A carrier adds a fuel surcharge to an order you quoted last week. Freight books the cost. Sales never sees the margin move.
The surcharge is on the carrier charge. The margin floor is on the sales order. In most Business Central environments nothing compares the two while the order is still open, and no team owns the call to absorb it, pass it through, consolidate or switch carrier.
This capability is on the OpsGrid roadmap, not shipped in the active beta today. A surcharge signal for open orders, with a named owner and a recorded absorb, pass-through or carrier-switch decision, is on the roadmap. Freight books the cost and sales owns the margin, so no single team has a reason to ask for a fix. If it hits your freight lines, apply and write “fuel surcharge” in the bottleneck field. We will ask for your surcharge threshold and margin floor in our reply and scope it against your BC data first.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’s October 2026 Beige Book reports that “the higher price for diesel reigned supreme in terms of the most commonly cited factor driving up costs,” with “widespread margin compression across numerous industries” (Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, 14 October 2026). On an order you already quoted, the surcharge changes the margin after the price is fixed.
Two surcharge signals, on the roadmap for Business Central.
Not live in the beta today. This is the design, using the routing pattern already running for inventory and supplier signals.
- Fuel surcharge above threshold on an open order Carrier charge in BC against base freight, flagged while the order can still be re-priced or re-routed
- Order margin below the floor after freight Margin before and after the surcharge, ranked by dollars lost, not a count
One surcharge, five stages, one recorded decision.
A worked example of the design. The order, amounts and settings are illustrative, not customer data, and nothing below is a live screenshot. The capability is not live in the beta today.
- Order value
- $42,000
- Quoted margin
- 17.5% ($7,350)
- Base freight
- $6,200
- Carrier surcharge
- 22% (+$1,364)
- Margin after surcharge
- 14.3%
Example settings: surcharge threshold 15% of base freight, margin floor 15%, response clock 4 business hours. Each is configurable.
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Signal
OpsGrid, watching Business CentralOpsGrid compares the carrier’s freight charge in BC with base freight on every open order. This order’s surcharge is 22% of base freight, above the 15% threshold, so it becomes a signal. Open surcharges are ranked by dollars exposed, not by count.
+$1,364 on one open order, ranked against every other open surcharge.
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Route
Two named peopleThe signal goes to one named owner, the Logistics Coordinator, with a response clock running. Margin falls from 17.5% to 14.3%, below the 15% floor, so the customer’s Sales owner is brought in as well. If the clock runs out, the card escalates to the approver’s manager.
One person decides. One person knows. Nothing waits in a shared inbox.
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Approve
The Logistics Coordinator, in Microsoft TeamsThe owner gets a card with the numbers and four options. Each option states what it does to margin and what OpsGrid will write to BC.
- Order
- Example sales order
- Surcharge
- 22% of base freight (+$1,364)
- Margin
- 17.5% to 14.3% (floor 15%)
- Decides
- Logistics Coordinator
- Notified
- Customer’s Sales owner
- AbsorbMargin stays at 14.3%. Recorded as an approved exception.
- Pass throughFreight charge on the order updated and a customer notice drafted. The approver confirms the contract allows it.
- ConsolidateLists open orders on the same lane that could ship together.
- Switch carrierA rebooking is drafted for confirmation.
Nothing posts to Business Central until the approver confirms.
One approval, with the margin consequence shown before the click.
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Execute
OpsGrid, writing to Business CentralOn approval, OpsGrid writes the outcome to BC: the freight charge updated on the sales order, a customer notice drafted for pass-through, or a carrier rebooking drafted for confirmation. The approver confirms each write.
Pass through chosen: freight charge updated on the order, margin back to 17.5%.
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Audit
OpsGrid, automaticallyEvery step is recorded as it happens. Nobody fills in a form, and finance reads the record at month-end without asking anyone what happened.
Illustrative audit record for the example order Surcharge $1,364 (22% of $6,200 base freight) Margin before decision 14.3% Decision Pass through Margin after decision 17.5% Approver Logistics Coordinator Sales owner notified Yes Signal to decision 1 h 40 min (example) Written to BC Freight charge on the sales order A decision with an owner, a number and a time stamp.
Before and after
| Step | Without the signal | With this signal (design) |
|---|---|---|
| Detect | The surcharge posts to freight cost. Nothing compares it to the order margin. | A surcharge above 15% of base freight on an open order is flagged. |
| Own | Freight sees the cost. Sales owns the margin. | The Logistics Coordinator decides. The Sales owner is notified below the margin floor. |
| Decide | Absorbed by default, or raised at month-end review. | Absorb, pass through, consolidate or switch carrier, inside a response clock. |
| Record | An email thread, if anyone wrote it down. | Approver, decision, margin before and after, logged automatically. |
| Write to BC | A manual correction, if anyone makes one. | Freight charge updated on approval. |
Freight sees the surcharge. Sales owns the margin. Nobody owns both.
This breaks at Route. The cost is on the carrier charge the day it posts, in a line sales never opens.
OpsGrid's live signals (stockout risk, stuck POs, supplier OTD) already carry the same named-owner, $0-unauthorized-write architecture this capability will use.