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Automated Rating Engine

What is the Automated Rating Engine?

The automated rating engine applies stored customer rates and carrier tariffs to quotes and orders automatically based on freight characteristics like origin, destination, equipment type, and commodity details. Instead of manually looking up rates and typing them into each quote or order, the rating engine searches your rate tables, finds matches for the specific shipment parameters, and pre-fills the customer and carrier rates with margin calculated instantly. This automation speeds up quoting, ensures pricing consistency, and eliminates the transcription errors that happen when people manually enter rates dozens of times daily.

The rating engine becomes the single source of pricing truth for your operation. Sales, dispatch, and accounting all get rates from the same system using the same logic, so the quote a sales rep sends matches the order dispatch creates and the invoice accounting generates. This alignment prevents the pricing disconnects that create customer disputes, margin erosion, and operational confusion.

How the Automated Rating Engine works:

  1. Ensure your rate tables are configured and active. Before the rating engine can auto-rate shipments, you need customer rate tables and carrier tariffs in the system. The rating engine pulls from these configured tables, so they must exist and be marked as active.
  2. Create a new quote or order for a customer. When building a quote from the Quotes module or creating an order in the Orders module, start by selecting the customer and entering the basic shipment details (origin, destination, equipment type, commodity information).
  3. The rating engine searches for applicable customer rates. Based on the customer selected and the origin-destination pair entered, the rating engine searches your customer rate tables for matching lanes. It looks for exact matches first, then broader zone-based matches if you've configured zones.
  4. Customer rate auto-populates in the quote or order. If the rating engine finds a matching customer rate, it automatically fills the customer rate field with that amount. You'll see the rate appear without manual entry, along with a note indicating which rate table it came from.
  5. Click "Find Partner Rates" or "Add Partner Costs" to search carrier tariffs. In a quote, use the "Find Partner Rates" widget. In an order, use "Add Partner Costs." This triggers the rating engine to search all carrier tariffs for applicable rates on this lane.
  6. View all carrier options with their rates displayed. The rating engine displays a list of carriers who have tariffs covering this lane, showing each carrier's rate from their tariff. This lets you compare multiple carriers side-by-side with their respective costs clearly visible.
  7. Select a carrier and their rate applies automatically. Click on the carrier you want to use and their rate from the tariff automatically populates in the carrier cost field. You don't manually type the amount, reducing data entry errors and ensuring you're using the agreed tariff rate.
  8. The system calculates margin instantly. With both customer rate and carrier cost populated by the rating engine, TMS.ai immediately shows the margin (customer rate minus carrier cost) and margin percentage. You see profitability before committing to the shipment.
  9. Override rates manually when needed for exceptions. If the auto-rated amounts don't fit a specific situation (spot market, negotiated one-time rate, accessorials not in the tariff), you can manually override either the customer rate or carrier cost. The system notes that you've overridden the tariff and recalculates margin based on your manual entries.
  10. Rates flow through to invoicing automatically. Once an order is delivered, the customer rate that was auto-populated by the rating engine flows through to the invoice generation. Accounting doesn't re-enter rates or look them up again, they just generate the invoice with the rates already attached to the order.

What it means for you:

Quoting speed increases dramatically. A sales rep who previously spent 5 minutes looking up customer pricing and calculating margins now gets instant rate population and margin calculation. They can respond to customer rate requests in under a minute instead of putting people on hold or calling them back later. In competitive situations where speed matters, faster quoting wins business.

The accuracy improvements prevent costly mistakes. When dispatch books a load using auto-rated carrier costs, they're working from documented tariffs not memory or estimates. When a carrier later bills $200 more than expected, you have system records showing what was agreed. This documentation supports cost control and dispute resolution in ways that spreadsheet-based rating can't match.