1. Purpose
Add a percentage or flat markup on top of a carrier's rates, so that the child organizations you publish the account to are quoted your price rather than your cost.
2. Scope
Creating a markup tier on a carrier account you already hold, and getting that tier through to your child organizations. Publishing the account itself is covered in SWI-006, and should be read alongside this one.
3. Roles & Responsibilities
Role | Responsibility |
|---|---|
Parent organization admin (the 3PL) | Decides the commercial terms, creates the tier, and chooses which children receive it |
Operations or finance lead | Confirms the resulting quoted price is the intended one before the tier goes to a customer |
4. Key concept — a markup tier modifies another tier
A tier is a named set of rate charts on a carrier account. A markup tier does not hold prices of its own. It holds an instruction such as "add 10 percent", and each of its charts is bound to a specific chart in the tier it was compared against. That base tier is what supplies the actual numbers.
The consequence is the single most important thing on this page: a markup tier is meaningless without the tier it compares against. The field is labelled Compare At Tier (Optional) in the dialog, but for a markup or discount it is not optional. Leave it blank and the tier is created with nothing in it, no error is shown, and quotes carry on at your cost price.
5. Prerequisites
The carrier account already exists and already has rate charts on it. A tier can only be built from charts that are already there.
You are signed in to the parent organization. The Add Tier button and the tier selector appear only in an organization that has no parent above it, so you will not find them inside a customer's organization.
You know which existing tier represents your cost, since that is what you will compare against.
6. Procedure — create the tier
Go to Carrier Accounts.
Click the carrier's logo to open the account's detail page.
Click Add Tier.
Enter a Tier Name. There are no restrictions, so use something you will recognise on an invoice discussion later, such as the customer's name or the commercial terms.
Choose the Compare At Tier. Pick the tier that holds your cost, commonly a commercial or base tier. This is required in practice, whatever the label says.
Choose the Service Scope: Selected Service Only, which uses the service currently chosen in the selector, or All Services.
Choose the preset: Percent Markup, Percent Discount, Flat Markup, Flat Discount, Custom Chart or Echo Chart. For a straightforward resale margin, Percent Markup.
Enter the Percentage or Dollar Amount. The field accepts a plain number, so 10 means 10 percent and 2.50 means two dollars fifty.
Save the tier.
The new tier then appears in the tier selector, and one chart is created for every base chart it matched.
7. Procedure — send it to your children
Markup tiers reach a child organization through the published carrier account, not on their own. Follow SWI-006, and at the Rate Charts step:
Tick the services under your new markup tier.
Also tick the same services under the tier it compares against. The markup is expressed relative to that tier, so send both.
Note the markup in the Private Description so anyone in your own organization can see at a glance that this published account is marked up. That description is not visible to the customer.
Save Changes, then have the child add the account as normal.
8. Verification
The new tier appears in the tier selector on the carrier account detail page, and opening it shows charts rather than an empty tier.
On the published carrier account, the new tier appears as its own group under Rate Charts, and the compact card lists it among the Tiers.
In the child organization, a quote on that service comes back at your marked-up price rather than your cost.
Check the third one on a real quote before the customer does. It is the only step that proves the whole chain end to end.
9. Constraints and caveats
Blank Compare At Tier creates an empty tier, silently. No error, no warning, and the tier still shows in the list. If a tier looks created but nothing is priced, this is why. Delete it and build it again with the comparison set.
The Add Tier button and the tier selector are hidden in any organization that has a parent. Markup tiers are built in the parent only.
The account must already carry rate charts. With none present, the tier cannot be built at all.
Percent Markup and Percent Discount, and their flat equivalents, all work the same way and all need a comparison. Custom Chart and Echo Chart behave differently and are outside this instruction.
Adding a tier after the account is already published does not push it to existing children by itself. Go back to the published record, tick the new tier and its comparison tier, and save again. See SWI-006.
Changing the markup later means editing the tier's charts. It does not apply retroactively to labels already bought.
10. Worked example
A 3PL holds a UPS account with a commercial tier carrying its negotiated cost, and wants to resell to its customers at cost plus 10 percent.
Step | Action | Result |
|---|---|---|
1 | Carrier Accounts, click the UPS logo | The account detail page opens |
2 | Add Tier, name it Custom Tier | Tier named |
3 | Compare At Tier set to the commercial tier, All Services | The tier now has something to modify |
4 | Percent Markup, value 10 | One markup chart created per commercial chart |
5 | Published Carrier Accounts, tick both Custom Tier and the commercial tier, Save Changes | Both travel to the child |
6 | Child adds the account and requests a quote | The quote returns at cost plus 10 percent |
Step 5 is the one people miss. Ticking only Custom Tier sends a modifier with nothing to modify.