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Your freight master is the Excel workbook where your team keeps agreed carrier rates: lanes, ocean freight, surcharges and free time. Send Mercora a carrier’s rate sheet or notice and it proposes the exact cell changes. Nothing is written until someone confirms.
Available when the Freight Rates and Document inbox modules are turned on for your workspace. Ask your workspace admin.

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Before you start: connect the freight master

A workspace admin connects the workbook once, from SharePoint:
  1. Under Settings → Integrations → Microsoft 365, connect your organization and switch on Files.
  2. In the SharePoint section, under Add a SharePoint link, paste the workbook’s link.
  3. Click Make freight master. It then reads “Changed only through Freight Rates”.
From then on, the Copilot’s and automations’ ordinary file actions can’t change the workbook. See Microsoft 365.

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Send Mercora a freight source

A source can be a rate sheet, a carrier email, or a surcharge or free-time notice, as Excel, CSV, PDF, Word or text.
  • Upload: choose Carrier rate sheet as the document type. It goes to the Inbox, not your trade documents.
  • Email: forward it to your workspace’s email inbox. Mercora recognizes freight from registered carriers, and any spreadsheet as freight. See Email ingestion.
  • Copilot: on Home, attach the rate sheet (the chat also accepts .xls, .ods and .eml here) or paste the text, and ask it to update the freight master.
An uploaded or emailed source becomes a freight item in the Inbox within a few minutes. A Copilot request shows the same plan on a card in the chat, with Approve and Reject.

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Review and confirm the changes

1

Open the freight item in the Inbox

For each lane, such as Laem Chabang → Singapore, it shows each cell’s current and proposed value.
2

Correct the plan if needed

Skip a lane, type your own value, or take a column Mercora held back. Lanes whose all-in rate doesn’t add up from freight plus surcharges are flagged.
3

Confirm

Confirm writes your reviewed plan; Reject drops it. Mercora checks the cells haven’t changed since the plan was made, writes them, and reads every cell back.
The item then shows Applied. If it shows Failed (nothing written) or Partly written, retry or click Prepare again, which keeps your corrections. An item reads Nothing to apply when the master already matches the source.

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House rules

House rules are your workspace’s own conventions for the freight master, such as how a port is written; Mercora follows them ahead of its general rules. Add one by telling the Copilot, which proposes it on a card for your approval. Retire one under Settings → Freight house rules.

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Permissions

Your role needs the Freight Rates permission: view to see freight items, edit to upload and confirm. See Roles and permissions.

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Next steps

  • The Inbox: where freight changes wait for your Confirm.
  • Copilot: ask freight questions and request changes from a chat.