When you counter a contract proposal the following rules apply.

The countering process must be completed before the proposal expires.

When you counter you can submit changes to fields that were notchanged in the original proposal. For example:

• The original proposal changes the rate on a contract lane.
• When you counter you can also submit a change to the expirationdate of a lane.

You cannot add new sections or lanes using the countering process.To add sections or lanes create a new contract proposal.

Sterling TMS allowsunlimited iterations of countering a proposal back and forth betweenthe shipper and the carrier. For example the shipper proposes a ratechange the carrier counters with a revised rate change the shippercounters with another revised rate change and so on.

After you are done with the countering process one party mustaccept the entire proposal as a package. You cannot accept some changesand then go back and use the countering process for the remainingitems.

When you create a mass change proposal the receiving organizationcannot do a mass change to counter all these lane changes at one time.For example:

• A shipper creates a mass change to increase all the rates in onecontract section by 3.5 percent.
• The carrier cannot create a mass change to counter that proposalwith a 4 percent increase. Instead the carrier can counter with changesto individual lanes in that section.