Freight Order Control

Freight orders provide information about goods that must be transported, and provide major input to transport planning and subcontracting. The main purpose of the Freight Order Control is to maintain freight orders, and to keep track of freight orders in the course of their life cycle, both before and after their transportation has been planned and executed, or before and after they have been subcontracted.

You can use Freight Invoicing to release invoicing data for transport costs to Invoicing. The invoicing data is used by Invoicing to create invoices for transport costs to internal and external business partners. Some business partners are invoiced for estimated freight costs, others are invoiced for actual freight costs listed on the carrier invoice, and sometimes invoicing is based on other agreements. Invoicing data is ready for release to Invoicing when the freight costs are calculated.

  • Create freight orders

    Freight orders originate from warehouse, sales, purchase, or distribution (EP) orders, possibly in different logistic companies. Freight order generation can take place automatically or in a batch. You can also manually create freight orders.

  • Freight order statuses

    After a freight order is created, the freight order will go through several stages until the goods reach their destination and are paid. These stages include both inbound and outbound goods transports. The freight order status shows the current stage of the freight order or freight order line.

  • Invoicing process

    In Freight Invoicing, you can generate invoices for transportation costs. These can be transports of purchased goods from suppliers or sold goods to customers. Organizations usually subcontract the transportation of these goods to a carrier. Most organizations have agreements with their customers and suppliers on how much they can charge for transportation: the full amount they had to pay to the carrier, some special rate, or no charge at all.

    Invoices for freight costs are based on freight orders. To create invoices, the invoicing information from these freight orders must be released to Freight Invoicing. In Freight Invoicing, the invoices are created and sent to the business partners.

  • Invoicing methods

    The following invoicing methods are used to determine the amount invoiced to business partners for freight charges:

    • Freight Costs

      The amount invoiced to the business partner depends on the moment the costs are calculated: before, during, or after transportation takes place. Before: the amount is based on the ordered quantities and the carrier rates. The carrier rates are maintained in the Pricing module. When calculated at some point during or after transportation, the amount charged can be different if the transported quantities, the transportation time, or the transportation mode have changed at the moment the costs were calculated. These changes occur if, for example, the goods were damaged or the planned transport capacity was unavailable.

    • Freight Costs (Update Allowed)

      The freight costs are based on the carrier rates maintained in Pricing, which is the same as for the Freight Costs invoicing method.

      If differences occur between the freight cost amount invoiced to the business partner and the transportation costs actually incurred, this invoicing method enables you to send another invoice to the business partner charging him with the difference.

    • Client Rates

      Client rates are freight rates agreed on with an organization's business partners. These rates are maintained in the client freight rate books in Pricing. The invoiced amount is a fixed amount based on the client rates, regardless of the actual costs incurred.

    • Not Applicable

      No invoicing.

  • Negative freight costs

    You can specify negative freight costs for loads, shipments, and shipment lines. For example, if a customer is overcharged for a shipment, you can compensate the customer by charging a negative freight cost amount for the next shipment.

  • Internal and external invoicing

    In Freight Invoicing, invoices can be created for both internal and external business partners. External business partners are the customers or suppliers on whose behalf the transportation costs are incurred. Internal business partners are departments in larger organizations that can be invoiced internally. The shipping offices arrange transportation on behalf of internal business partners such as:

  • Calculation of estimated freight costs

    For loads and shipments, Freight calculates the estimated freight costs of loads and shipments during load building. For freight order clusters, Freight calculates the estimated freight costs during freight order clustering.

    The Freight calculation engine is also used to calculate estimated freight costs for individual order lines of the following types:

    • Sales order lines
    • Sales quotation lines
    • Freight order lines
  • Subcontracting

    Subcontracting is the process of offering freight orders to an external carrier for transportation. You can create load plans for the freight orders and offer the planned loads to a carrier, or you can offer clustered freight order lines for which no load building is performed. The freight orders can be clustered based on a range of common criteria, such as delivery dates, service levels, shipping offices, transport means groups, overlapping time windows, planning groups and so on, that is subcontracted to a carrier.

  • Cluster and cluster line status overview

    A freight order cluster is a group of freight order lines with matching properties that is subcontracted to a carrier. These properties include shipping offices, planning groups, transport means groups, and overlapping time windows.

    Cluster headers and cluster lines have various sets of statuses. Cluster header statuses indicate the progress of the cluster during the freight order cluster subcontracting process. Cluster line statuses have the same status as the corresponding freight order lines.

  • Clustering by address

    To limit the number of freight order clusters generated for a group of freight order lines, you can cluster freight order lines by ship-from and ship-to address.

  • Change freight order clusters

    Freight order clusters can be frequently changed for various reasons. For example, if a carrier is not available, you must specify a different carrier. Also, if a customer orders more goods, you must create freight order lines. You can rerun the clustering process to cluster the new freight order lines. Depending on the properties of the new freight order lines, you can add the properties to the cluster, or you can create a new cluster.

  • Confirm delivery/receipt for clusters

    In Freight, you can set the status of batches of cluster lines to Shipped or Completed. Using this option, you can indicate the progress through warehousing and transport for cluster lines that are not linked to Warehousing.