About SPOT BIDDING in 123cargo

The spot bidding is opened by launching an offer request upon the posting of the load to be transported by the load poster. A posted load is itself a request for a transport offer that is solved through the traditional ways between the requesting user and the offering carriers. The offer request in the spot bidding is a new way to solve the transport request. Shorter, more clear cut, and with the knowledge of 123cargo, but in guaranteed confidentiality.

The spot bidding is opened by launching the offer request on the page I HAVE A LOAD! The command to edit one of the routes stored in MY ROUTES also leads to this page. In the library of usual load routes, the possible offer request that accompanied the load posts is now stored.

- Load route (loading and unloading town)

- Available calendar interval for loading (date plus maximum 9 days)

- Load tonnage

- Equipment required

- Grouping system requested by the requesting user

- Requesting user’s budget (price offered excluding VAT)

- Deployment included in the price offered (optional)

- Payment due date proposed by the requesting user

- Exact loading date (optional)

- Exact unloading date (optional)

- Spot bidding duration (decided by the requesting user)

Further to the enumeration in the previous question: informative data that cannot be changed by the offering user:

- Load route

- Available calendar interval for loading

- Load tonnage, required equipment and grouping system

The remaining data is negotiable. Which means that in the spot bidding the carrier may propose values different from those mentioned by the requesting user in the offer request. Optional data may be changed in the spot bidding only if they have been filled in by the requesting user in the offer request. As an example, if the requesting user did not request a certain unloading date in the offer request, the offering user cannot specify its own conditions regarding this date, because the requesting user did not request such a thing.

On routes with less interest for carriers, the duration of the spot bidding established by the requesting user posting the load, we assume that it is long enough for the load to be consulted. An offer cannot be drawn up if the load is not consulted.

On routes of great interest to carriers, the spot bidding term will be short and even very short. In general, on these routes, we assume that the posting requesting users of the load and of the offer request are under time pressure because their customers – large retailers or distributors, launch transport requests to a whole list of forwarders, which creates competition between forwarders.

The possibility to specify a deployment included in the price budget in the offer request has the role of eliminating the possible ambiguity contained in the route of the load with which the load was posted.

With the implementation of the possible offer request when posting a load to be transported, the content of the offer request is also saved in the company's routes library for subsequent reuse. The company's route library is confidential at company level, shared only between users of the respective company.

After it is launched, the offer request remains at the disposal of the requesting user in the page ACTIVE OFFER REQUESTS in the SPOT BIDDING module. The spot bidding being a real-time process, as new offers appear upon the offer request, the requesting user is notified by the occurrence of a warning.

The offer can be made by any 123cargo/BursaTransport user, not by Alpega users.

The offer is made on the SEARCH LOADS page, by unfolding the load containing the transport request, and by enabling SEND OFFER!

A user can make only one offer in response to a given offer request.

The spot bidding module provides the offering carrier with the possibility to group all its simultaneous offers targeting the same vehicle in an ALIAS (identifier). When the first of the offers in the ALIAS group is accepted, the offering carrier may withdraw all the remaining ones by a single bulk command which delete all the remaining offers in the ALIAS group. The offering user may not engage the same vehicle in more than one transport operation at the same time. If a second offer from the group would be accepted, the offering user will have to withdraw one of the two offers and this withdrawal places him in the penalty regime leading to the decrease of the user’s score in the spot bidding and the decrease of the company's score in the contracts.

When drawing up the offer, the following may be negotiated: the price requested, the due date for payment and the optional dates, if mentioned in the offer request: the exact date of loading and/or unloading. Mention for the exact date of loading. Both in the offer and in the offer request, the exact date can only be within the available loading range (the loading date plus possibly a few additional days in which the transport request remains valid).

As decided by the offering user, the offer may remain valid until the end of the spot bidding or, if the circumstance forces the offering user to hurry, a period of minutes corresponding to his impatience.

In the main menu, the spot bidding badge adjacent to the title begins to tremble. This is the notification intended for the offering user that there has been a change in the list of his active offers.

On the ACTIVE REQUESTS page you can find the requests for offer requests in progress, from active spot bidding. There are also expired, assigned or unassigned offer requests from the current day. The OLD BIDDING REQUESTS contains the OFFER REQUESTS for closed spot bids from the last two months.

