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Set up capacity contracts with carriers

Record the capacity you buy from carriers, understand how load, vehicle, equipment and chauffeur capacity behave, and how carriers are booked and paid.

Updated October 21, 2026

Who can do this: The capacityContract permission and the Capacity platform feature.

A capacity contract is an agreement with a carrier (a charter or subcontractor). It records what you buy from the carrier, for which period, how the carrier receives work and what they charge. When a trip runs under a contract, it becomes a Forwarded trip: the carrier does the work, receives the booking and their cost is calculated with the contract's price modules.

What you buy: three choices

The form has three cards under What you buy. Your choice decides what you can plan on the contract.

Choice	Use it when
Forward trips to this carrier	You have a standing agreement and hand trips to the carrier one by one. The carrier plans their own trucks and drivers. This fits parcel carriers and subcontractors. The form asks no questions about capacity.
A fixed fleet from this carrier	You buy a standing amount of capacity, for example five trucks with drivers every weekday. With vehicles, transport equipment or chauffeurs, Transportial keeps a pool of virtual resources for it (see below).
A one-off purchase	You buy capacity once, for example space on one sailing or for a peak week. No resources are created; trips are forwarded under the contract one by one.

After you save the contract, this choice cannot be changed. Technically, Forward trips to this carrier is a permanent contract without capacity, A fixed fleet from this carrier is a permanent contract with capacity and A one-off purchase is a one-time contract.

You may also see contracts marked One forwarded trip. Transportial creates these automatically when it forwards a single trip. You do not create them by hand.

What does the carrier provide? What really happens

For a fixed fleet or a one-off purchase, the form asks What does the carrier provide?. The four answers look alike, but they behave very differently.

Answer	What you buy	What Transportial does
Vehicle	A number of vehicles (usually with driver) that you plan yourself.	On a fixed fleet, Transportial keeps exactly How many virtual vehicles, named 1 virtual vehicle, 2 virtual vehicle and so on. They belong to the carrier, use the contract's transport mode and sit in a fleet named after the contract. They appear on the plan board like your own vehicles. Planning a trip on one of them forwards the trip to the carrier.
Transport equipment	Trailers, containers or other equipment from the carrier.	On a fixed fleet, Transportial keeps How many virtual transport equipment (1 virtual transport equipment, …), without a fleet. A trip forwarded under the contract gets a virtual transport equipment of the contract on it.
Chauffeur	Drivers only, who drive your own vehicles.	On a fixed fleet, Transportial keeps How many virtual chauffeurs (first name 1 virtual chauffeur, last name the contract name), without a fleet. A trip forwarded under the contract gets a virtual chauffeur of the contract on it.
Load	Space for your cargo, for example loading meters, volume or weight. The carrier decides which truck and driver they use.	No resources are created. You hand trips to the carrier by choosing the contract on the trip. Each forwarded trip gets its own temporary virtual vehicle, named <contract> virtual vehicle, unless the trip already has a vehicle. Trips under Forward trips to this carrier work the same way.

Resource pools (vehicle, transport equipment and chauffeur)

The pool follows How many every time you save the contract. Raise the number and new virtual resources are added; lower it and the surplus is removed. The form shows how many plannable virtual resources Transportial keeps.
Virtual resources cannot be deleted one by one, and a fleet that contains contract vehicles cannot be deleted. Change the contract instead.
Only vehicles pass their contract to a trip. Dragging a trip onto a virtual vehicle forwards it under that contract. Assigning a virtual chauffeur or transport equipment does not forward the trip by itself; choose the contract on the trip.
On the plan board, use the filter Which vehicles do you want to see? to show Show only capacity contract vehicles, only your own vehicles or all of them. Chauffeurs and transport equipment have the same filter. The Capacity contract column shows which contract a resource belongs to.
When a trip under the contract is completed or canceled, the virtual resources it used are archived once they have no other active trips. Saving the contract again brings the pool's vehicles, equipment and chauffeurs back.

Load capacity is not counted down

How many and Size of one unit (optional) on a load contract are for your records. Transportial does not book trips against them, does not count them down and does not warn when you forward more than you bought. Keep track of the volume you agreed with the carrier yourself, for example with a report on forwarded trips per carrier.

Ask yourself who plans the resource. If you plan the carrier's trucks, drivers or trailers on your own plan board, choose A fixed fleet from this carrier with Vehicle, Chauffeur or Transport equipment. If the carrier plans their own resources and you only hand over work, choose Forward trips to this carrier.

