Smart Rate Shopping
Carrier performance reports
See on-time rates by carrier, service, and lane — and how much Smart Rate Shopping has saved you this month.
Where to find it
Go to Admin → Analytics → Carrier performance (path:
/admin/analytics/carrier-performance). The dashboard breaks down every shipment in the last 90 days by carrier, service level, origin zone, and destination zone, and computes on-time and exception rates per combination.Reading the heatmap
The main view is a heatmap where rows are (carrier, service) and columns are (origin zone, destination zone). Each cell shows on-time percentage, color-coded green (95%+) to red (under 80%). Click any cell to drill into the underlying shipments and see which ones missed the predicted delivery date and by how much.
Identifying underperforming lanes
Sort the table by "on-time rate, ascending" to surface the worst-performing combinations. Common findings: "FedEx Home Delivery from Zone 2 to Zone 8 is hitting 71% on-time" or "UPS Ground from California to Florida is 4 days slower than predicted in May". From there, update your rate shopping profile to exclude that service on that lane, or raise the SmartRate confidence percentile so the predictor stops recommending it.
The monthly savings widget
On /admin/analytics/rate-shopping, the top card shows "ShipWave saved you $X this month". The number is computed by comparing the rate you actually purchased to the rate you would have purchased under a naive "default carrier" baseline (typically your most-used carrier before SmartRate was on). Click the card to see the per-shipment breakdown: each row shows the actual cost, the baseline cost, and the delta.
Back-testing predictions
The Prediction accuracy tab back-tests SmartRate against your actual delivery dates. If 85th-percentile predictions are landing 92% on-time over the last 90 days, the predictor is being slightly conservative — you could safely move to 80th percentile and save more on rates. If they are landing 78% on-time, bump up to 90th or 95th percentile. Adjust in Settings → SmartRate and the system will retune from the next shipment forward.
Exporting and sharing
Every chart on the dashboard has an Export button (CSV and PNG). Useful for vendor reviews — bring a carrier rep a screenshot of their underperforming lanes and ask for a credit or a service-level change. The lane-level data is also queryable via the
read:analytics API scope; see API scopes explained.FAQs
How does ShipWave know an on-time delivery?
Every shipment record stores the predicted delivery date (from SmartRate at the time of purchase) and the actual delivery date (from carrier tracking events). On-time = actual <= predicted.
What counts as an "exception"?
Any tracking event in the categories DELIVERY_EXCEPTION, RETURN_TO_SENDER, FAILED_DELIVERY_ATTEMPT, or LOST/DAMAGED. The exception rate is shown alongside on-time on every row.
Why is my savings number different from what I expected?
The baseline assumes you would have shipped your single most-used carrier-service combo for every order. If that is not realistic for your business, change the baseline in Settings → SmartRate → Savings baseline (options: most-used, retail, naive cheapest).
Can I get this data in BigQuery / Snowflake?
Yes. Connect via the standard ShipWave data export integrations (Admin → Integrations → Data warehouse). The carrier-performance fact table is exported nightly with the same schema the dashboard uses.
More in Smart Rate Shopping
- Smart Rate Shopping overview
Use real carrier transit performance — not published transit days — to pick the cheapest rate that will actually arrive on time.
- Rate shopping profiles
Save named rate-shopping strategies (cheapest, fastest, preferred carrier with fallback) and assign them per channel or per warehouse.
- The Promise Engine and Shopify widget
Show shoppers a real "order in next 4h 12m for delivery by Wed" countdown driven by SmartRate — not a hardcoded promise.