With the volatility of fuel prices over the last several years, keeping up with fuel surcharge calculations and pricing has become a challenge for the first mile/last mile carrier. Several of our customers came to us with the request of using outside fuel index services to calculate the surcharge. Since the Datatrac rating module is comprehensive and flexible, we spent a significant amount of design time working with customers to be sure we included the same flexibility for fuel surcharge rating.
The module includes multiple variables for calculating the fuel surcharge:
A Fuel Sources record has been created which allows the ability to get fuel pricing from multiple sources. While many carriers use the Department of Energy index, this function allows you to create multiple sources of Fuel data so that the specific customer’s contract requirements can be met.
- We also included the ability to record a fuel type on each vehicle in case the fuels differ by power unit for regular or diesel fuel.
- For companies who do work in multiple regions, we included the ability to set up zones for the areas where work is done.
- Rate components such as base and weight charges may include fuel surcharge portions while other components such as tax or overtime may not. The module includes the flexibility to determine whether fuel surcharge is applied at the individual charge component level.
- Settlement components have the same flexibility as the user will determine whether fuel surcharge applies to the settlement charge on a charge-by-charge basis.
- From a rating standpoint, we added a maintenance screen to define the effective date range for the fuel price by source, zone, and frequency.
- Once a Fuel Plan has been created, it can then be assigned to a specific customer.
For more information about this new feature, contact Datatrac’s Customer Care group for setup documentation and version 6.8.370.