TrackFlo
Working a load

Mark a load as an exception

Updated today

The Mark as Exception flags mark a load inside TrackFlo only. Nothing is sent to your TMS (transportation management system): use them when you want a load to stand out to your team, not to change anything in your TMS.

Two things share the word "exception." The exceptions that drive the board — Stationary Too Long, Late to Delivery, and the rest — are detected automatically from load conditions. The Exception Load? flag here is set by a person. Both say "something about this load needs attention," but they're recorded separately: clearing one doesn't affect the other.

Where the flags live

  • Open the load and select Exception. The panel heading is Mark as Exception.

  • Fill in the info to mark the load as exception, then select Mark as Exception.

  • The flags are saved to the load, and the load appears with its icon on all boards.

Fields

  • Exception Load?

  • Hot Load?

  • High Value Load?

All three fields are optional, so you can set any combination of flags.

What each flag is for

Nothing in the product enforces a meaning for these, so their value depends entirely on your team agreeing what they mean. A flag used three different ways by three trackers is worse than no flag.

The distinction most teams land on:

  • Hot Load — urgent right now. A customer is calling, or something is going wrong today. This is a temporary state, and somebody should be clearing it when the situation resolves.

  • High Value Load — valuable freight needing closer attention throughout, regardless of whether anything is currently wrong. This is a property of the load, set once.

  • Exception Load — something about this load is unusual and the next person should read the updates before acting. Use it for what the automatic exceptions can't detect: an unusual customer instruction, a facility with a known problem, a situation that needs context.

Write your version down somewhere your trackers will see it, and revisit it after a month. The most common failure is Hot Load creep: everything becomes hot, and the flag stops meaning anything.

The flags need somewhere to appear

Each flag has a matching workflow tab — Exception Loads Tab, Hot Loads Tab, and High Value Loads Tab — and those tabs are off by default. If the relevant tab isn't turned on in Workflows Included, the load still carries its icon on the boards but nobody can pull up a list of flagged loads.

Turn on the tabs for the flags you actually intend to use, and leave the rest off.

These flags stay in TrackFlo

Nothing here reaches your TMS. Anyone working from your TMS rather than from TrackFlo has no idea a load has been flagged.

So a flag is a message to your tracking team, not a record of the situation. If the reason behind the flag matters to anyone outside TrackFlo, add a load update as well — that's the part that syncs.

These flags are a TrackFlo concept and are never synced to your TMS. See Terminology glossary for how exceptions work in TrackFlo.

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