How to skip calculations with the load meter functionality

With many different clients, one-way pricing is not always easy for transporters. For one partner you work with roll containers, for the other one you may be transporting kitchen appliances. And for other parties, you may work with pallets or other non-stackable goods. In most cases, transporters work with load meters. They often still do this manually, which means calculations need to be done each time.

Fortunately, there is a possibility to automate this workflow. Do you receive an order? With Boltrics’ load meter functionality, you only have to enter the order, select the correct carrier type and the rest follows automatically. No manual calculations and no cumbersome invoicing. Simple and effective. In this blog, I will explain you what the function does and how it works.

How do I calculate a load meter?

I probably do not need to explain this to you, but a little background information never killed someone. In practice, one load meter corresponds to one linear meter of cargo space in a truck. The calculation of a load meter is as follows: you calculate the floor surface that the loading goods occupy. You divide this by the width of the truck (which is almost always 2.40 meters). As an example I will take the EURO pallet with the standard sizes 0.8 by 1.2 meters.

0.8 × 1.2 = 0.96
0.96 / 2.4 = 0.4 load meters

Load meters in combination with transport

When a warehouse is combined with transport, one often wants to have insights on the amount of pallets, preferably including load meters. These numbers are calculated on the shipment document and can be transferred to the document you are transporting with, e.g. a shipment document or TMS.

You can calculate the number of pallets and load meters in Microsoft Dynamics. For the outgoing goods, this is based on the expected carrier type calculation. You can choose between different calculations to calculate the expected number of carriers.

Calculation of the carriers

Below, you can see every calculation of the carriers listed. Most of these are only on the document line:

• The number / the number that is standard per carrier. This is the number per unit code (METHOD06)
  • This can also be calculated backwards to a standard equivalent. You can find this at the warehouse settings (like METHOD03 and -04)

• Counting the number of carriers in detail lines or warehouse activities (METHOD07)
• Total height of the customer item/maximum height of a carrier type (METHOD01)
  o Total height of the customer item = (number on document line / number of low pairs *height)
  o Maximum height of a carrier type = Carrier type pick maximum load
• The same calculation as the height version, but then based on cubage.

From this calculation you will get the amount of expected pallets for transport. This is when the number of pallets is not complete, but load meters are necessary. In that case, you can set a conversion number for each type of carrier. It calculates the load meters per document line with a status function. All these document lines are then added together and noted on the document header.

In the example of METHOD01, you can see that the number of load meters is 2. You will get this number by multiplying 0.5 with 3. The number 0.2 is also considered as a load meter. Together, when rounded, this makes 2.

How do I invoice load meters?

You use the shipment document as a transport order. This may or may not go through the warehouse. In one case, the load meters will come from the shipment document, but in the other case from the goods out. In the latter case, the load meters will be removed from the goods out- and placed on the shipment document. Here, you can use a so-called number-calculation with the WMS contract that retrieves the load meters from the document. With these load meters and the from-to-address, the WMS contract looks up a price scale and then places the correct price on the shipment document. This way, you never have to look for the price per load meter yourself.

Status functions that apply

The next status code units apply:

• Load meters: 11154680 with function 138
• Carrier calculation: 11154680 with function 95 or 105

Enter only once and always profit from the benefits

With this new functionality, you (or your consultant) only need to fill in some variables once. You choose the desired calculation, apply this in the right WMS contracts and the rest automatically follows. You know in advance how many carriers you need. Trucks are never too full or too empty, you always calculate the right costs towards the customer and they immediately know where they stand. Do you want to make use of this function as well? Contact us and we will arrange it for you.