The left column contains my offer requests. For the current, selected offer request, in the right column there are the offers received at the current request in the left column. Both the offer requests in the left column and the offers received for the current request, in the right column, can be sorted and filtered by the user's interest and skill.

The filter panels are separated because the filtered matter is distinct: requests are distinct from offers. Thus, the filtering of requests can be done by: request ID, request status, load route (where you can even search for a substring from the name of the loading or unloading town), the name of the requesting user – useful only in multi-user companies. Filtering the offers of the current request: the name of the offering company, the name of the offering user, the status of the offer.

The current offer request has a distinct background from the other offer requests. With a left click on another offer request, this new offer request becomes the current offer request. Consequently, on the right column are displayed according to the current order of displaying the offers received for that offer request.

- Offer request ID, offer request status and time left to expire

- Number of new offers received

- Requesting user’s name: either the current user or another company user

- The load ID on which the offer request was launched

- Load route, tonnage, grouping system, required vehicle equipment

- Offer request attributes: price offered and deployment included, due date, exact loading/unloading dates

- Offer ID and status, and if active, time left until expiry

- Name of the offering company and name of the offering user

- The load ID from which the spot bidding started

- The attributes of the offer request and next to it, the offer received (in red, the attributes that differ from the attributes of the offer request)

Related to the offer, if any, my counteroffer

The yellow strip represents the notification that new offers have appeared on the current offer request. Due to the real-time system, new offers are not pushed into the list of offers until the user is ready to receive them by clicking on the yellow band or on the current offer. If it were not for the yellow notification strip, the list of offers for the current offer request would have changed while the requesting user was reading them.

It is the time remaining until the expiry of the respective component. About the duration of the offer or of the counteroffer: it cannot exceed the time remaining until the expiry of the offer request.

The respective phrases represent the status of the spot bidding component. The components of the spot bidding are the offer request (drafted by the requesting user), the offer (drafted by the consultant of the offer request, who became the offering user) and the counteroffer (drafted by the requesting user)

The status impacts the possible orders on the respective component. The names of the orders are chosen so as to give meaning to the spot bidding stage.

The following describes what the requesting user sees onACTIVE OFFER REQUESTS page.The types of statuses are seen in the filter panel on the STATUS section, and the actual statuses are seen on the page on each offer request/offer/counteroffer.

ACTIVE category of request statuses, i.e. an ongoing spot bidding. Possible statuses:

- LAUNCHED. It means that no offers have yet arrived for the offer request. In this status, the orders available to the requesting user: Modify or Delete offer request. The change is still possible until the first offer arrives. The deletion of the offer request may also produce, upon consent of the requesting user, the deletion of the load.

- ACTIVE. Following the offer request, at least one offer has arrived. Possible order: Delete offer request. The deletion has no impact on the spot bidding user score because the requesting user has not yet accepted any offers.

- IN NEGOTIATION. The requesting user has not yet accepted any offer, but has launched at least one counteroffer, to which it has not yet received a response. Possible order: Deleteoffer request without impact on the liability incurred because it has not yet undertaken its liability in relation to any offer nor has it yet received acceptance on any counteroffer

ASSIGNED category of offer requests statuses. That is, the auction ended successfully. Possible Statuses

- ADJUDICATED. The requesting user accepted one of the offers received

- SOLVED. The requesting user received acceptance on one of the counteroffers sent

UNASSIGNEDcategory of offer requests statuses. That is, the spot bidding ended in an assignment failure. Possible statuses of the offer request:

- CLOSED. The requesting user accepted one of the offers received, but subsequently the offering user withdrew the offer. Possible order: Relaunch request. Repost the load and relaunch the offer request

- EXPIRED. The validity period of the request, decided by the requesting user, has expired

- DELETED. The requesting user either deleted the active request, or withdrew the acceptance on the previously accepted offer, or cancelled the counteroffer already accepted by the offering user

On ACTIVE REQUESTS page, for the current request, the received offers and their statuses are listed. When moving the control from one request to another, the set of offers is changed accordingly, so that always on the right side of the page there are the offers of the current request.

