Rates hierarchy: default, customer & supplier rates

Every price in the portal comes from a rate card. What makes a card a “default” rate or a “customer” rate is not a setting on the card — it is whether the card has customers assigned to it. This page explains the hierarchy the pricing engine walks, and where supplier rates fit in.

Customer rates — tried first

Assign one or more customers to a card (Rates → Rate Cards → open the card → Customers) and it becomes that customer’s customer rate. When a booking or quote is priced, the engine always looks at the customer’s own assigned cards first. If any assigned card has a matching lane (zones, charge method, conditions), that price wins — shared cards are not consulted at all.

Use customer rates for negotiated agreements: a customer-specific pallet schedule, contracted per-kg rates, special lanes, project pricing.

Default rates — the shared fallback

A card with no customers assigned is a default (global) rate: it is available to every customer as a fallback. If none of the customer’s own cards can price the requested lane, the engine searches the default cards and prices off the best match.

Two controls shape this fallback:

• Global fallback toggle (Settings → Rate Card Settings): set per customer, ON by default. Switch it OFF and that customer’s bookings price only from their assigned cards — a lane with no match returns “no rate” instead of silently falling through to shared pricing. Use this for customers whose agreement must never be priced off the house rates.
• Operator visibility: the booking form shows a “Using global rate card” warning whenever the price came from a default card rather than one of the customer’s own, so the operator can verify before booking.

When several cards could match a lane, the engine prefers: the customer’s own cards first, then a card matching the requested transport configuration and charge method, then the lowest base rate, then the oldest card — so the outcome is deterministic.

Supplier rates — planned

Customer and default rates are both sell rates — what you charge your customers. Supplier rates — what a carrier or subcontractor charges you (buy rates) — are not yet part of the pricing engine. The system already records which companies are suppliers, and manifests support subcontractor assignment, but no supplier price is stored or applied anywhere today.

The planned direction is to reuse the same rate-card machinery — zones, lanes, charge methods, tiers, service levels — with cards assigned to suppliers instead of customers. A booking could then carry both a sell price (from the customer/default hierarchy) and a buy cost (from the supplier’s card), enabling buy-vs-sell margin per job and supplier cost comparison per lane. Until that ships, treat every rate in the portal as a sell rate; supplier cost agreements need to be tracked outside the system.

Quick reference

Tier	What it is	When it applies
Customer rate	Card with customers assigned	Always tried first for those customers
Default rate	Card with no customers assigned	Fallback for everyone — unless the customer’s Global fallback is OFF
Supplier rate	Buy-side card assigned to a supplier	Planned — not in the engine yet

Related pages

• Rate cards & pricing — how a single card prices a lane: zones, charge methods, tiers, add-ons.
• Rate card settings — the per-customer Global fallback toggle and tenant-wide pricing defaults.