Freight and landed cost
Quote the delivered price, not just the product.
For a distributor shipping pallets across three regions, freight can be the difference between margin and loss. Apex prices freight, duty and surcharges from your own lane and weight-band rates, shows the landed cost on every line, and invoices exactly what was quoted.
What a delivered price includes
Every charge between your dock and theirs.
Lanes
Rates by origin and destination, from your carrier contracts or your own rate cards.
Weight and volume bands
Rates by pallet, hundredweight or cubic meter, with breaks where your carriers have them.
Surcharges
Fuel, liftgate, residential, hazardous and accessorial charges, applied by rule.
Duty and import
Duty and brokerage by origin and tariff code for imported goods, so the landed cost is real.
Unit rates
Per shipment, per mile or per pallet-day for 3PL and warehousing contracts.
Who pays
Prepaid, prepaid and add, or collect, set per customer and shown on the quote.
Freight as an afterthought
Where freight margin usually goes.
| Freight estimated later | Freight priced on the quote | |
|---|---|---|
| Quote | Product price only, freight TBD | Delivered price, freight and surcharges itemized |
| Margin | Known after the carrier bill arrives | Landed cost and margin shown before sending |
| Fuel moves | Absorbed until someone notices | Fuel surcharge recalculated from the index |
| Invoice | Freight added by hand, or forgotten | Same charges carried from quote to invoice |
From rate card to invoice
One set of rates, used three times.
- 01
Load your rates
Lane and band rates from your carrier contracts or rate cards. Each has an effective date, so old quotes keep old rates.
- 02
Quote
Apex picks the lane and band from the ship-to and the shipment, adds surcharges and duty, and shows landed cost per line.
- 03
Ship
Actual weight or pallet count from the ERP's delivery replaces the estimate where the contract allows.
- 04
Invoice
The freight lines go on the invoice as quoted or re-rated, with the basis shown.
Agents propose, people approve
The agent drafts. A person decides.
A freight agent reads a carrier's rate sheet or a customer's routing guide and drafts the lane and band rates from it, citing each line. A person checks the rates before any quote uses them.
Every agent stops at an approval gate until it has earned its way out of one. Nothing releases cash, commits spend or touches a customer without a person saying so.
Your dataModels that read your data run inside your environment, behind your firewall. No client data reaches a frontier lab.
Start here, keep the foundation
Start with freight and landed cost. Add the rest without starting over.
Start with freight quoting alone. Apex brings your customers, ship-to addresses, items and deliveries down from the ERP into your Ferrata foundation, so lanes and weights come from real records. When you add invoicing, the freight lines are already priced.
FAQ
Questions, answered plainly.
What is freight quoting software?
Freight quoting software prices the cost of moving goods, by lane, weight, volume and service, so a seller can quote a delivered price. Apex prices freight inside the product quote, from your own rates, and carries the same charges to the invoice.
What is landed cost?
Landed cost is the full cost of a product once it reaches the customer or your warehouse: the product itself plus freight, duty, brokerage, insurance and surcharges. Apex shows it per line so margin is calculated on the real cost.
Where do the freight rates come from?
From your carrier contracts and rate cards, loaded into Apex with effective dates. Apex does not buy freight or connect to carriers to book loads; it prices what you will charge.
Can fuel surcharges follow a diesel index?
Yes. A fuel surcharge can be tied to a published diesel price and recalculated on the schedule your contracts set, the same way index-linked pricing works for product prices.
Does it work for 3PL and warehousing contracts?
Yes. Unit rates such as per shipment, per mile or per pallet-day are supported, with the units read from your ERP or warehouse system where they are recorded.
What if the shipment weighs more than quoted?
If the contract allows re-rating, Apex uses the actual weight or pallet count from the delivery record in your ERP and shows both figures on the invoice. If it does not, the quoted freight stands.
Related in Apex
- Index-linked pricingPrices tied to steel, fuel or CPI, with caps and floors, re-priced on set dates.View
- CPQConfigure, price and quote from the items and price lists already in your ERP.View
- Usage-based billingBill what customers used, rated at the price they signed, posted to your ERP.View
- LogisticsUnit rates per shipment, pallet-day or mile, with fuel indexed and usage from the TMS.View
- DistributionCustomer price agreements, call-offs, rebates and freight on every order.View
Start with freight and landed cost, or talk it through first.
Thirty minutes with Ferrata Labs on one workflow. You leave with a view of where Apex fits, and an honest answer if the sequencing is wrong and you should fix something else first.
Your pricing, approval and billing rules are your advantage, and they stay yours. Apex is configured to the way you sell and bill. You are not handing over a playbook or fitting into a template.