Customize pricing for a port

When to customize, and when not to

Your default tariff is what a service charges everywhere it runs. That works until it does not: a port where your costs are higher, a terminal with its own fees, an agreement that only applies in one place.

Customizing is the right answer when the numbers are different at one port. It is the wrong answer for two situations that look similar:

• A one-off job. If this quote is unusual rather than this port, adjust the lines on the quote itself and leave your tariff alone.
• A rate that has changed everywhere. Edit your defaults instead. Editing one port fixes one port and quietly leaves the others wrong.

Before you click Customize This Port

Selecting a port that is still on defaults does not change anything. You are looking at what that port charges, which at this point is exactly what your defaults charge.

That is a useful state to sit in. Check the lines first, confirm this is really the port you meant, and only then customize. Nothing is committed until you press the button.

If a port is not in the selector at all, the service does not run there yet. Enable it first, and see Manage port availability.

What gets copied

Customizing copies your active default lines. Anything you have set to inactive is left behind, which is usually what you want, and worth knowing if a line you expected does not appear.

Everything else comes across exactly as it was: description, quantity, unit type, selling price, cost price, markup, currency, tax, turnaround time, notes, and the order the lines are in.

So the port starts out charging precisely what your defaults charge. Nothing has changed for a buyer yet. What you have done is give yourself somewhere to make changes that will not affect anywhere else.

Editing the port's lines

Stay on the Tariff Items tab with the port still selected. Everything you do here now applies to this port alone.

• Change prices, markups and quantities on the copied lines.
• Add lines that exist only at this port, such as a local fee that applies nowhere else.
• Delete copied lines that do not apply here.
• Reorder them, since this port's quotes follow this port's order.

The form is the one you already know from your defaults, with the same required fields and the same Pricing Preview. The only difference is which port the line belongs to.

Switch the selector back to Default Tariff Items at any point and you are editing your defaults again. Check which one you are on before you start typing.

Seeing which ports are custom

The port selector badges each port as you scroll it, which is what you want while you are working on one service.

For a wider view, Manage Port Availability lists every port at once with a badge on each row. Its row menu also has View Pricing, which opens a read-only page for that port showing exactly what it charges. That page is worth knowing about when somebody asks why a number came out the way it did and you do not want to open anything editable.

Putting a port back on defaults

Go to Manage Port Availability, open the menu on that port's row, and choose Revert to Default.

Read the confirmation before you accept it. Reverting deletes every custom line on that port. It does not archive them and it does not turn them off. The port then goes back to following your defaults, and any line you had added only there is gone.

If you might want those numbers back, write them down first. If you customized the port by mistake and have not changed anything yet, you lose nothing, because the lines were only ever a copy of your defaults.

Keeping custom ports in step

Every port you customize is one more thing to keep track of. A couple of habits can make this easier to manage:

Customize as few ports as you can. If several ports need the same different rate, it may be a sign that your defaults need updating rather than creating multiple custom ports.

When you change a default, check your custom ports. The badges show which ports were not affected by the change. A quick check helps make sure your pricing is up to date across all ports.

If a custom port has changed so much that you no longer want to maintain it separately, revert it and customize it again. This gives you a fresh copy of your current defaults to work from.