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Glossary

A​

Accessorial​

An additional shipment-related service or charge beyond the basics of moving cargo from origin to destination. Accessorials could be related to special equipment usage, state tolls, overtime, or liftgate. There's a distinction between accessorial services, which are requested at booking time, and accessorial charges, which appear on invoices.

Accessorial charge​

An additional charge for a shipment that appears on an invoice. An example for an LTL shipment is "inside delivery", which is charged when the destination address does not have a loading dock and requires the driver to go inside. Based on shipment activity, some accessorial charges may be included by carriers on invoices even when the accessorial service was not requested by the customer.

Accessorial service​

An additional service requested by a customer during a shipment's quoting or booking phase. Typically these will result in a charge on the invoice. An example for a parcel shipment is "signature required".

Address​

An entity representing a mailing address, for example "760 Market St, 8th Floor, San Francisco, CA, 94102." Addresses do not include names. Addresses are assigned QIDs, which are used on shipment jobs to identify the origin and destination addresses.

Artifact​

An entity representing a coherent piece of data with a type and format. Example artifact types include bill of lading, invoice, delivery receipt. Example artifact formats include PDF, JSON, JPEG. Raw input data received from external systems is first saved as artifacts prior to further processing. Loop uses the term "artifact" rather than "document" because sometimes data is received as PDFs files and other times the same data is received as an API response, and "artifact" works well for both use cases.

Artifact extraction​

The process of extracting semi-structured key-value pairs of data from unstructured artifacts. It is part of the broader artifact ingestion process.

Artifact ingestion​

The overall process of Loop receiving data and storing it as Loop entities. It includes several subprocesses. See the section on artifact ingestion within "How Loop works" for details.

Artifact type​

The type of an artifact. Examples include bill of lading and proof of delivery. This is represented in the API with an enum like INVOICE or DELIVERY_RECEIPT.

B​

Bill of lading (BOL)​

An artifact that includes shipment details such as shipper, consignee, cargo description, and carrier. It can also be referred to as BoL, BL or B/L. There are several types of BOLs, as described on Wikipedia. In domestic FTL and LTL trucking, most bills of lading are straight bills of lading.

Bill-to organization​

An organization responsible for paying for logistics service. The term "bill-to" can be used when discussing shipments, invoices, or rate contracts.

Bilateral rate contract​

A rate contract agreed upon by two organizations, for example a bilateral FTL lane rate schedule or an LTL pricing agreement.

C​

Carrier​

A mover of cargo. In Loop, carriers are represented as organizations. The term is used in two different ways:

  • The first way is to describe an organization that moves cargo, as a fixed attribute of the organization. In this context, a distinction is drawn between a carrier versus a broker, 3PL, or forwarder. Carriers tend to be asset-owning, meaning they directly own and operate ships, plans, trucks, etc. Whereas brokers, 3PLs, and forwarders tend to be asset-light, meaning they are more focused on information routing and coordination. But the line here is blurry: there can be asset-heavy brokers, carriers that also provide brokerage services, and forwarders that are considered carriers from a legal perspective for certain shipments.
  • The second way is to identify a role that an organization plays on a particular shipment or rate contract. The organization with the carrier role in these cases may in fact be more broadly considered a broker, 3PL, or forwarder based on the first way this term is used.

Both uses are valid.

Client​

A client of Loop. The term customer is reserved for the customers of Loop clients.

Consignee​

A receiver of cargo. A consignee is counterparty to a shipper. In Loop, consignees are represented as organizations. An organization may act as consignee on some shipments and a shipper on other shipments.

Consignor​

Another word for shipper. Loop uses "shipper" rather than "consignor."

Contract rate​

A service rate agreed to in advance and locked in for a period of time. Contract rates secure a carrier's volume and price commitment for generally at least a year. They are written down and agreed to as rate contracts. The alternative to a contract rate is a spot rate.

Customer​

A customer of a Loop client. This term is used in receivables to refer to the customers of a broker, forwarder, or 3PL. Often these are shippers or consignees.

D​

Delivery receipt​

Additional documentation submitted with POD when cargo is delivered, usually signed by the consignee to confirm delivery.

E​

Entity​

A structured piece of data associated with a QID. Each entity has a specific type that describes its structure. Example entity types include organization, payable invoice, shipment, and user. Each individual entity is uniquely identified by its QID.

F​

Factoring​

A financial service for carriers in which they get paid immediately for freight invoices instead of waiting for 30-, 60-, or 90-day terms from their shippers. It improves working capital at the expense of a percentage of the invoiced total.

