Buyer's Consolidation 
As a carrier, you can use this function if your customers regularly buy goods in a particular country or region. You can then consolidate goods from different suppliers that are intended for one consignee before the main carriage and load them into one container. The goods are not deconsolidated after the main carriage, they remain together in the container in the on-carriage stage also. This keeps the transport costs cheaper than with the LCL scenario for example (LCL = Less Than Container Load).
You can define rates for consolidated transportation in a separate calculation sheet.
Features
You create a container in your ocean freight booking, in other words, the container does not exist in the corresponding forwarding order. You specify that you want to use the container for Buyer's Consolidation in the container details. You then create a freight order for the container for the consolidated on-carriage from the ocean freight booking. The system automatically assigns the affected freight units to this freight order and copies seal information, quantities, and references from the ocean freight booking to the freight order.
Note
If you try to plan the on-carriage stage in the transportation cockpit before creating the freight order, the system issues an error message.
If no ocean freight booking exists for your forwarding order, you can specify directly in the forwarding order that it should be Buyer's Consolidation (Tab General Data). If you create an ocean freight booking for this forwarding order later on, the system copies this information to the ocean freight booking. If an ocean freight booking exists for your forwarding order, the corresponding checkbox in the forwarding order is not ready for input.
Forwarding Settlement Documents
You can create a forwarding settlement document (FWSD) for a buyer’s consolidation in your ocean freight booking. The system uses the Consolidation Container field for an individual line item in the 
Cargo Management 
Container Details 
, tab pages to identify buyer’s consolidation cargo in the ocean freight booking. You can also create an FWSD for an unplanned party in an ocean freight booking. This enables you to invoice for any unplanned charges or services that are associated with the ocean freight booking.
To calculate the charges for the cargo items on stages that are consolidated as a buyer’s consolidation in the ocean freight booking, the system uses an agreement item with the consolidation type Buyer’s Consolidation. If you have not defined an agreement item with the consolidation type Buyer’s Consolidation, the system uses a standard calculation sheet defined for full truck load (FTL) road transportation or full container load (FCL) sea transportation. If you have not defined a calculation sheet for FCL or FTL transportation, the system chooses an agreement with no shipping type. The system does not consider the calculation sheet for LCL or less than truck load (LTL) transportation.
The following restrictions apply to the use of the sales organization in all the forwarding orders that are linked to a cargo line item in a buyer’s consolidation:
If the sales organizations in all the forwarding orders are the same, then the system uses this sales organization in the FWSD.
If the sales organizations are different, the system tries to use the purchasing organization in the ocean freight booking. The purchasing organization has the organizational unit function that you have defined as a forwarding house (organizational unit function – 89) in the organization set up. The system uses this organization as the sales organization for the FWSD.
If none of these options apply, the system displays an error when it attempts to create the FWSD in the ocean freight booking.
Example
As a carrier, you want to transport three different products for your customer from three different manufacturers from Asia to Germany. You organize the consolidation of the goods in Shanghai port. This means that the pallets are loaded into a container in Shanghai. The container is then transported by sea to Hamburg. In Hamburg the container is loaded onto a truck. The truck then drives with the container to the distribution center in Hanover. This is where the container is deconsolidated.
The customer is invoiced at consolidated rates if you have defined an agreement item with the consolidation type Buyer’s Consolidation. If you have not defined an agreement item with the consolidation type Buyer’s Consolidation, the system uses the FCL rates for the stages by sea from Shanghai to Hamburg and for the onward journey from Hamburg to Hanover. You can create these FWSDs from the ocean freight booking.