The file viewer — reading and editing a rate workbook in place

The split preview, and the row cap

Opening a file keeps the list on the left and puts the workbook on the right, with a notice stating that large sheets are previewed to the first several hundred rows. Check the sheet's row count against that cap before drawing any conclusion from what you see. Under the cap you are reading the file; over it you are reading the top of one, and the difference does not announce itself.

Sheet tabs: the customer's sheet, and the shared ones

The tabs usually show one sheet belonging to this customer and several that do not — the shared reference tables stamped into the workbook. Recognising which is which stops you editing a shared table when you meant to edit a rate, and confirms from inside the workbook that the tariff really is inherited.

Full width, and where the data actually starts

Expand to full width and the sheet's real structure appears: rows of preamble, then a header row below them, and often an empty leading column. Two habits follow. Find the header row before you count anything, and read the units row before you read any number — a rate sheet will state whether its figures are dollars per hundredweight or something else, and every later interpretation depends on it.

The rate ladder

LTL rate sheets are built as weight breaks: a minimum, then successively larger thresholds, with the rate falling as weight rises. That taper is the volume incentive, and reading it across a lane tells you what a customer pays for consolidating freight onto fewer, heavier shipments.

Two things worth checking in any rate sheet

Both are visible from the ladder alone and both have pricing consequences.

• A break that stops tapering — If the top two breaks hold the same rate, there is no volume incentive above the lower one. Confirm that was intentional.
• Identical rates, different rate bases — When lanes with distinct rate bases carry one identical set of rates, whatever decides the number is not the rate base column alone.

Long decimals are not corruption

A cell showing a value to fifteen decimal places is ordinary binary floating-point residue of a normal number — the viewer displays the stored value rather than a formatted one. Nothing is wrong with the file. It does, however, mean the sheet is carrying more precision than its own header promises, which is what makes the next few steps worth reading.

Edit history

Edit history lists what has happened to this file — each change, when, and by whom, with the base version often unattributed. Revert is one click from here. That is precisely what makes editing a shared file a reasonable thing to do: the safety comes from the version list, not from the edit being careful.

Editing in place, and the amber banner

Switching to edit mode raises an amber banner stating that editing overwrites the shared file. Not a copy, not a personal draft, not your view of it. Save stays disabled until something actually changes, so opening edit mode is safe; leaving it with a save is the committed act.

What rounding a rate actually costs

Rates on these sheets are dollars and cents per hundredweight, so tidying a long decimal down to the cents the header promises changes the price by that difference multiplied by the shipment's hundredweight. On a single mid-sized shipment it is a few cents. Multiplied by every shipment on the lane over a contract term it stops being a rounding question, which is the argument for making this edit deliberately rather than while tidying up.

What to check after any in-place edit

Finished runs read the file once and do not re-read it, and a run can be in flight while you save. So the question after an in-place edit is not whether it saved — the version list already answered that. It is which completed runs now quote a number this file no longer contains, and whether any of them has already been sent. Edit the file, then go and check the runs.