FAQ
What is RateGate?
RateGate is a pricing engine for LTL groupage freight forwarders. It takes a shipment specification and produces a price using the forwarder’s own pricing logic: tariffs, terminal pricing, partner rates, and unit conversions. One system instead of spreadsheets and memory.
Who is RateGate for?
Small-to-mid LTL groupage forwarders and 3PL networks in Europe: pricing managers, operations leads, and commercial directors. It is not built for FTL carriers, parcel couriers, or one-person operations.
How does RateGate make LTL quoting faster?
A quote that requires cross-referencing international tariffs, terminal pricing, partner rates, and CBM/KG/LDM conversions across multiple files takes minutes instead of hours, because the engine does the cross-referencing. The operator enters the shipment; the engine applies the logic.
Why do two operators quote the same shipment differently, and how does RateGate fix it?
In spreadsheet-based pricing, the quote depends on who is at the keyboard: which tab they opened, what they remembered to check. RateGate makes the output deterministic: same inputs, same number, every operator, every shift.
Can a salesperson lower the margin to win a load?
No. Margin is configured as company policy, tiered per direction and by shipment size in LDM, KG or CBM, and operators and salespeople cannot override it on a quote. The rule is enforced in the pricing engine rather than hidden in the interface. A negotiated discount is recorded as an edited offered price against the quote, so it stays visible instead of silently changing the margin.
Do we have to change our pricing logic to fit the tool?
No. Rigid pricing platforms fail because they force forwarders to reshape their logic into fixed templates. RateGate runs the forwarder’s own logic and makes it consistent across the team: their tariffs, their zones, their rules.
Can RateGate work with partner tariffs in PDF or Excel?
Yes. Partner tariffs are imported in the format they arrive, whether PDF, Excel, Word or scanned, and parsed into the forwarder’s network model. There is no requirement to retype tariffs into a fixed template. On two real carrier pricelists, 572 of 572 price cells were extracted exactly.
What pricing elements does RateGate handle?
International transport tariffs, terminal pricing for collection and distribution, partner network rates, hub routing, and CBM/KG/LDM conversions: the components a real LTL groupage quote is built from.
Can we see which quotes we won and lost, and what they earned?
Yes. Every quote can be marked won with the price actually agreed, or lost with a reason from a list each company defines for itself. Each quote records its cost, the margin applied, the price offered, and the outcome. A dashboard reports calculations, won, lost, open, win rate, and realized profit on won quotes, broken down by user, by lane, and by loss reason over a chosen date range. Each user also has their own quote log and win rate.
Can we see how a price was calculated?
Yes. Every quote shows how the number was built, component by component. Every quote, input, and change is logged, so pricing decisions are auditable rather than opaque.
Does RateGate replace Excel?
It replaces Excel for quoting. Excel won because it bends to every forwarder’s logic; RateGate keeps that flexibility while removing what Excel cannot provide: consistent output across a team, visibility into how a number was built, an audit trail, and a record of which quotes were won.
How do we see RateGate on our own lanes?
Book a demo call and start with one lane. Tell us how your team prices today: how a request arrives, who quotes it, where the tariffs live. Send the tariffs behind that lane in whatever format you hold them, and we will price inquiries you have already quoted so you can compare the numbers with the ones you sent.