For benefit of (FBO)​

A indication that an account is held for the benefit of another person or organization. It may appear in many types of financial and legal documents. In logistics, it generally indicates that an intermediary such as factoring company or freight audit and pay firms is involved in a transaction.

Consider the case where Sam's Supply shipped with Tom's Trucking. In the simple case, Tom sends Sam an invoice where Sam is the payor and Tom is the payee. In a more complex case, let's say Tom is using Frank's Factoring to factor his invoices. In this case, Frank will send Sam an invoice where Sam is the payor, Frank is payee, and Tom is list as the payee FBO. The most complex case, say Sam is use Anne's Auditing as a full-service freight audit and pay firm. This may result in an invoice where the factoring firm pays the audit firm: Anne is payor, Sam is the payor FBO, Frank is payee, and Tom is the payee FBO.

Freight charge term​

A data field on an FTL or LTL bill of lading indicating which organization is the bill-to organization. Values may be one of "outbound prepaid", "inbound collect", or "third-party". Outbound prepaid means the shipper pays for freight. Inbound collect means the consignee pays for freight. Third-party means neither the shipper nor the consignee but some other organization pays for freight. In these cases, typically another organization is explicitly listed.

Fuel surcharge (FSC)​

A charge for a trucking shipment job added to account for fluctuations in regional and seasonal fuel prices. The fuel surcharge is usually based on a percentage of the base cost of the shipment and the relevant EIA fuel price.

Full truckload (FTL)​

A trucking service that involves dedicated use of a semi-trailer. Often FTL is used for cargo volumes that are too large to ship with LTL, but it is not required to use the full container. Sometimes FTL is referred to as "truckload" or "TL", but Loop uses "FTL".

G​

General ledger code (GL code)​

In accounting, a general ledger code is an identifier used to categorize types of financial transactions. Often a GL code has a name and numeric component, with the numbers following a standard schema. "GL 231100055 - Inbound Freight, Bloomington Facility" is an example of this in which the leading "2" indicates expense, the "311" indicates the Bloomington Facility, and the "055" represents inbound freight. Different organizations use different coding standards.

I​

Inbound collect​

A freight charge term indicating that the consignee is responsible for paying for freight. This can also be referred to as freight collect.

Invoice​

A request for money for provided services. Within Loop, there are two separate entities: receivable invoice and a payable invoice.

L​

Lane​

A specific origin-destination pair. This a flexible concept that applies across modes, and the origin and destination can be defined in different ways. An air freight lane is HAM to ORD (Hamburg to Chicago O'Hare). A trucking lane could be 60601 to 53022 (Chicago to Milwaukee with 5-zip O/D pair) or 606 to 530 (3-zip O/D pair). An ocean freight lane could be TPEB (transpacific eastbound). Lanes can also be referred to as freight lanes, shipping lanes, trucking lanes, or O/D (origin/destination) pairs.

Linehaul rate​

The primary charge for an LTL or FTL shipment job, typically calculated using a rate-per-mile for an origin-destination pair. In the context of an invoice, this often referred to simply as "linehaul". Sometimes called the "lane rate".

Less-than-truckload (LTL)​

A trucking service for the movement of cargo larger than parcel but smaller than full truckload.

LTL public tariff​

An entity representing a unilateral document published by an LTL carrier defining rules, regulations, rates, and charges for carrier services.

M​

Money​

Within Loop, money is represented as an amount and a currency code.

N​

Normalization​

The process of creating and updating Loop entities based on ingested data. It is part of the broader artifact ingestion process.

O​

Organization​

An entity representing a group of people. Typically, an organization is a legal business entity, but it could also be a non-profit group, a division within a business, or a government agency.

Outbound prepaid​

A freight charge term indicating that the shipper is responsible for paying for freight. Despite the word "prepaid", this does not mean that the shipment was actually fully paid in advance—the shipper may be invoiced after the shipment is delivered.

P​

Parcel​

A logistics service for the movement of a packaged, individual cargo, typically under 150 pounds. Parcel carriers include UPS, FedEx, DHL, and USPS, all of which require their own size limits that define the shipment as a parcel rather than freight. Domestically in the US parcel shipments typically move via truck and air freight. The term parcel is also used to refer to the item being shipment, i.e. the parcel.

Payee​

A receiver of money. A payee is counterparty to a payor.

Payment​

An entity representing a transfer of money initiated by Loop.

