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Summary

Before you can price a bid, the shipper the bid is for needs to exist in BidRight as a bidding customer. The customer record holds the settings that turn your RPM into a shipper-specific rate: fuel surcharge program, payment terms, and mileage basis. Get this setup right and every bid for that customer will calculate correctly. Get it wrong and every rate will be off. This article walks you through creating a new bidding customer, screen by screen.

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When to use this

New shipper

You received a bid from a shipper you have not priced for before.

First-time setup

You are adding a new customer to BidRight for the first time.

Get ahead

You are setting up for a bid you know is coming and want the customer ready in advance.

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Before you start

Have these pieces of information on hand. If you do not have them, pause and get them. It is easier than correcting a misconfigured customer later.
  • Parent customer and bidding customer name: Every bidding customer rolls up to a parent for reporting.
  • Relationship type: Direct, Managed Transportation, or Brokerage.
  • Industry: The shipper’s vertical.
  • Bill To codes in FreightMath: So historical load data pulls in on bids.
  • Team assignments: Who owns Sales, Pricing, Operations, and Review for this customer.
  • Fuel surcharge program: Flat, DOE-based table, or lane-level. If DOE-based, have the full table. If lane-level, know it.
  • Payment terms: Days to pay (30, 45, 60, 90, 120).
  • Mileage basis: Practical, shortest, or whatever the shipper specifies. Default to practical if unsure.

Open the customers section

From anywhere in BidRight, click Customers on the left menu panel.You land on the Customers page, which shows every bidding customer currently set up in your BidRight account.

Start a new customer

Click + Add Customer in the top right.The Add Customer modal opens where you enter the customer’s setup details.

Select or create the parent customer

In Parent Customer, search for the parent company this bidding customer rolls up to. If it does not exist yet, create it here.Every bidding customer is tied to a parent customer for higher-level reporting. Think of the parent as the corporate entity and the bidding customer as the specific division or brand you price for. For example: PepsiCo is the parent, Frito-Lay North America is the bidding customer.If you are only going to bid for one division of a company, the parent and bidding customer names can be the same. Still set them both so reporting stays consistent if you pick up more divisions later.

Confirm the contract specifier

Contract Specifier defaults to Main. Leave it there unless you know you need something else.The Contract Specifier distinguishes multiple contracts under the same bidding customer. For example, if you have a regional contract and a dedicated contract with the same shipper and want to price them separately.

No action: bidding customer name is auto-generated

You do not need to enter a manual bidding customer name in this step.

Link bill to codes

In Bill To Codes, search for and select the Bill To codes in FreightMath that match this bidding customer.This is what lets BidRight pull the customer’s historical load data from FreightMath to help price bids. Without Bill To codes linked, you will not see historical OR, volume, or rate data on lanes for this customer.If a customer’s Bill To codes do not show up in the search, they either have not synced from FreightMath yet or the customer is not in FreightMath’s system. Check with KSMTA (jordann@ksmta.com) if you are stuck.

Set the relationship

Under Relationship, select one:
  • Direct: You contract directly with the shipper.
  • Managed Transportation: A third-party logistics provider manages this shipper’s transportation and brokered the contract to you.
  • Brokerage: A brokerage books the freight with you on behalf of the shipper.

Select the industry

In Industry, search for the shipper’s industry or create a new one if it is not in the list.Industry is used for reporting and for comparing performance across shippers in the same vertical.

Add remarks (optional)

Use Remarks to capture anything important about this contract that the team needs to know: special terms, quirky bid processes, known lane constraints, and key contacts.This is not a required field, but it is a good place to write down the context you wish you had remembered six months from now.

Assign your team

Under Assignments, select the person responsible for each area. All four are required:
  • Sales: Owns the commercial relationship with the shipper.
  • Pricing: Owns the rate-setting work for bids from this customer.
  • Operations: Owns day-to-day execution once freight is awarded.
  • Review: Owns the final check on bids before they go out.
One person can appear in multiple roles if your team is small. Just make sure someone owns each role.

Save the customer

Click Add Customer at the bottom right of the modal.The customer now appears in your customers list.

Set fuel and mileage on contract details

The Add Customer modal creates the customer record. The bid economics (fuel surcharge and mileage) are set on the customer’s Contract Details page.
  1. From the Customers list, click the customer you just created. You land on the customer detail page (breadcrumb: Customers / Customer Name).
  2. Open the Contract Details section.
  3. Under Fuel and Mileage, find the Fuel Surcharge card.
Entering fuel surchargeThe Fuel Surcharge card shows a row for each DOE price level the customer’s FSC program references (for example, FSC @ 3.00 DOE, FSC @ 4.00 DOE, FSC @ 5.00 DOE). For each row, enter the cents-per-mile the customer pays at that DOE level.For example, if the customer’s program pays **0.42permile∗∗whenDOEisat0.42 per mile** when DOE is at 4.00, enter 0.42 in the FSC @ 4.00 DOE field.Leave the rows at zero if the customer does not pay an FSC. This generates all-in rates for you in the bid.Reading the adjustment columnTo the right of each FSC input, BidRight shows an Adjustment value (for example, +.05∗∗,∗∗+.05**, **+.08, +$.03). That is the dollar-per-mile gap between the customer’s FSC at that DOE level and your company’s FSC peg. This amount gets added to or subtracted from your S-RPM at that fuel level to reflect the real fuel revenue on this customer’s lanes.Positive adjustments mean the customer’s FSC pays you less than your peg at that DOE level. Negative adjustments mean more.Other Contract Details settings
  • Mileage: Coming soon - Track what mileage settings they use for future bidding intel.
  • Payment terms: Coming soon - Track what pay terms they provide for automatic adjustements to your rates for long pay terms.
See Fuel surcharge (FSC) for the full explanation of how FSC programs work in BidRight, and Lane-level fuel hedge (Breakthrough) for customers on lane-level FSC programs.
Fuel setup matters. If these numbers are wrong, every adjustment in every bid for this customer is wrong.

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How to verify the setup

Before you price your first bid for this customer, open a test bid or an existing one and look at a few lanes in bid detail.
  • Check the FSC adjustment column: If the customer has a different FSC program than your company peg and this column is $0.00 across the board, something is misconfigured.

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What to watch for

  • Customer settings apply to every bid for that customer: If the customer’s FSC program or terms change later, update the customer record and it applies going forward. Existing bids keep their original settings unless you manually update them.
  • You can override at the bid level: If a specific bid has different terms (special fuel arrangement or promotional payment terms), override the customer-level settings on that bid instead of changing the customer record.

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