Carrier Portal: easy submission of documents to freight forwarders after order completion

Handling completed freight orders often involves dedicating significant time and effort to process and register documents submitted by the carrier. What can be done to make work easier, digitise document flow, and automate invoice issuance? It’s worth using the Carrier Portal in fireTMS.

What is the Carrier Portal?

The Carrier Portal is a feature of the fireTMS system that speeds up communication between freight forwarders and carriers, enabling the latter to upload documents directly into the system after completing an order.

What can be submitted via the Carrier Portal?

• Scanned invoice for the completed order
• Scanned CMR and transport documents
• Supplementary data for the invoice

The Carrier Portal is a convenient solution that reduces the number of paper documents needing archiving while also speeding up work. Thanks to the portal’s facilitation of document submission by carriers, freight forwarders can quickly settle orders.

How to configure the Carrier Portal

To configure the Carrier Portal select Configuration from the menu, then go to System configuration. On the selected screen, click the Order handling tab, then select Carrier portal.

When the system window appears, you can configure the tool. Apart from enabling the Portal, you can set several useful features, such as:

• Including a portal link in the carrier’s order printout
• Sending notifications to the forwarder when the carrier uploads documents
• Requiring a scanned invoice in the documents submitted by the carrier
• Allowing the carrier to edit the invoice amount

Once the Carrier Portal is enabled, it will be available to all carriers. If you need to exclude access for certain transport companies, go to the selected carrier’s profile (Files >> Carriers) and uncheck the Use carrier’s portal option in the Carrier details section.

How to use the Carrier Portal

For freight forwarders using the Carrier Portal is almost automatic. From the moment this feature is enabled, carriers will receive links to the Portal in emails with orders. The freight forwarder’s role is only to retrieve documents within the fireTMS system. Scans will be visible on the Orders in progress or All orders lists, in the view of the selected order and In the view of the purchase invoice. Based on this, the system will fill in the data for the purchase invoice being prepared, which the freight forwarder then only approves and registers.

For carriers, in the received transport order, you will find a link to the Carrier Portal, where you can upload the required documents. It’s important to note that the carrier doesn’t need to work within fireTMS to use the Portal, so to add and send files to the freight forwarder, all you need to do is click the link in the email or in the order printout if the forwarder has set this option in fireTMS.

What are the benefits of the Carrier Portal?

The Carrier Portal is a tool that significantly streamlines work for both freight forwarders and carriers. This leads to additional benefits for your company.

Benefits of the Carrier Portal

• Time savings: the carrier can immediately provide all required documents after completing the order.
• Labour savings: handling electronic documents directly in the TMS system requires much less effort than managing physical ones.
• Improved communication with carriers: by moving document flow online.
• Enhanced business relationships with carriers: faster financial processing of orders can accelerate payment terms for transport services.

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