the most cost effective carrier/servicelevel is used for the booking. The booking response will always contain the actual carrier/servicelevel that was used for the booking.