On-time and OTIF that survives a QBR
On-time pickup and delivery, and in-full performance, calculated against one agreed clock — appointment, requested date or portal — so your number and the shipper’s stop diverging mid-review.
Power BI consulting for freight and fleet operations
On-time delivery, freight cost and fleet dashboards, built by a senior Power BI consultant for logistics companies
A fixed-fee build for carriers, brokers, 3PLs and private fleets whose numbers are already in the TMS but never in one place: OTIF and on-time performance, cost per mile and fuel, lane and route profitability, carrier scorecards, driver and fleet utilization, dock throughput, detention and demurrage. One written price, typical delivery in 2–4 weeks, 30 days of hypercare included.
Representative dashboard — sample data
What you get
The freight numbers dispatch, sales and finance argue about
Every build covers the measures that decide whether a lane keeps running, not a generic KPI template.
Cost per mile, per stop, per load
Linehaul, fuel, driver pay and accessorials split into loaded and empty miles, so a rate conversation starts from what the load actually costs to run rather than a blended average.
Lane and route profitability
Margin by lane, customer, equipment type and season, with the round-trip view that shows when a well-priced headhaul is being paid for by an empty or losing backhaul.
Carrier scorecards
Tender acceptance, on-time pickup and delivery, claims and invoice accuracy per carrier, ranked so routing guide decisions rest on a record instead of on who called last.
Driver and fleet utilization
Revenue per truck per day, deadhead ratio, empty miles and available hours drawn from telematics, so idle capacity is visible while there is still a week left to sell it.
Dock throughput, detention and demurrage
Dwell time by door, site and hour, with detention and demurrage separated into recoverable and absorbed, so the charges you are eating are ranked before the next contract review.
How it works
Three steps from load records to a dispatch-ready view
- 1
Walk the lanes, then scope
A free consultation covers how you define on-time today, where accessorials and fuel land, which customers get a service report, and what dispatch checks each morning. We reply with a written scope, one fixed fee and a delivery date.
- 2
Connect, model, reconcile
We pull loads and stops from the TMS, dock events from the WMS, hours and miles from telematics, and status or invoice events from EDI, then reconcile revenue and cost per load against the settlements your finance team already closes.
- 3
Deploy and stand behind it
We publish to your governed workspace with row-level security by terminal, customer or carrier, walk dispatch, operations and finance through their own views, hand over documentation, and stay on for 30 days of included hypercare.
What a freight reporting build actually covers
Logistics operators are not short of records. The TMS knows every load and stop, the ELD knows every mile and hour, EDI messages tell you when a trailer was picked up and what the carrier billed — and yet the Monday service call still runs on a spreadsheet someone rebuilt from three exports. The work is engineering the layer underneath: joining load, event, telematics and settlement data on keys that actually match, agreeing what each measure means, and modelling it so it holds up when a customer disputes it. Microsoft’s own Power BI documentation (opens in new tab) describes the data, model, report and service layers involved, and a freight dashboard that survives peak season needs all four built deliberately.
Definitions decide the headline number here more than anywhere. Whether on-time is measured against the requested date or the scheduled appointment, whether a driver-caused reschedule resets the clock, when the detention meter starts and who is allowed to waive it, whether empty miles belong to the load that ended or the one that follows — each choice moves service and margin figures by a wide margin on the same underlying loads. We settle those with your operations lead first, then encode them in DAX measures (opens in new tab) that every page reuses, so the definition lives in the model rather than in five analysts’ spreadsheets. For context on how the wider freight system is measured, the US Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics (opens in new tab) publishes national freight and transportation data your internal trends can be read against.
Deliverables for a typical engagement: the report files and semantic model in your own tenant, tested measures for on-time and OTIF, cost per mile, lane and route margin, carrier performance, utilization and dwell, workspace and row-level security configuration, a refresh schedule with monitoring notes, and written documentation. Timeline is typically 2–4 weeks from kickoff, stated in your scope before you commit, with 30 days of post-delivery hypercare included.
Where logistics data actually lives
Nearly every freight build draws on the same four or five systems, and each one carries a familiar snag. Naming them early is what keeps a scope honest — the table below is the checklist we walk through during a consultation, not a promise that every source is reachable on day one.
| Source | What it carries | What it feeds | Common snag |
|---|---|---|---|
| TMS | Loads, stops, tenders, rates, accessorials, customer and lane references | On-time and OTIF, lane and route profitability, revenue per load | Accessorials coded inconsistently between terminals, so cost per load is not comparable until the codes are mapped |
| WMS | Receipts, picks, put-away, door and dock appointment events | Dock throughput, dwell by door and hour, warehouse labour against volume | Dock events timestamped when a clerk keys them rather than when the trailer moved |
| ELD and telematics | Miles, engine and idle hours, hours-of-service status, GPS breadcrumbs, fuel burn | Driver and fleet utilization, deadhead and empty miles, idle and fuel cost per truck | Vehicle identifiers that do not match the TMS tractor list, so miles and loads join badly |
| EDI 214 and 210 feeds | Shipment status events (214) and carrier freight invoices (210) | Carrier scorecards, milestone compliance, invoice accuracy and billed-vs-quoted variance | Status codes sent late or in bulk at end of day, which flatters milestone timing unless it is flagged |
| Fuel cards and settlement files | Fuel purchases, driver pay, carrier settlements, fuel surcharge | Cost per mile, margin after settlement, surcharge recovery | Arrives on a different close cycle than the TMS, so month-end and live views disagree unless the cut-off is modelled |
| Operations spreadsheets | Detention claims, customer exceptions, manual service notes | Detention recovery, exception reasons, service commentary on scorecards | The only record of why a load was late lives here, in free text, and needs an agreed reason list before it can be reported |
Where a source cannot be reached directly, we agree a reliable export path during scoping rather than assuming one, and we say so in the scope. Sharing the result outside your walls — a customer service page, a carrier scorecard — is handled with row-level security (opens in new tab) so one shipper never sees another’s rates.
