A few of the most recent updates in this month and a few new items to look forward to in the new year!
A few quick features that were rolled out that may or may not affect some of your operations along with some major updates to invoicing and alerts:
Dispatch Enhancements
Out-of-sequence Dispatching
Dispatchers (and drivers if you elect to give them permission in driver preferences) can now dispatch trips out of sequence. This feature will resequence the timeline so that dispatched trips move to the current time, and the remainder of the trips in the timeline adjust accordingly.
Please Note: A driver still cannot be dispatched while already on an active trip
Driver Notes Shortcut on Dispatch Gantt
There is now a Note Shortcut that will appear if you have any notes on the driver profile. This shortcut will open the Driver Detail panel and go straight to the notes tab.
Team Driver HOS Visibility
When using team drivers, the Driver summary panel on the Dispatch Gantt will now show a summary of both drivers HOS clocks rather than just the primary driver. This feature relies on the ELD integration to supply the HOS historical logs; they are not generated by LoadOps.
Customer Enhancements
Customer profile: "Bill To" Field
An option to "use different Bill To" section has been added to the Customer Detail Panel that allows the user to add a different "Bill To" address. This contains Name, Address, and Phone number fields.
By default, the toggle is off and the Customer information will be mapped to the invoice. If the user chooses to enable teh toggle, the new Bill To information will be mapped to the Invoice for PDF generation.
Customer profile: "Net terms" Default
A "Net terms" field (optional) has been added to the customer profile. The default value of this comes from the organization's default "Net terms" set in the preferences. Users can choose to change the default "net term" at the time of customer creation or while editing the customer.
While creating a load or updating the load customer, it will use the net terms from the customer first. If the value is not available on the customer profile then it will use the organization defaults.
After the load is created, if you make any changes to the net terms of a customer, it will not have any impact on the existing loads. The changes will apply only to the future loads.
Customer profile: "Alert changes"
We've automated Customer Contact Alerts! Customer Contact profiles have gotten the addition of setting for receiving email or SMS alerts. Previously a contact would receive an alert by whichever contact information was present (SMS, email, or both) which often caused unnecessary texts to be sent to landlines and office phones.
If a contact under the customer is set to receive the email/sms alerts, whenever a load is created with that customer, the customer alerts will be automatically added to those loads for whichever contact and alert method is enabled.
Customer profile: "Message on Invoice" field
A new field "Message on Invoice" has been added at the customer profile level. When a load is created for a particular customer, this message will be automatically mapped to the "Message on Invoice" field of the load. Users can choose to update this message after the fact or use it as a general template.
If the load is "factored" then the message will be appended to the factoring notes.
Terminal Enhancements
Terminal profile: "Payable To"
On the terminal profile or organization profile (if no terminal exists), you have the option to enter the "Payable To" fields (Name, address, contact).
If the "Payable To" is configured at the terminal level then this data will be used in the invoice PDF generation, otherwise, the terminal or organization information will be used for Invoice PDF (current workflow).
If the Load is factored, then the "Payable to" will be the factoring company (current workflow).
Terminal profile: "Terms and Condition PDF"
You can now upload a terms and conditions PDF at the Terminal level. This PDF will be appended with every invoice PDF that is invoiced to that terminal to allow customization of your individual terms and conditions.
CAUTION: Terminals must be enabled for this feature to work. Terminals cannot be disabled once enabled without incurring fees for developer engagement.