Author: Scott

One of the goals that Terry Higgs of National Freight Movers was a TMS software that would allow him to create separate brokerage offices and build a network of agents. However he also had to safeguard his information so an agent couldn’t just walk off with his customer and carrier information.

To achieve this goal I showed Terry how to setup multiple offices within his new freight broker software. Then we assigned the various agents to their respective office and also assigned a manager to each office. The key to this is Role Assignment. By assigning the “Manager” role to a person, that manager is able to administer all aspects his assigned office but cannot see any customers, carriers or loads in any other office. Terry was assigned the Administrator Role which allows him to see activity in all offices.
Terry also had to manage freight agents’ sales commissions based upon gross profit. To set this up, we updated all commissionable agents with their commission percentage. Then once a week Terry ran Load Manager’s commission report, grouped by Sales Agent. The report has a page break between each Sales Agent so that Terry can use the report as a commission statement for each agent. It also shows the agent’s average margin %. The margin percentage is a key factor and allowed Terry to council agents with lower percentages to help improve their margin. Over a short period of time, Terry was able to build over 20 agents into his company and easily manage them within Load Manager.

Cove Logistics was searching for new TMS Software that could be customized. When Steve and Dave saw Load Manager on YouTube they liked what they saw and asked for a demo. During the demonstration of our Freight Broker Software we realized that they needed some customization to accommodate one of their contract customers. Specifically they had to report back to their customer how well they met promised delivery dates but also had to factor in the customer’s “Ready Date”. Moreover sometimes a late delivery was excused for various reasons so that had to be factored in as well.

We continued to discuss their needs and layout a plan for customizing Load Manager. Along the way we found other small items that would make their dispatching software run more efficiently. This included the ability to change their Pro Numbers and also download their load dispatch data into Microsoft Excel. They were even able to propagate that excel data into a Google Doc which they all shared and updated as needed.

That was almost two years ago and since then Cove Logistics has continued to thrive, moving their Freight Brokerage to a new location to accommodate their growth and improve their customer service. Load Manager has been with them every step of the way.

 

When Drake Transportation wanted to make the move from our desktop version of Load Manager Freight Broker Software to our cloud-based version, one important feature was integration with QuickBooks accounting software. Without it they would have to double entry all brokered loads into QuickBooks. With this is mind we set out to not only eliminate double entry but to also use the Load Status as a trigger for the export.

When the load status is set to “POD”, that means the proof of delivery has not yet been received for the load. When the “POD” is received, then the load status is changed to “INVOICE”. This is when the invoice for the load is usually printed and the Invoice and Bills are exported to QuickBooks Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable. We call this software our QuickBooks Dispatch Module.