can u quote 2 pallets machine parts, 480kg total, LAX to Sydney door to door, ready thursday…
Margins and approvals
Protect freight margins without slowing every quote.
Apply approved pricing rules consistently, then route only the high-value, low-margin or unusual quotes to the person who should decide. Everything else goes straight to a draft.
- Rules by lane, mode, customer
- Exceptions routed
- Named approvers
- A person always sends
Your rules, running the desk
Flow view
Request inany customer
Route by valuetotal > 10,000
Hold for approval
Straight to draft
Approval
If total > 10,000
Hold for a second pair of eyes
Follow-up chaser
- Tue — quote sent
- Thu — 48 h, no reply
- Follow-up drafted
Chasers and clarifications are drafted, never sent on their own.
01Before
The margin depends on who happened to quote it.
Two people quote the same lane for the same customer in the same week and land two percent apart, because one of them remembered the agreement and the other did not. Nobody is at fault; the rule was never written down anywhere a quote could read it.
- 01Recall what markup this customer is on. Ask a colleague if unsure.
- 02Check whether this lane is one of the exceptions.
- 03Apply it — in your head, in a calculator, or in a formula somebody built.
- 04Notice the total is unusually large and wonder whether to flag it.
- 05Send it anyway, because the customer is waiting.
- 06Discover the margin problem at month end, on a shipment already moved.
02Workflow
The rule is written once, then applied every time.
Margin rules by customer, lane and mode, plus approval and routing rules, are Growth-plan capabilities.
- 01Write the rule where a quote can read it.Markup by mode and region, customer-specific pricing, and the exceptions to both — configured once rather than remembered.
- 02Apply it consistently.The tenth quote on a Friday is priced the way the first one on Monday was, because it is the same rule doing it.
- 03Show which rule fired.The quote names the rule it applied, so a figure can be explained without reconstructing somebody’s reasoning.
- 04Hold the ones that should be held.Route by total value, by thin margin, by expired rate or by missing source — to the person who should actually decide.
- 05Let the rest through.An approval gate on every quote is a gate nobody uses. The routine ones go straight to a draft for the desk to send.
03Rules on a live quote
One quote priced, one quote held.
A rule engine is only worth having if you can see it working. This is the same desk running two requests: one where the configured markup applied and the draft is ready, and one held above a value threshold for a named approver before it can be sent anywhere.
Which rule priced this
Ocean FCL SIN–RTM · 2 × 40HC4,910.00
Where this number comes from
- 1
Cost SEA-EU_FCL_Q3.xlsx row 12 · 2,150.00 per 40HC
- 2
Customer rule Nordkust AB · contract markup +9%
- 3
Lane rule Ocean · Europe · minimum margin 180.00 per container
- 4
Applied minimum margin wins on this lane: +180.00, not +193.50
- 5
Approver not required · total below the 10,000 threshold
Illustrative sample data. The rule that fired is recorded on the quote, including when two could have.
Held for approval: air LAX–SYD · 11,240.00
Above your 10,000 value threshold. Routed to Kim before it can be sent, and visible on the desk as waiting.
04When it cannot
What happens when something is missing.
This is the half of automation worth interrogating. Freitt says so rather than filling the gap — no invented rate, no assumed weight, nothing sent unread.
HeldThe total is above your threshold.It goes to the approver you named. It cannot be sent while it is waiting, and the desk can see that it is waiting.
Thin marginThe rule would leave less than your minimum.Flagged before it is sent rather than discovered at month end on a shipment that has already moved.
Expired rateThe best-matching line is out of date.Blocked from being quoted. An expired cost with a healthy-looking markup on top is the worst of both.
No sourceA charge cannot name where it came from.It is raised rather than quoted. A number that cannot prove itself is a number you will have to defend from memory.
05Control
Fast does not mean unchecked.
- 01Margins come from your rules, not from the model.
- 02The quote names which rule it applied.
- 03Thresholds hold quotes before they can be sent.
- 04Expired and unsourced charges are blocked.
- 05A person approves every send.
Separate encrypted workspaces · no cross-customer use · deletion confirmed in writingRead about security →
06Fit
Use this when
- More than one person prices, and their answers should agree.
- Some customers or lanes have agreements that only exist in somebody’s memory.
- You want a value threshold above which nothing leaves unread.
- Margin erosion is being found after the fact rather than before the send.
Look elsewhere when
- One person prices everything and holds every agreement themselves.
- Every quote is bespoke enough that a rule would be wrong more often than right.
- You want approvals inside your TMS rather than beside it.
- Nobody can own deciding what the rules should be this quarter. That decision has to come first.
Margins and approvals, answered.
Something else on your mind? Bring it to a live quote session — thirty minutes, no deck, on one of your own RFQs.
No. Margins come from your rules — by lane, mode, customer or quote value. Freitt applies them and shows which one it applied. The model reads requests and prepares drafts; it does not set prices.
Yes. Set a threshold and route those quotes to the right approver before they can be sent. Approval and routing rules are included in Growth.
Only if you route everything, which is why you should not. The point of a threshold is that routine quotes go straight to a draft and only the exceptions wait.
The rule that produced the markup on that quote, alongside the source rate line it was applied to. Enough to explain a figure to a customer or a colleague without reconstructing anyone’s reasoning.
Margin rules by customer, lane and mode, and approval and routing rules, are Growth-plan capabilities. Starter prices from your rates and drafts the quote; every plan requires a person to send.
Next in the workflow
Then find out what happened to it.
Time to draft, time to send, drafts sent without a pricing edit, response and win rate by lane — measured from the quotes the desk already produced.
See quote tracking- Request received
- Details read
- Priced from your sheet
- Reply drafted
- Approved and sent
Read from the email
LAX → SYDDoor to door2 pallets, 1.68 cbmReady Thu 21 Aug480 kg — gross?480 kg chargeable
- Air freight LAX–SYD
- 1,872.00
- Margin +12%
- +224.64
- Fuel surcharge
- 288.00
- Pickup + delivery
- 327.40
- Total, door to door
- USD 2,712.04
Hi Mike — pleased to quote LAX to Sydney, door to door. 2 pallets, 480 kg chargeable. Total USD 2,712.04, valid 14 days.
Reviewed by Dana, sent from your own address
one request, from the forwarded email to the sent quote
See it live
Bring the rule nobody has written down.
Tell us how one awkward customer or lane is really priced, and we will configure it on the call.
30 minutes · no deck · your rates stay private