The ACTIVE category of offer statuses can have the following statuses:

- ACTIVE. The offering user has submitted the offer and the offer is within its validity period. Orders available to the requesting user: Accept offer, Rejectand Counteroffer .

- IN NEGOTIATION. The requesting user has sent a counteroffer to the attention of the offering user. The fate of the offer becomes subordinated to the counteroffer, therefore the duration of the offer no longer matters and the remaining time is that of the counteroffer. The counteroffer is displayed under the offer although it was sent by the requesting user and not by the offering user. The counteroffer status is ACTIVE as long as the offer status is IN NEGOTIATION .

WINNING category of offer statusesand possible offer statuses:

- ACCEPTED. The offer was accepted by the requesting user. The order available to the requesting user is Transaction canceled whereby the requesting user certifies that the agreement just obtained has fallen. It should be noted that the cancellation of the transaction will not be a subject of dispute, 123cargo failing to determine who is liable for the cancellation: the requesting user or the offering user.

- SUCCESSFULLY NEGOTIATED. The counteroffer was accepted by the offering user. Counteroffer in ACCEPTED status. Order available to the applicant on the counteroffer: Transaction canceled .

NON-WINNING category of offer statuses:

- REJECTED. The offer was rejected by the requesting user

- UNSUCCESSFULLY NEGOTIATED. The counteroffer of the requesting user was rejected by the offering user.

- EXPIRED. The term of the offer set by the offering user has expired without the requesting user deciding on it

- EXPIRED NEGOTIATION. The term of the counteroffer set by the requesting user has expired without the offering user deciding on it

- DELETED. The active offer has still been deleted by the offering user

- RETRACTED. The offer having already been accepted by the requesting user, the offering user used the order Transaction canceled in ACTIVE OFFERS page

- CANCELLED. The offer having already been accepted by the requesting user, the requesting user used the order Transaction canceled on the winning offer

- CANCELLED IN NEGOTIATION. The consultant used the order Transaction canceled on the counteroffer already accepted in MY ACTIVE OFFERS page

- NO OBJECT.The requesting user has accepted another offer or deleted the offer request or the offer request has expired

At the maintenance at 00:00 of the following day, the assigned and unassigned requests are automatically moved to old bidding requests.

All the components of the spot bidding are kept in the archive, namely: the load on which the offer request was made, the offer request, the received offers and the counteroffers. If the offer request has been assigned and the spot bidding has been won by a particular offering user, all the data of the requesting company and the winning offering company shall be kept in the state in which they were at the time of the spot bidding. Example: if currently, after closing the spot biding, the requesting company becomes insolvent and the suffix IN INSOLVENCY is added to its name, the suffix will not appear in the archive because at the date of the spot bidding the state of insolvency does not exist. Another example: the requesting user was named Smith and was subsequently replaced by Johnson in the company file. Smith's name will be kept in the old bidding offers because he is the one who launched the offer request.

Yes, the goods continue to be accessible by using the link BM- … found in the offer request

Yes, through the link that shows the number of offers received

The offer requests remain in the old bidding requests for 2 months.

In the active offers page there are the offers in progress or the offers from the current day to the already closed spot bids. On the page there are the offers of all the users of the company. The offer archive contains the offers made in the last two months.

Counteroffers are made by the requesting user and not by the offering user. The counteroffers are highlighted on my offers page because they represent the last stage of negotiation between you as offering user and the requesting user. The counteroffers understood together with the offers they were made. The negotiation process is: the requesting user issues the offer request, you issue the offer, the requesting user can issue a counteroffer to your offer

Everything that is changed in the offer versus the request and in the counteroffer versus the offer, is marked in red for better visibility

If you have a single vehicle for which you make multiple simultaneous offers, group all offers under a single ALIAS. ALIAS is a phrase of your choice. When one of the offers with a common ALIAS will be accepted by the requesting user, the ALIAS will help you delete all the other offers and avoid that another offer from the group will be accepted in another spot bidding. It is known that the cancellation of an already accepted offer leads to the depreciation of the user score in the spot bids and to the decrease of the score of the contractual behavior company.

With the help of the filter panel you can select certain offers, if you had a busy day when you issued many offers. For example, you can select a certain route of the load to which you have submitted an offer, or a certain requesting company. Also for the situation where there are many offers on the page, you have the possibility to order the offers according to your interest.

