As a shipper you need to manage thousands of orders and shipmentsthat are delivered by many different carriers. Sterling TMS offers a powerfulset of features you can use to automate the transportation planningshipping and reconciliation processes:

Contracts

Use contracts in Sterling TMS to store theshipping rates for all your carriers. Sterling TMS uses theserates to automatically calculate the line haul rates for every shipmentthat is submitted to Sterling TMS.

Thesecentralized contracts enforce pricing compliance for your shippingfacilities. You always pay the proper rates for your freight and minimizeoff-contract expenditures also known as contract leakage.

Accessorial Charges

You can define accessorial charges which are supplementalfees that are above and beyond the line haul charge for each shipment.

Youcan assign two types of accessorials to your contracts:

• Planned accessorials: Sterling TMS automaticallyapplies the charge to every shipment that is rated using that contract.
• Unplanned accessorials: Shipper or carrier users manually applythe charge to specific shipments. You can define thresholds that controlwhether Sterling TMS automaticallyapproves the charge.

Fuel surcharges

You can assign accessorials to your contract to cover fuelsurcharges. Sterling TMS automaticallyupdates the fuel surcharges once each week based on the U.S. federalfuel index.

This feature ensures that you always pay the carrierthe proper fuel price at the time of the shipment departure.

Automatic Mode Selection

Use the automatic mode selection features to have SterlingTMS choose the best transportation mode for your order or shipment.

SterlingTMS selects the mode based on the weight or volume as well as themodes with adequate transit time.

You can also submit ordersto Sterling TMS andhave the system automatically feed these orders to the optimizer forconsolidation.

Carrier Selection

Use the powerful tendering features of Sterling TMS to automaticallyselect the best carrier to take the load based on cost rank orvolume commitments.

You can turn on Automatic Carrier Selectionfor your entire shipping operation or define Route Guides to performautomatic carrier selection for specific shipping regions and carriers.

Inaddition your carriers can specify whether they want to automaticallyaccept tenders from your organization.

Optimization

Use the Sterling TMS optimizerto automate the consolidation of large order sets into the most cost-effectiveshipments:

• The optimizer provides a wide range of parameters you can useto fine-tune the results based on your shipping requirements.
• You can schedule optimization runs and then receive an email alertwhen the runs are complete.

Freight Payment

The Freight Payment module provides the following options toautomatically generate freight payment vouchers:

• Auto-Pay: Sterling TMS calculatesthe shipment charges and always uses that amount in the voucher. Thesystem does not compare these charges to the carrier invoice.
• Match Pay: Sterling TMS comparesthe carrier invoice to the calculated shipment charges. The systempays the amount in the carrier invoice if it falls within your MatchPay tolerances.

Departure and Arrival Windows

Youcan set up Sterling TMS toautomatically calculate your shipment schedules:

• Submit the planned departure date and have Sterling TMS calculatethe planned arrival date.
• Submit the planned arrival date and have Sterling TMS calculatethe planned departure date.

ETAs

Sterling TMS automaticallycalculates the Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) for each shipment basedon the departure date and time transit time and stops in the route.

Mass Entry and Editing

You can use themass entry and mass edit features to update many records in SterlingTMS at the same time.

For example:

• You can make a single change to update the departure date or arrivaldate for multiple shipments.
• You can propose a mass rate change to all the lanes in one contractsection.

Dock Scheduling

Use the Dock Scheduling module to automatically calculate thelength of pickup and delivery appointments based on the carriersupplier or the quantity of the load.

Optimizing Routes

Whenyou build a multi-stop shipment itinerary you select the order ofthe stops. If you add or update orders you can click a single buttonto have Sterling TMS optimizethe route and reorder the stops to reduce the total distance.

Route Itinerary Templates

You can setup route itinerary templates which support multi-leg shipments thatare routed through cross-dock facilities. Execution users can applythese templates and quickly build shipments that use a different transportationmode for each leg of the route.

Shipment and Order Numbers

You can have Sterling TMS automaticallygenerate SID numbers order numbers and purchase order numbers.

Carrier PRO Numbers

You can have Sterling TMS automaticallyassign Carrier PRO numbers to LTL shipments. Your LTL carriers providea block of PRO numbers for each location where they pick up LTL freight.

Alerts and Event Management

You can set up event agents in Sterling TMS to monitorall your transportation events including shipment tenders departuresarrivals and invoices. Sterling TMS will sendyou email alerts for any events that are late missing or out oftolerance.

Scheduling Reports

You can schedule reports to run daily weekly or monthly.You can have these reports automatically delivered to you in emails.

Data Exchange

Specify when you want Sterling TMS to automaticallysend you:

• New shipments (EDI 204)
• Tender notifications (EDI 990)
• Shipment status updates (EDI 214)
• Emails for Data Exchange errors