Carrier Guide: Taking Tenders in the Portal, the Driver App, and POD

How carriers run contracted freight with Docklify shippers: accept or decline TMS tenders in the Carrier Portal, run trips in the driver app with four check-ins, and close with a signed POD.

This guide is for carriers — trucking companies running freight for shippers who use Docklify TMS. You do not need to buy the shipper’s system: the shipper dispatches to you, you accept in the Carrier Portal, your drivers run the trips in the driver app, and the signed POD at the end is what your invoice stands on.

Step 1: Accept (or decline) tenders in the Carrier Portal#

1. Shippers dispatch two ways: direct assignment, or a tender broadcast to several carriers. Tenders land in your Carrier Portal inbox — review the lanes, equipment, and offered rate, then accept or decline there. First acceptance wins, so a tender is a race, not a queue.
2. After acceptance the trip is yours: dispatch it to one of your drivers inside the portal, and the driver sees it in the app. Declining early is better than accepting and failing — shippers remember both.
3. Multi-stop trips stay one job: when a shipper consolidates several orders into one run, the stops travel together under one SH- number, so the driver follows one trip instead of juggling separate orders.

Step 2: Drivers run the trip in the app — four check-ins#

1. The driver opens the assigned trip and swipes to accept it — after that, the trip clock and the shipper’s tracking both start from the same event.
2. Four check-ins structure the trip: arrived at pickup, loading complete, arrived at delivery, unloading complete. Each one is a single tap that timestamps the trip — the shipper watches progress without calling the driver.
3. At the last stop the driver collects the receiver’s signature on the phone — that is the POD. Exceptions (damage, shortage, refusal) are reported from the same screen with photos, not reconstructed later from memory.
4. No signal is not an excuse to skip: the app works offline and syncs when coverage returns, so a rural delivery still produces a complete, timestamped trip record.

Step 3: Close the loop — freight bills and reconciliation#

Completed trips feed the freight bill: the charges agreed on the shipment become the bill, and reconciliation compares what was billed against what was agreed. Because the POD, the check-ins, and the bill all come from the same trip record, rate disputes stop being “your word against mine” — the timestamps and the signature are already there.

Step 4: Check the money and the reputation — bills and the scorecard#

The portal has two places that watch the money and your reputation: Billing shows the freight bills issued to you from TMS freight billing, and the Scorecard tallies your performance from real tender and load activity. Both pages open only for carrier admin accounts — your drivers will not see them.

1. Billing opens with three summary cards: Total bills; Outstanding (sent) — the combined amount of all bills marked Sent that have not been paid yet; and Paid — the combined amount of paid bills. Below them the bill table lists Bill #, Period (start → end), Issued date, Amount, and Status. The status tag shows exactly one of four states: Draft, Sent, Paid, or Disputed. If you have more than 20 bills, the table paginates at 20 per page.
2. Bills are read-only here: amounts and statuses come straight from TMS freight billing, so the portal always shows the same numbers as the shipper’s books. If a bill carries the Disputed tag, pull the trip record first — the POD, the four check-in timestamps, and the rate agreed on the shipment — then settle it with the shipper outside the portal. The portal never edits a bill itself.
3. The Scorecard tallies four headline metrics from your real activity: Tender acceptance rate (accepted divided by accepted-plus-declined), Completed loads (delivered plus billed loads), On-time delivery (the share of completed loads that have a required delivery date and arrived on or before it), and Avg. tender response (the average time from receiving a tender to your accept or decline). A metric with no supporting data does not show its card at all — nothing is invented.
4. Two detail tables sit below: Tender activity (Received, Accepted, Declined, Expired, Awaiting reply) and Load activity (Total loads, In progress, Completed, Cancelled). If you have no tender or load activity at all, the whole page shows one line instead: “No activity yet — your scorecard will appear once you receive tenders and loads.”
5. The shipper side sees the same scorecard numbers, so reply fast even when the answer is no: response time only counts from receiving a tender to your accept or decline — pending and expired tenders are excluded. Pending rows stay listed in the Tender activity table, where the shipper can see them.

Docklify features used in this article#

• Accept or decline tenders, then dispatch drivers — Carrier Portal inbox: review the lanes, equipment, and offered rate, then accept or decline; after accepting, dispatch the trip to one of your drivers inside the portal.
• Billing — Carrier Portal → Billing: three summary cards (Total bills / Outstanding (sent) / Paid) plus the bill table (Bill # / Period / Issued / Amount / Status); status tags: Draft / Sent / Paid / Disputed. Read-only: amounts and statuses come from TMS freight billing. Admin accounts only.
• Scorecard — Carrier Portal → Scorecard: four metric cards (Tender acceptance rate / Completed loads / On-time delivery / Avg. tender response) plus Tender activity and Load activity tables. Metrics without data hide their whole card. Admin accounts only.
• Driver app trips — four check-ins (arrived at pickup / loading complete / arrived at delivery / unloading complete); the receiver’s signature on the phone at the last stop is the POD, and exceptions are reported from the same screen with photos.
• Multi-stop trips — when a shipper consolidates several orders into one run, the stops travel together under one SH- number, so the driver follows one trip.