Calculating Dimensional Weight

Transcript

In this video, we're going to talk about calculating Dimensional Weight. In the shipping industry, weight is one of the most important things to be able to measure and charge for. Obviously, there is a big difference if you're shipping something like bricks versus something like foam. In order to make your pricing fair to you and your customer, Dimensional Weight can help with this problem. In OnTime, Dimensional Weight is calculated very easily, in line with your other prices, so that you and your customer service representatives and your customers don't have to worry about how those rather complex calculations occur; they will happen automatically when you tell OnTime how you would like them done. In OnTime, Dimensional Weight is plugged directly to the price modifier system, so you can use the pricing system that you're already familiar with to integrate Dimensional Weight. Let's take a look at how that's done.

I'm going to open OnTime Management Suite and we will look at the Dimensional Weight modifier that I created earlier. In this modifier, what we want to be able to assess is what the DIM factor is and how that fatcors into the amount that we're going to charge the customer. The DIM factor, or dimensional factor, represents the allowed volume of a package per unit of weight. By using that DIM factor, we are able to calculate a virtual weight for a package and compare that to the actual weight of a package. That way, you can see what is better to charge for: the weight that is being used in your vehicle or the volume that is being used in your vehicle. If you don't know what your dimensional factor is, we will talk in a second about how you can calculate that in OnTime.

In this example, we're using a dimensional factor of 172.8. That can be a fairly common DIM factor. What we're telling OnTime is that we want to look at the cubic dimensions and we want to charge $0.15 based on that DIM factor. To test out how this is going to charge, we can use the testing area. Let's put in a dimension of 12 by 12 by 12 and run the test. The testing harness here will show us the actual arithmetic used to calculate the dimensional factor and turn that into the price. What we can see here is that the DIM factor has calculated the volume to be 1728, we divide that into the DIM factor of 172.8. That is going to come back with ten units of weight, which then are multipled by the $0.15 charge we had specified for a total of $1.50. So that's how easy it is to take your DIM factor, associate it with a price you want to charge for that virtual weight, and then get your total.

As I said earlier, if you don't know what your DIM factor is, I will show you how easy it is to calculate that. I'm going to close this modifier and go up to the Tools menu in Management Suite. You'll notice a button, Calculate DIM factor. This tool allows you to play around with some numbers and find out what you want your DIM factor to be. The first step is to type in some dimensions and then you want to, in the second step, tell OnTime how much you want to charge for that virtual weight. For instance, let's do a 12 by 12 by 12. In the United States, that might represent one cubic foot of volume. In step two, you can tell it how much weight you would want to assess to that volume. In this case, let's say 10. That will then calculate the DIM factor of 172.8, which I can then use in my price modifiers. And, of course, you could create different price modifiers that use different DIM factors depending on the needs of your business divisions or your customers.

This has been a video showing how to integrate Dimensional Weight into your pricing in OnTime delivery software. If you have any additional questions about this topic, please feel free to contact OnTime courier software Customer Support at OnTime360.com.