What a contract is

Last updated: August 26, 2026

A contract is the agreement that sits behind a provider. It's what decides whether that provider can carry a given order, and what it costs if it does. This page covers what a contract is and what it affects — not how to create, price, or edit one, which isn't something you do from the portal.

What a contract is

Every provider connected to your organization — an outside carrier or your own fleet — has one or more contracts behind it. A contract is the versioned pricing and eligibility agreement for that provider: it belongs to the provider, and a provider can have more than one, each covering different terms. When you open a provider's detail drawer and pick a contract from the Contract section, you're looking at one of these agreements — its rates and the rules that decide when it applies.

You don't work with a contract directly as its own object. You encounter it through the provider it belongs to: in the drawer's Contract section, and, indirectly, every time you see a quote at dispatch (more on that below).

What a contract charges

A contract carries the rate card that prices a delivery: the base delivery price, plus fees layered on top of it — insurance, toll, wait time, cancellation, and returns. A contract can price differently from another contract behind the same provider, or from a contract behind a different provider entirely; there's no single price list across your organization, just whatever each eligible contract quotes for a given order.

What a contract gates

A contract also carries the eligibility rules that decide whether it's even in the running for a given order. A contract can gate eligibility on:

  • Geography — the zones or areas it covers; see manage zones for how zones are defined.
  • Vehicle type — what kind of vehicle the delivery needs.
  • Package requirements — size, weight, or handling requirements the delivery must meet.
  • Active period — the effective dates and time windows the contract applies during.
  • Lead time — how far in advance an order needs to be placed.
  • Distance — how far the delivery can travel.
  • Order value — minimum and maximum declared value.

An order only gets a quote from a contract if it clears every rule that contract sets. Change any of those inputs — where an order ships from or to, what it needs, when it's placed — and a different set of contracts ends up eligible.

Why contracts are set up by Nash

Important

Contracts are set up and priced by Nash. There's no portal flow to create a contract, adjust its rate card, or change its eligibility rules directly. Availability of specific contracts and terms varies by organization — if you want a contract added, priced differently, or its eligibility changed, reach out to Nash.

This holds for contracts behind outside providers. Your own fleet's terms are a different concept, managed in Fleet rather than here — see manage your fleet.

The one thing you control

There is exactly one contract-level change you make yourself: a provider eligibility override. It lets you restrict where one of a provider's contracts applies for your organization — to specific pickup or dropoff locations. It's a location restriction, and it doesn't change the contract's price. See override provider contract eligibility for how to set one.

How a quote ties back to a contract

At dispatch, every quote you see comes from exactly one eligible contract. The quote's price is that contract's price; the fact that it showed up at all means the order cleared that contract's eligibility rules. If you're ever looking at a quote and wondering why a particular provider offered that price, or why a provider you expected doesn't have a quote at all, the answer traces back to a contract behind it — its rate card, or a rule it didn't clear.

Picking a winner among the quotes that come back — automatically by dispatch strategy, or by hand — is a dispatch decision, not a contract one. See how dispatch works for how a winner gets chosen.

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