Represents the time remaining until the expiration of: the offer request, the offer or the counteroffer. The spot bids are conducted in real time and last a limited period of time. The term of the spot bidding is decided by the requesting user launching the offer request.

Depending on the statuses, you understand what happened to your offer and you understand the significance of the orders you have available, different, depending on the status.

The ACTIVE category of offer statuses can have the following statuses:

- ACTIVE. Offer sent and active until expiration. Orders at the offering user's disposal: Deletion. After deletion, it is no longer possible to send a new offer to the same spot bidding

- IN NEGOTIATION. The requesting user sent a counteroffer to your offer. The fate of the offer becomes subordinated to the counteroffer, therefore the term of the offer no longer matters and the remaining time is that of the counteroffer. The counteroffer is displayed under the offer although it was sent by the requesting user and not by you as an offering user. The counteroffer status is ACTIVE as long as the offer status is IN NEGOTIATION.

WINNING category of offer statusesand possible offer statuses:

- ACCEPTED. The offer was accepted by the requesting user. The order available to the requesting user is Transaction canceled whereby the requesting user certifies that the agreement just obtained has fallen. It should be noted that the cancellation of the transaction will not be a subject of dispute, 123cargo failing to determine who is liable for the cancellation: the requesting user or the offering user.

- SUCCESSFULLY NEGOTIATED. You have accepted the counteroffer. Counteroffer in ACCEPTED status. Order available on the counteroffer: Transaction canceled.

NON-WINNING category of offer statuses:

- REJECTED. The offer was rejected by the requesting user

- UNSUCCESSFULLY NEGOTIATED. You rejected the requesting user’s counteroffer

- EXPIRED. The term of the offer has expired without the requesting user deciding on it

- EXPIRED NEGOTIATION. The term of the counteroffer set by the requesting user has expired without you deciding on it

- DELETED. The still active offer has been deleted by the offering user

- RETRACTED. The offer having already been accepted by the requesting user, the offering user used the order Transaction canceled in MY ACTIVE OFFERS page

- CANCELLED. The offer having already been accepted by the requesting user, the requesting user used the order Transaction canceled on the winning offer

- CANCELLED IN NEGOTIATION. The offering user used the Transaction canceledorder on the already accepted counteroffer

- NO OBJECT.The requesting user has accepted another offer or deleted the offer request or the offer request has expired

Offers are automatically archived at the end of the current day.

All offers made by company users are kept

Offers remain in the archive for 2 months.

Reviews are grades that the transport transaction partners concluded with the help of 123cargo and can grant after the end of the transport. Reviews do not replace transport incidents and payment incidents. Reviews are meant to express the satisfaction and comfort produced by the trading partner to the one offering the review. The review given to the carrier should reflect the way in which the carrier performed the transport: in terms of schedule, compliance with the instructions received, report of unforeseen situations encountered, and last but not least, in terms of promptness with which the carrier documented the completion of the trip: CMR and transport invoice. The review given by the carrier to the one who ordered the transport should reflect the accuracy and entirety of the data communicated in order to carry out the transport, the ability to be contacted during transport in the event of unforeseen circumstances.

The granting of reviews is an optional action offered by the spot bidding module.

Only in spot bids can the participating parties be unequivocally ascertained and consequently the right of mutual reviews can be granted to them. In the remaining means of communication prior to the transport transaction, the negotiation is made between two companies that can only submit their own responsibility when they claim to give a review to another company.

My reviews can only be seen by me but they contribute to the calculation of the user scort in spot bidding for the user I review. My rating concerns the partner user of the company with which I carried out the transport transaction, and only indirectly concerns the entire partner company.

The reviews received by me can only be seen by the partner user who has given them to me.

In the future, if the audience that the spot bids becomes notable, the user score in the spot bidding will be able to influence the contractual behavior scores of the employing company.

The page contains my offer requests and my offers from successfully closed spot bids. Their appearance on that page gives me the opportunity to rate the transaction partner user as follows: review on the winning offering user of my offer request, or requesting user in the spot bidding request that I won with my offer. The time I have available for granting a review is limited, and the time window in which I can issue ratings is located after the end of the transport.

New transactions appear on the REVIEWS page as they reach the time window in which I rate.