Shippers who regularly face tender lead-times in excess of shipment visibility, but are unable to use the processLoadCompositionUpdate API to replace forecast shipments with firm shipments may reserve carrier resources against loads built from temporary shipments. The concept is called pre-booked capacity and applies only to loads in the Tendered and Tender Accepted operational statuses assigned to carriers profiled to allow additional shipments after tender.
Pre-booked capacity offers an alternate workflow that preserves the tender (and associated dock commitments) until firm shipments can be applied, or until the empty stops are removed. After which, the load can be advanced to execution and payment workflows.
The general expectation is that pre-booked capacity loads will have had all temporary shipments removed once, but this cycle could repeat.
Transportation Manager (TM) must be configured to enable and support the pre-booked capacity workflow. Once configured, Transportation Planner will identify pre-booked capacity loads as an eligible pre-built load input and consider both adding new stops and refilling existing empty stops from the pool of available shipments in order to fill up the load. Available shipments must meet the tariff/service conditions defined for the tender carrier.
Operations and APIs in TM recognize loads when they have empty stops and either support or block execution against these loads.