Who this is for
It fits asset-based carriers, freight brokers, 3PLs, private fleets and distribution operations — one terminal or a dozen — where the service review still runs on exports somebody assembled at 6am. A dispatch manager who wants yesterday’s late loads by reason before the morning call. A sales lead who suspects two lanes are carrying the rest of the book but cannot prove it. A controller who needs cost per mile to move with fuel and driver pay rather than a month-end estimate. An operations director tired of paying detention nobody billed for. If your reporting is accurate but arrives too late to re-route anything, that is the gap this closes.
The freight side is deliberately not the plant side. If your question is what happened on the production line — OEE, downtime reasons, scrap and throughput from MES and ERP data — that work is scoped on our Power BI consultant for manufacturing page instead. This page is for what happens after the dock door: loads, lanes, carriers, drivers and trailers, modelled from TMS, WMS, telematics and EDI. Manufacturers with their own fleet often end up wanting both, and we scope them as separate, connected builds rather than pretending one model answers both questions.
This page is the freight-shaped version of our wider fixed-fee Power BI dashboard development service, so nothing here is a different engineering standard — only a different vocabulary. Two questions usually come up before a scope is signed, and we have written both up honestly: what a Power BI dashboard build actually costs, with the factors that move a fixed fee up or down, and how to choose a Power BI consultant, including the questions worth asking before you hand anyone your rate and settlement data. Operations that want the detention log or the driver exception sheet replaced at source often pair the build with a custom Power App for drivers and dock staff, and many add Power Automate alerts when a load misses a milestone so the dashboard pushes rather than waits to be opened.
Fixed-fee project tiers
Three common shapes cover most logistics requests. Every fee is fixed and put in writing after your free consultation — the table shows scope and typical timeline, not prices, because an honest price requires seeing your sources first.
| Tier | Scope | Typical timeline | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| On-time and cost per mile starter | One TMS as the single source: on-time pickup and delivery on one agreed clock, cost per mile and per load, loaded versus empty miles, and refresh configured | About 2 weeks | Fixed fee — scoped after your free consultation |
| Lane, carrier and dock performance pack | TMS with WMS or EDI alongside it: lane and route profitability, carrier scorecards, dwell and detention with recoverable charges separated, and role-based views for dispatch and sales | 2–3 weeks | Fixed fee — scoped after your free consultation |
| Multi-terminal governed rollout | Telematics, EDI and settlement data blended across terminals, fleet utilization and driver views, row-level security by terminal, customer or carrier, certified datasets and admin documentation | 3–4 weeks | Fixed fee — scoped after your free consultation |
Whatever the tier, you own every artifact — report files, semantic model, measure definitions and workspace settings live in your Microsoft tenant from the first day.
Related services
Other ways we make Microsoft easy
Power BI Dashboards
The wider fixed-fee dashboard service: semantic models, DAX, governed reporting and Fabric migration for any industry.
Power Apps Consulting
Driver, dock and dispatch apps that replace the detention logs, exception sheets and paper forms feeding your reports.
Power Automate Consulting
Alerts and workflows for missed milestones, late tenders and detention claims, so exceptions chase people instead of waiting.
What a dashboard really costs
An honest fixed-fee cost breakdown and the factors that move the number on a Power BI build.
Outgrown your Excel reports?
The warning signs that a weekly load or service spreadsheet has stopped being reporting and started being risk.
How to choose a consultant
The questions to ask before you hand anyone your rate, settlement and customer service data.
FAQ
Freight reporting questions, answered
Every build includes discovery with your operations and finance leads, connections to your TMS, WMS, telematics or EDI feeds, a semantic model, validated on-time, cost per mile, lane margin and utilization measures, role-based pages for dispatch and management, governed workspace deployment, and written documentation. Scope and fee are agreed in writing first.
Usually several at once. Loads and stops come from the TMS, warehouse tasks and dock events from the WMS, hours and miles from ELD telematics, and status or invoice events from EDI 214 and 210 feeds. Where a system has no usable connector, we agree a reliable export path during scoping.
We settle it before we build. On-time against the requested date, the scheduled appointment, or the customer's own portal produces three different numbers from the same loads. We agree one definition per customer program with your operations lead, encode it once in the model, and label it on every report page.
The fee reflects how many operating systems we connect, how consistently loads, stops and accessorials are coded, and how many role-based views dispatch, operations, sales and finance need. After a free consultation you receive a written scope with one price, and that price moves only if the scope does.
Typical delivery is two to four weeks from kickoff. A single on-time and cost per mile starter from one TMS lands at the short end; a multi-terminal rollout blending telematics, EDI and settlement data with row-level security sits at the longer end. Your scope states the delivery date before you commit.
Yes, and it is a governance decision as much as a technical one. We use row-level security so a customer sees only their lanes and a carrier only its own scorecard, agree what is shared before publishing, and document the rules so nobody has to guess who can see which shipper's rates.
Book a free consultation
Get more from the Microsoft tools you already pay for
Tell us what you’re trying to fix — a report, an approval process, an intranet, a Copilot rollout. We scope it as a fixed-fee project, you approve, and a senior engineer delivers in 2–4 weeks.
- Fixed-fee scope agreed before any work starts
- Senior, US-based Microsoft engineers — no handoffs
- Typical 2–4 week delivery
- 30 days of post-delivery hypercare included
The fastest way to reach us is the form — tell us the task and we’ll reply within one business day.