09 — Pull Rates & Pick the Cheapest Mix

Your vendors have quoted. Now the system does what used to take an evening with a spreadsheet: it snapshots every vendor rate, builds every valid vendor mix per loading port, computes the full landed cost of each mix, and applies the cheapest one to your costing — with the winning vendor stamped on every cost line. You stay in charge: you can override the pick with one click.

Before you start

• Your RFQs are sent and submitted — see Ask Vendors for Rates (RFQs).
• Vendors have submitted their quotes through their guest links — see How Vendors Quote (no login needed). Rates are pulled only from submitted Supplier Quotations; a vendor who never pressed "Submit quote" contributes nothing.
• Your costing exists and carries its charge lines — see Create an Export Costing.
• The Max Combinations safety cap lives in Export Settings — you will only meet it if you have very many overlapping vendor rates.

The whole round is three clicks on one menu:

flowchart LR
    pull["Pull Vendor Rates\nsnapshot every submitted quote"] --> raw["Raw Vendor Rates\nfilled on the costing"]
    raw --> gen["Generate Combinations\nevery valid vendor mix, ranked"]
    gen --> auto["Cheapest mix applied\nautomatically"]
    auto --> compare["Compare & override\nif you prefer another mix"]
    compare --> done["Status: Costing Selected\nport locked, vendors stamped"]

Steps

1. Find the Combinations menu

1. Open your costing from Export Costing in the workspace sidebar.
2. At the top right, click the Combinations menu.

The menu grows as you progress: Pull Vendor Rates is there as soon as the costing has charge lines; Generate Combinations and View Combinations appear once vendor rates have been pulled — on a brand-new costing you will see only the first entry.

2. Pull Vendor Rates

1. Click Combinations > Pull Vendor Rates.

How you know it worked: a green alert pops up — "N vendor rates pulled" — and the Raw Vendor Rates section of the costing fills with one row per quoted rate. The costing's Status moves to Rates Received.

How to read the grid:

• Each row is one vendor's rate for one cost head — here two freight quotes and two rice-mill quotes are competing.
• A blank Port of Loading means the vendor quoted for any port; a filled one means the rate only applies when loading there.
• Expired is ticked when the quote's Valid Till date has passed — expired rates stay visible but are left out of the mixing.
• Pulling again refreshes the snapshot with the latest submitted quotes. Only rows backing an already-selected combination are frozen and survive a re-pull untouched.

If you get the message "No submitted Supplier Quotations found for this costing — send the RFQ first", your vendors have not submitted yet — chase them with the guest links from the previous section.

3. Generate Combinations

1. Click Combinations > Generate Combinations.

The system builds every valid mix — one vendor rate per cost head, per loading port — and computes the complete landed cost of each mix. That last part matters: it never just picks the cheapest individual rate, because the cheapest freight and the cheapest rice may not make the cheapest deal once currencies, port charges and duty are stacked up. With the four rates above:

flowchart TB
    subgraph freight["Ocean Freight"]
        f1["MSC — 1,675 USD"]
        f2["Other line — 1,725 USD"]
    end
    subgraph mill["Procurement Cost"]
        m1["Mill A — 29,800 INR"]
        m2["Mill B — 30,200 INR"]
    end
    freight --> combos["2 × 2 = 4 combinations,\neach costed end-to-end\nand ranked by landed cost per bag"]
    mill --> combos

How you know it worked: a green alert reads "N combinations generated — cheapest applied: …" and the Combination Comparison report opens by itself, filtered to your costing. The rank-1 mix is already selected and written into your costing — you only act if you disagree with it.

Two guard rails you may run into:

• "N combinations would be generated (cap: …)" — too many overlapping rates; prune expired or duplicate rows in Raw Vendor Rates, or raise Max Combinations in Export Settings.
• "No port has a compatible rate for every variable charge head" — for every loading port, at least one cost head has no usable rate there; check which vendor still owes you a quote.

4. Compare the mixes

The Combination Comparison report shows every mix side by side, cheapest first — the rank-1 row is highlighted in green. You can come back to it any time via Combinations > View Combinations on the costing, or Combination Comparison in the workspace sidebar.

• The columns walk the cost build-up: Landed Cost / Bag, Inland Freight to Port (INR), FOR Total (INR), FOB (INR, Indian Port), Freight to Destination (INR), Insurance (INR), CIF Total (INR), Cost / MT (USD), then Margin / Bag, Margin % and Selected (scroll right for the rest).
• The filters across the top — Port of Loading, Cost Head, Vendor, Min Margin % and Only Selected — let you answer questions like "show me only the mixes that use MSC" in one click.

The same mixes also live as documents in Export Cost Combination (workspace sidebar), where the list shows Rank, Port of Loading, Landed Cost / Bag and the margin columns, with a tick on the selected one:

The margin columns still read 0 here — they come alive the moment you enter your selling price, in Price It, Quote It, Win It.

5. Open a combination to see its story

Click any row to open the combination. The rank-1 document greets you with a green banner:

Three sections tell you everything about the mix:

• Rate Picks — exactly which vendor rate was chosen for each competed cost head, with its currency and rupee value:

The grid shows the cost head, rate, currency and rupee amount — open a line with its pencil icon to see the Supplier behind the pick and the Supplier Quotation it was sourced from.

• Landed Cost — the full build-up for this mix (Ex-Works, FOR, FOB, CFR, CIF totals, cost per MT in USD, the destination-side clearing figures).
• Margin — landed cost per bag against your selling price per bag. Like the list columns, these stay 0 until you price the deal in the next section:

6. Override the pick if you disagree

The cheapest mix is not always the one you want — you may prefer a vendor with better payment terms, or a rate that is valid for longer. To apply a different mix:

1. Open the combination you prefer (its status reads Generated).
2. Click Select This Combination in the toolbar.

How you know it worked: the green "selected winning combination" banner moves to this document, the previous pick quietly steps down, and the costing recomputes on this mix's rates. If anything on the costing changed since the combinations were generated (an edited exchange rate, a changed charge row), the system refuses with a "Parity check failed" message and asks you to regenerate — it will never silently apply stale numbers.

Changed your mind entirely? On the selected combination the button reads Deselect — clicking it lifts the lock and drops the costing back to Rates Received so you can re-pull or regenerate.

7. Check the costing — the result of the round

Go back to the Export Costing. Three things prove the round is complete:

• Status shows Costing Selected.
• Port of Loading is filled and locked to the winning port — remember you left it empty when creating the costing.

• Every competed charge row now carries the winning vendor. Open a charge row (the pencil icon on the Charges table) and you will find the Supplier and the Supplier Quotation it came from stamped under the rate — your audit trail from costing back to the vendor's quote:

Where this goes next

The costing now stands on real, chosen vendor rates. Time to put your price on it, send the buyer a quotation and win the deal: Price It, Quote It, Win It.