Payor​

A sender of money. A payor is counterparty to a payee.

Payable invoice​

An entity representing an invoice from the accounts payable perspective. Includes a total amount, line items with descriptions and amounts, a payor, and a payee.

Proof of delivery (POD)​

An artifact proving that cargo has been delivered. In FTL and LTL, it is typically a copy of the bill of lading signed by the consignee. In parcel, it could be a photo of the delivered cargo.

Q​

Qualified identifier (QID)​

A unique identifier for an entity within Loop. An example is qid::user:64d8de89-3eb2-4376-93af-656ba5dbf9f1. See the page QIDs (qualified identifiers) for details.

R​

Rate contract​

A catch-all term for any rate management artifact used to calculate rates for logistics services. Examples include LTL public tariffs, LTL pricing agreements, FTL rate schedules, fuel surcharge policies, parcel customer agreements, and even more ad hoc artifacts such as screenshots of emails with new accessorial fees. Within Loop, there is no single rate contract entity. Instead, we have separate entities for each type of rate contracts.

Receivable invoice​

An entity representing an invoice from the accounts receivable perspective. Includes a total amount, line items with descriptions and amounts, a payor, and a payee.

Remittance email​

An email sent by Loop to a payee on a behalf of a payor when a payment has been made. The payor can use this to expect the payment and for bookkeeping purposes.

S​

Shipment​

An entity representing a set of logistics activity. A shipment has a list of reference numbers and list of shipment jobs. The Loop platform is flexible about what a shipment means. Shipments may involve multiple transportation modes, shippers, consignees, origins, and destinations. Most of the interesting data is stored on shipment jobs rather than on shipments themselves.

Shipment job​

An entity representing a subset of logistics activity within a shipment. For example, a cross-border trucking shipment from Monterrey to Chicago might involve three separate jobs: an FTL job from Monterrey to Laredo, a cross-border transload job at a warehouse in Laredo, and an FTL trucking job from Laredo to Chicago. Within Loop, the granularity of jobs is based on auditability: each independently auditable unit is represented as its own job.

Shipment job type​

A type of shipment job such as FTL, LTL, or parcel. The type determines the shape of data associated with the job. For example, FTL shipment jobs support multi-stop with multiple origins and destinations, while LTL shipment jobs are single origin and single destination.

Shipper​

A sender of cargo. A shipper is counterparty to a consignee. In Loop, shippers are represented as organizations. Similar to the term carrier, this term is used to in two ways:

  • The first way is to identify an organization that typically acts as a shipper on shipment jobs, treating it as a fixed attribute of the organization. This is especially common in domestic FTL, LTL, and parcel shipping, where the shipper is often the bill-to organization and the direct customer of the carrier.
  • The second way is to identify a role that an organization plays on a particular shipment job.

At Loop, we tend to avoid the first way the term is it conflates the distinct concepts of who sends freight (the shipper), who pays for freight (the bill-to), and who nominated a particular carrier to move the freight (the customer). An organization may act as consignee on some shipment jobs and a shipper on other shipment jobs. Sometimes the consignee pays, sometimes the shipper pays. Sometimes the shipper is the broker customer, sometimes the consignee is bthe broker customer. These roles are not fixed attributes of organizations.

Spot rate​

A single-use rate for a shipment job that is requested on-demand. Spot rates reflect the current freight-moving market price and can also be referred to as a flat fee or spot quote. The alternative is a contract rate.

T​

Tenant​

An entity representing an owner of data within Loop. When a new customer signs up for Loop, a new tenant is created for that customer. Users for that customer are created within the tenant.

Third-party logistics (3PL) provider​

An organization that provides holistic, integrated logistics services to its customers. In contrast, a second-party logistics provider offers simpler point-to-point services and tends to be less integrated into its customers supply chains. The exact services vary based on customer requirements. Example 3PLs include freight forwarders such as Flexport and ecommerce fulfillment providers such as Shipbob.

Transportation management system (TMS)​

A comprehensive software solution designed to holistically manage the transportation component of a company's supply chain. A TMS will typically track shipment jobs in day-to-day operations, route shipment jobs and select carriers, coordinate from purchase to delivery, and offer analysis of historical shipment job data. Loop is designed to complement rather than replace TMSes.

U​

Unilateral rate contract​

A rate contract that is shared out by one organization and relevant to many organizations. For example, LTL public tariffs.

User​

An entity representing a human or bot that perform actions within Loop. Human users are able to sign in to the Loop web application. Bot users can interact with Loop via the API.