Consignments and the six questions

A consignment is one shipment under one connote. It can carry one order or several. Forensik prices each consignment from your approved rate card, fuel levy and markup rules, then checks it against the carrier invoice when that arrives.

The consignments list

Open Consignments at /consignments. Each row shows the connote, ship date, carrier and service, destination, linked orders, and four amounts ex GST:

• Charged: what the customer paid for freight
• Expected: what the carrier should charge on your approved rates
• Billed: what the carrier invoiced, or "Not yet"
• Margin: charged less billed, or less expected until the invoice is matched

The Status column shows "Cannot price" or "Not priced yet" when a consignment has no price, and a count of open exceptions when the audit flagged its invoice lines.

Use Search for a connote, reference or order number, filter by Shipped from, Shipped to and Carrier, then select Search. Clear removes the filters. The list shows 25 consignments a page.

Select a row to open the consignment.

The consignment page

The header shows the carrier and service, ship date, origin warehouse, destination and zone, the package count and the actual, cubic and rated weights. Badges show whether it is priced and whether an invoice is matched.

A row of six headline figures sits at the top. Select any of them to jump to the answer below.

1. What should it cost?

The expected cost, line by line: base freight, fuel levy and any surcharges, each linked to the rate card or fuel levy version used and the weight band it fell in. GST is shown separately.

2. What did we charge?

What the customer was charged, the FORENSIK price your markup rules set, and the gap between them. Below that, each linked order and how it was charged (at checkout, entered by hand or imported), and each SKU line with its share of the cost, its markup (or free freight) and its price.

3. What did the carrier bill?

Each invoice or credit note line matched to this connote, with every charge on it. The total is ex GST and net of credits. If nothing is matched yet, import your carrier invoices; the audit matches them on the connote. See How invoice lines are matched.

4. Did we make or lose money?

The margin, how it was worked out, and the margin you would have made if the carrier had billed as expected. When there is a loss, it is split into a planned part (free freight you chose to absorb) and an unplanned loss.

5. Why did it change?

The difference between charged and price, and between billed and expected. Each variance the audit found is listed with its cause (weight, zone, fuel levy and so on), the amounts and a link to the invoice line and its exception. It also tells you if rates changed between the quote and the ship date. See Audit variance causes.

6. What should we charge next time?

The price today for the same cartons and lane on today's rates, and, where there is history, what this lane actually bills as a percentage of expected, with the margin today's price would make at that ratio.

When a consignment cannot be priced

A yellow note says "Cannot price" and the reason. Expected cost and price stay empty until it is fixed; Forensik never guesses. See Cannot price orders.