Create a capacity contract

Open the side menu (☰) and choose Capacity Contracts.
Click + Create capacity contract.
Under Carrier, enter the Name. The capacity, the vehicle fleet and the virtual chauffeurs are named after it; the capacity has no name of its own.
Choose the carrier in Carrier. Set Valid from and, if the contract ends, Valid until (empty = open-ended).
Under What you buy, click one of the three cards.
For a fixed fleet or a one-off purchase, choose the Transport mode (road, sea, air, rail …) and answer What does the carrier provide?: Vehicle, Transport equipment, Chauffeur or Load.
Enter How many you buy. For Load, you can also enter Size of one unit (optional). On a fixed fleet of vehicles, transport equipment or chauffeurs, this number is the size of the resource pool.
Under How the carrier receives work, click a card (see below).
Under Cost, add the price modules that calculate the carrier's cost. See Price modules explained.
Optionally open More options. Here you choose the Administration the costs are booked in (your main administration when empty), add the contract terms and signed documents, and set up the Neutral CMR.
Click Save. If something is missing, the form shows a list of what to fill in.

Valid from and Valid until are not enforced. The planning recommendations warn when a consignment falls outside the contract period, but you can still forward work under the contract, and the contract stays active after its end date.

How the carrier receives work

This choice decides how the carrier receives the booking. It works the same for every kind of contract. The booking is sent when you confirm a forwarded trip and again when you cancel it.

Carrier connector or API: choose the integration. The list only shows integrations that can receive bookings; accounting, CRM, telematics and similar integrations are hidden. With a parcel carrier connector (UPS, DHL, DPD, FedEx, DSV), confirming a trip books a shipment with label for each consignment, canceling the trip voids the shipments that were not picked up yet, and tracking updates arrive automatically. A configured or file template integration receives the transport order on its outgoing data sources.
E-mail or message: choose a message automation. It sends the transport order with its PDF to the carrier. See Message automations.
Their Transportial platform: the trip arrives as a transport order on the carrier's own Transportial platform; status, documents and invoices come back. This needs an active network link with the carrier. See Work with carriers on the Transportial network.
Manually (PDF): nothing is sent automatically. Download the order PDF from the trip and send it yourself. Optionally choose a document template; the trip's PDF menu then offers it next to the standard order PDF.

Whatever the method, carriers with a carrier portal account also see the forwarded trip in their portal. See Set up the carrier portal.

Cost and self billing

The cost of a forwarded trip is the same calculation for every kind of contract. If the trip has a Spot Quote, the quote's lines are the cost. Otherwise the contract's price modules are applied to the trip and booked to the carrier. The price modules of the vehicle, chauffeur or equipment on the trip are not used, also not on a chauffeur-only contract.

A leg booked on a schedule route departure is costed with the pricing of that weekly departure if it has any, else with the line's pricing, else with this contract's price modules. A spot quote still wins for a forwarded trip, and self billing uses the same choice. See Set up schedule routes.

Switch on Self Billing if you make the carrier's invoice yourself. Then choose the Billing period: End of week, End of week or month, End of month, End of quarter, End of year, Monthly from start date, Quarterly from start date or Yearly from start date. At the end of each period, Transportial prices the completed trips carried out under the contract with its price modules and saves the result as one incoming invoice from the carrier, as a draft for you to check. End of trip and End of transport order are not offered, because they never produce a self-billed invoice.

Create contracts together with a new carrier

When you create a business, the form has a Capacity Contracts section. Fill in the Shared Capacity Contract Fields once (type, communication method, start and end time, self billing). Then click + Add capacity contract for each contract. The shared fields apply to all of them.

View, edit and remove

Click a row to see the contract: Type, communication method, Self Billing, Purchased Units, the period, the businesses and the administration.
Click the pencil icon or Edit to change it. Use the history icon to see earlier versions.
Click Remove and confirm to delete it.

Filter the list on Contract type, Communication method and Validity period.

Deleting a permanent contract archives its virtual vehicles, transport equipment and chauffeurs. They are kept, not deleted, so past trips still show who did the work.

What you chose under What you buy cannot be changed after saving. On a saved fixed fleet you can still change What does the carrier provide?. Then the virtual resources of the old answer are archived (and its vehicle fleet removed), and a pool of the new answer is created.

Use a contract on a trip

There are three ways to forward a trip under a contract:

Create the trip on the Forwarded tab and choose the contract in Select capacity contract.
In the planner, search the contract in the sidebar and drag it onto the trip.
For a fixed fleet of vehicles, plan the trip on one of the contract's virtual vehicles.

Transportial then creates a booking and a forwarded transport order for the carrier, with your company as the customer. See Forward a trip to a partner.

On a trip's booking stop you can also pick a departure of a schedule route that runs under the contract. That books the leg with the carrier and fills in the contract for you.