Pricing Templates is where you see a service mix as a route — stage by stage, activity by activity — and set the pricing rules for each activity in one panel. This article covers reading that route view, the per-activity settings, the price details and evaluation types behind each activity, and Selling by Route, which prices an activity from the customer's own selling agreement. It does not cover creating the service mix itself: its tabs, routing levels and template steps are in How to configure a service mix.
Before you start
- A service mix has to exist before it has a pricing template to read. The service mix defines the legs, routing points and logical activities; the pricing template sets how each activity is priced.
- Service Mix and Pricing Templates are two separate permissions, so you can hold one without the other. If Pricing Templates will not open for you, that is the permission to ask your Freightools administrator about — see How to set pricing permissions per user.
- Know which customers have their own selling agreements. Selling by Route reads them, and an activity ticked for it with no matching selling agreement has nothing to take a selling price from.
Read a service mix as a route
Open Settings → Service Configuration → Pricing Templates. The grid lists one template per service mix — Ocean FCL, Ocean LCL, Air Service, Road FTL/FTL and so on — with an EDIT button on each row. Opening one shows Edit Pricing Template (Ocean FCL), for example: a header card with the template's name, its SERVICE TYPE, PICKUP SERVICE, DELIVERY SVC and FREIGHT UNITS, and the note "This pricing template defines the routing and default activity structure used for instant quote evaluation."
Under it the template lays the service mix out as the route a shipment follows: each stage of the journey in order — ORIGIN, Pick-up Containers, POL - Port Of Loading, Ocean Freight Containers, TRN (Transshipment), POD - Port of Discharge, Delivery Containers, DESTINATION on an Ocean FCL template — and under each stage the activities that are priced there, each with its activity count and an Add Activity button. An activity row carries a REQUIRED badge when it must be priced, and its selling and buying lines with their evaluation ("Eval: Cntrs 40' HC"). Here the activities are the thing you work on: click one and the right-hand panel opens with its rules.
Read the whole route before you change a rule. A pricing template answers one question per activity: when this service mix is quoted, where does this activity's price come from, and does it belong on the quotation at all.
Set the rules for one activity
Click an activity and its rules open in the right-hand panel (Back to Overview returns to the route). Click Basic Activity Configuration for the settings:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| SERVICE TRADE — Export, Import, Domestic, Cross Trade | The trade directions the activity applies to — the same choice as on the service mix. |
| Required For Evaluation | The activity must be priced for the quote to be returned. |
| End to End | "This activity is calculated as one direct result from origin to destination regardless of intermediate routing steps." |
| Allow Missing Rate | "The system tries to find a rate for this activity, but the quote can still be returned if no rate is found." |
| Is Master | "This activity is a master activity." |
| Include in Quote | "Controls whether this activity appears in the manual quote / sales proposal output." |
| Main Activity | "Marks this activity as the main activity of the routing - it supplies the sales proposal main supplier and is preferred in spot rate results." |
| Additional Percentage | A percentage added on top of the activity's price. |
| Selling by Route | Prices the activity's selling from the customer's own selling agreement — explained below. |
| All Incoterms, All Countries | Whether the activity applies under every incoterm and in every country. |
Below them sit the ADVANCED and CONNECTED PRICING LOGIC sections and the Add Price Detail button. End to End also changes what Selling by Route matches on, explained below. The settings are read and set per activity in the same panel; set them for the activity in front of you, then read the next activity rather than assuming it carries the same rules.
Add price details and evaluation types to an activity
Under the rules, each activity carries its price details and their evaluation types — the charges that belong to the activity and what each one is counted per. Add Price Detail adds one. Buying and selling are shown as rows side by side, so the buying charge and the selling charge for the same price detail are read on one line rather than on two screens.
The same price detail can be added to different activities. A terminal handling charge that applies both at origin and at destination is added to each of the two activities.
What a price detail and an evaluation type are, and how the same two fields are filled on an agreement, is in How to add or edit rates and charges in a buying agreement.
Price an activity from the customer's own agreement with Selling by Route
Without Selling by Route, the selling agreement used for an activity is the one matched by the buying lane: the lane of the buying agreement that priced the activity. For a customer who has their own selling agreement on the lane they actually asked for, that is not always the agreement you want.
Selling by Route changes where the selling price comes from, one activity at a time:
- Click the activity in the pricing template, open Basic Activity Configuration and switch on Selling by Route. Its help text reads: "Prices this activity's selling from the customer's selling agreements found from the search's origin to its destination (first to last address), over the selling agreement matched to its buying."
- From then on, when that service mix is quoted, the activity's selling price comes from the customer's selling agreement found by the search's origin and destination — the places the customer asked for in Instant Quote.
- When End to End is on for the activity, the match uses the first address to the last address of the search, so a door-to-door search is matched on its first and last address.
- The buying side is untouched. The buying agreement, the buying lane and the buying price stay exactly as they were; only the selling agreement is matched differently.
So a search from a customer's warehouse to their consignee's warehouse, on an activity ticked for Selling by Route with End to End on, takes its selling price from that customer's selling agreement for warehouse to warehouse, while the ocean freight is still bought on the port-to-port buying agreement that priced it.
For how selling agreements are created and found, see Create your agreements in Freightools. For what the matched price then looks like on the quotation, and how to change it before sending, see How to edit quotation pricing before sending.
Who can edit what
Service Mix and Pricing Templates are separate permissions, so the person who builds the operational workflow of a service mix is not automatically the person who sets its pricing rules, and the other way round. Decide who edits what and have your Freightools administrator set the two permissions apart — see How to set pricing permissions per user.
If something goes wrong
| You see | What to do |
|---|---|
| Pricing Templates will not open, but Service Mix does | They are separate permissions. Ask your Freightools administrator for the Pricing Templates permission. |
| An activity's selling price did not come from the customer's agreement | Check Selling by Route is on for that activity under Basic Activity Configuration in the template, and that the customer has a selling agreement on the search's origin and destination — with End to End on, on its first and last address. |
| The buying price changed after you ticked Selling by Route | Buying is untouched by Selling by Route. Read the buying agreement behind the activity on the quotation, and tell your Freightools contact what you saw. |
| A price detail will not go onto a second activity | The same price detail can be added to different activities. Tell your Freightools contact which template and which two activities. |