Product update: Auto-Import Charges to New Bills of Lading

Hi there,

Back with another update.
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Every mover knows the pain of crews forgetting to add charges to a bill of lading -- lost revenue, plain and simple.
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​To reduce the chance of this issue, we've made a notable change to how charges from the estimate get imported to the bill in Chariot.

• By default, the crew leader is prompted to import charges from the estimate as their starting a bill of lading. They have the option to start fresh if needed.
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• There is also an option you can turn on (from Settings > General > Company Wide > Payment and Billing Settings) to always import charges from the estimate when the crew starts the bill of lading.

More context below. Reach out if anything is unclear!
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Even more to come soon :)
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Ian
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​P.S. You can also now add/ edit tags -- including saved tags -- to the intake tab of a lead / job. If you missed the previous update on saved tags, check it out!
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How importing charges worked before

If you opened a new Bill of Lading:

• At the beginning or end of the move, the crew lead would scroll down to the charges section (for example, at the end of the move) to add any charges they needed (box fees, travel fees, etc.).
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• Of course, many of the charges that need to be billed are already on the Estimate from the sales process. So we had (and still have) an Import from Estimate button that the crew leader could press to bring over those charges easily (and then finalize/ tweak remaining charges from there).

The problem was:

• Some crew leaders were forgetting to hit the import button -- and could forget to add charges as a result.
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• Sometimes crew leads would add charges, then click to import from the estimate. This cleared out the charges they had added manually -- meaning extra work to add them back.

The new default

When opening a bill of lading/ move contract, your mover will see a pop up asking them to confirm if they want to add charges from the estimate to the bill -- right from the start.
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​They have the option to uncheck any charges that don't apply -- or to start fresh if they prefer. It will be most natural to add all the charges and proceed - and we expect this is best in most cases.
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​Note that the "special" hourly rate charge -- the one synced to your team's work times or time tracking -- will not be included in the import (since it depends on the actual times worked.
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Some situations where a mover may not want to import from an estimate:

• If it's a multi day move (pack day, move day) and your companies uses separate bills for each day, they would only import charges that apply to the current day
• If you built a binding estimate up from individual charges internally, but just want to add one flat move price to the final bill

Another option: Set your company to ALWAYS auto-import charges from the estimate

If you're reading this and thinking:
​"I always want the crew to bring charges from the estimate onto the final bill -- I don't even want them to have a way to mess this up!"
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Then go to Settings > General > Company-Wide > Billing and check on the setting to "Always Automatically Import Charges from Estimate to new Bills of Lading".
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If this setting is turned on, the crew leader will be warned that charges will be imported to the bill -- but won't have the option to skip the import step.