VIA® Integrates with many carriers out of box to provide a seamless link between your VIA® system and their TMS. Through the API connection, you can request and receive rates for your movements as you create quotes and orders. There are a few prerequisits that you will need to look at before you can start receiving rates in VIA®:
- Your carrier must be integrated with VIA® and support an API connection to provide rates
- You must have an account setup with your integrated carrier
- You must setup any additional margins or markups in order to properly calculate the cost to the customer
- The carrier board must be configured as the rating board from within the administration screen.
Let's look at each of these steps in a little more detail:
Requirement 1 - Carrier Must Support API Integration for Rating
In order to pull rates back from your carrier VIA® needs to be able to connect to them using an API connection. Below are a list of some of the carriers that VIA® connects to as of the most recent documentation update:
- AAA Cooper
- Averitt Express
- Central Transport
- Dayton Freight
- Estes Express
- FedEx Freight Company
- Forward Air
- Holland Regional
- Old Dominion
- Pitt Ohio
- R&L Carriers
- Reddaway
- Roadrunner
- Saia
- Southeastern Freight Lines
- UPS
- XPO Logisitics
- YRC
It is possible that additional carriers have been added to this list since it was originally published. To see if the carrier you want to integrate with is currently available open a carrier type card and in the carrier details tab click on the MC number field. If there is an MC number for your specific carrier then they are connected to VIA® with API. If your carrier is not on this list speak to your Tranztec contact about creating an API connection to your carrier.
If the carrier is listed in this MC listing then you will be able to establish an API connection with them.
Requirement 2 - Existing Account Required
Each individual carrier requires users to provide credentials before they will create the API connection. The requirements of the carrier are outlined on the integration button that appears when an MC number is selected in the carrier screen. These fields change depending on the carrier that you select and their requirements. If you need to create an account with your carrier contact them directly and ask for the information that is requested in the carrier integration screen.
Requirement 3 - Setup Margins or Markups
Once you have taken a carrier card and completed the integration screen setup you can start defining what you will do with those rates. There are a couple options you can setup a margin calculation or a markup calculation. Let's look at each of these options in more detail. You can find the fields in the carrier cards under the carrier settings tab:
For the purpose of explaining how these fields work we will take a quote and see the various behaviors as the changes are applied to the carrier card setting. Here is the quote with no settings updated:
Carrier Minimum Margin - This value will alter the margin that appears on the screen to match a specific number or percentage. For example, if you want to always make at least $200.00 on every load regardless of what the carrier returns you can put that in this field and make sure $ is selected. When you refresh the quote it will appear as follows. Note that the carrier cost is still $146.33; however, you are now adding a $200.00 margin onto the quote.
Carrier Default Margin - This field will add on either a dollar amount or a percentage to the cost that comes in from the carrier. For example, if we set the default margin to $50.00 the quote will update and add $50.00 onto the cost of $146.33. NOTE that for this example we have set the minimum back to $0.00
This field can also be a percentage. Let's say we want to add 25% onto the cost instead of a flat $50.00:
This default margin field will work in conjunction with the Carrier Minimum Margin field to add a margin onto the amounts returned from the carrier. If for example, the minimum was set to $25.00 and the default margin was 25% then the system will look for the greater amount to charge. In this example, the amount of the default margin will exceed the minimum (25% margin would be $48.78) and the default will be applied instead of the minimum:
Carrier Cost Markup - The value that you enter into this field will be directly applied to the carrier cost as opposed to showing as an addition to the cost that comes across from the carrier. For example, if you set the markup to $50.00 and refresh the quote then the cost will change from $146.33 to $196.33.
This field can also be created as a percentage. For example, if you set the markup as 50% then the field will look similar to below. The system will run the following calculation: 146.33 + 50% = 219.50
