Margins
Introduction to the administration of margins in QwykPortals
Margins are complex and can have a big impact on pricing displayed to customers. Use with caution and contact support if you're unsure how to set them up.
The purpose of margins
If you're using a rate management system to provide rates for Quotations requested from your QwykPortal, those rates will either be buying or selling rates. When the rates you maintain are selling rates, this guide is not for you and you can stop reading.
In order to take your buying rates and convert them into selling rates for customers that request quotations on your QwykPortal, you will define a set of margins that apply to them. Whenever our software then gets a rate from your rate management system, we will calculate and apply any relevant margins before showing that rate to your customer.
Margin Rules
A margin rule is a single unit of calculation that is applied whenever a customer quotes. Multiple margin rules can apply to a single customer and therefor to a single quotation. We'll explain how to create and maintain these margin rules further down.
You can access your margin rules from QwykHub by going to Administration and then Margins.
How margins link to individual users
Whenever someone searches for a quote on your portal, they do that with their user account. This User account belongs to a Customer, which can also be setup and managed from the QwykHub. A customer can either have a set of Margin Rules directly applied to them, or they can be part of a Margin Group. A Margin Group is a set of Customer who all share the same Margin Rules. An example might be 'Corporate Accounts', or 'Tier 1 accounts' or any arbitrary group you define to group customers.
Important to note is that when a Customer is part of a Margin Group, they can not also have their own distinct Margin Rules, and a Customer is always only part of one Group. Therefor, when you want to link a Customer to a Margin Group, they must not already be part of a group, and must not have margin rules linked to them.
You can view what groups and customers you have from the Margins list in Hub > Administration > Margins. This list will show Customers who are not part of groups, and groups with customers in them.
This screen also gives you the option to create a new Margin Group and show both which customers are linked to a group and how many rules are attached to the Customer or Margin Group.
Creating Margin Rules
When viewing the detail of a Customer or Margin Group from the Margins module, you'll see a set of rules. Initially nothing will be listed here, but we can create new Margin Rules by clicking on the Add Rule button. When we do this, a new blank dialog will open.
First the Product field will list the products you can apply a margin on. A margin rule is always setup for a single product, namely: Ocean FCL, Ocean LCL, Air, Truck FTL or Truck LTL. You'll notice that these products match the selections your customers make when they create a Quotation in your Portal.
Out of the fields displayed here, the Application field is probably the most important because it determines how the Margin Rule will be applied. Additional fields will show depending on what you select here. We'll explain each of the options in the next 3 chapters.
Add as charge
This is the simplest margin application. It will use the Rate and Calculation fields to calculate and additional charge line and simply add it to the quotation. What segment of the quotation (pickup, origin, freight, destination, or delivery) is in will depend on what you enter in the 2 boxes that appear when you select this option.
When selecting this option, the Rate and Calculation will determine the charge we apply. So if you were to enter a Rate of 100, with a Calculation of CONTAINER for the Ocean FCL product, we will add a line with the description you've defined in the Charge name field.
The exception here is the Percentage (%) calculation, this will not take a currency as input but will add a rule that is a percentage of the total quote price. So let's say a quote was calculated to have a total of EUR 1200, and you had added a Margin Rule with Rate 10 and calculation %. We will add a line to that quote with a lump sum amount of EUR 120.
When you add a charge with Segment Pickup or Delivery, but no pickup or delivery was requested, the margin rule will not be applied. This is not the case for Freight, Origin, or Destination segment charges, these will always be calculated and added.
Increase by amount
The increase by amount margin rule is intended to mark up an existing charge with a flat amount. It will look for a charge on the quotation with a matching Segment, Charge Description, and Calculation and increase both the Rate and Minimum of that charge with the rate provided.
Example:
You have a Margin Rule setup like this:
When a Quotation is created that has a Line in the Freight Segment, that's linked to the Freight Charges charge description, and has a calculation CONTAINER, we will increase the rate and minimum by 100 and re-calculate the total amount. So in the following offer, which has 1 container. The Freight Charges line would increase from 1700 to 1800 for the Rate, Minimum and Total. The Increase by amount rule will always match the currency in which the line has been quoted.
Charge not found behavior.
When selecting this application type, you will notice a drop down appearing labeled Charge not found behavior. This dropdown may be important because as we mentioned earlier the Increase by amount rule can only apply when the Segment, Charge Description and Calculation match a line on the quotation. The selection in this dropdown determines what the system does when this is not the case.
The Ignore selection will ignore the margin rule and not apply it. This can be useful for instance when you only want to markup charges that are available some of the times, such as a Customs Clearance, or Hazardous surcharge.
The Add as charge selection will cause the rule to fall back to the Add as charge application, causing a new charge to be added to the quotation. This may be useful if you're not certain the charge will be in the quote, but want to guarantee the margin being applied regardless. Selecting this option will also show the Currency dropdown, which will determine the currency of the charge that is added, in case it is.\
Increase by %
This application works basically the same as Increase by amount but rather than increasing the Rate and Minimum with a flat charge it will increase their prices by a specified percentage. This rule also does not depend on the Calculation on the charge to match the rule, because the price and minimum can be increased regardless of the calculation, this makes it somewhat more secure than the Increase by amount rule. Conversely though this rule does not have a 'Charge not found behavior' selection. Therefore when no charge with a matching segment and description can be found on the quotation, it will be ignored.
Applies to (origin/destination)
Lastly the margin rule can be setup to only apply to a set of matching routes. These routes can be defined as All, Countries or Places.
When the selection is left to All, the rule will apply regardless of the origin or destination of the quote. But when Countries or Places has been selected it will only be applied when the quote matches one of the Countries or Cities selected in the list that appears.
For instance and input like the one below, will cause this margin rule to only apply from Places in the Netherlands to Singapore specifically. It will therefore apply on a quote from Rotterdam to Singapore, but not on a quote from Antwerp to Singapore or Rotterdam to New York.
You can use this selection also to apply margins based on whether they are export or import from your point of view. If you are in Germany, you could create margin rule that applies From Germany to All and would be an Export margin, and a second one from All to Germany for Import.
Be aware ⚠️
A couple of things to keep in mind when maintaining margins.
Margin rules are applied in random order. This is important when you have 2 margin rules that apply to the same charge. For instance and Increase by amount of Increase by percentage on Ocean Freight. There is no guarantee that it will either first increase the amount and then the percentage or the other way around, meaning this could lead to different results and will depend on the order in which you have set these up. Therefor make sure to not have margin rules that stack on a single charge.
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