When a customer searches for fuel, they may choose to reserve fuel that is made with either a firm or an indicative offer. Firm offers are instantly booked and require no action from you to confirm the reservation. Indicative offers require confirmation from you before the reservation can be completed.
Indicative offers also allow for negotiation on price, quantity, and delivery details. By offering an indicative price, you are allowing your customer to counter your price. You will have the opportunity to review the requested price and all other details and may deny, accept, or counter back. Your customer can then accept your new offer, reject the new offer, or counter again. There is no limit to the number of counteroffers that can occur in an indicative thread.
The price details—whether your offer is firm or indicative—are set by you, the merchant, at the structure level.
Managing indicative requests
Request details can be accessed at any time by navigating to the Requests manager. Click on the request, then the Respond button for detailed information and ways to respond.
Responding to an indicative request
When a customer completes a fuel request on an indicative offer, you will receive an on-platform notification and email. Click on the link in the email or in the Gasology notification center, select the new request, and review your customer’s fuel request.
Reservation request email:
Every indicative reservation request and every subsequent counteroffer has an expiration time, set by whoever makes the request or counteroffer, with a maximum expiry time of 60 minutes. It’s important to respond to reservation requests quickly.
The Fuel Request window shows the details of your customer’s request, which may include quantity requested, delivery window, countered price, and delivery details.
There are four possible next steps:
- Deny the indicative request
- Indicative request expires
- Counter the indicative request
- Approve the indicative request
Denying a request
If you are unable to fulfill the reservation as requested by the buyer and are not willing or able to negotiate, you may deny the indicative request.
To deny a request, click Deny request in the Fuel Request window. It is recommended to complete the Notes field to let your buyer know why you cannot accept a request and are not able to counter.
Request expired
Fuel requests are valid for the amount of time set by the buyer, up to a maximum of 60 minutes, and will expire if you do not respond in time. If a request expires, you will receive an in-platform notification alerting you of the expired offer. A notification email is not sent when price requests expire.
When you are responding to an indicative price request, you may also set an expiration time. Similarly, the buyer must respond within that time window, or the offer expires, and you will receive an in-platform notification.
Countering a request
If you are unable to meet your customer’s exact reservation request but are able to negotiate one or more of the request details, click Counter Request to begin a counteroffer.
You may counter the price, delivery window, and quantity requested. Edit any of these fields to propose a change to your customer.
Next, complete the Request Valid For (minutes) field to set an expiration time for your counteroffer. You may also add Notes for your customer.
Once you have edited any fields you wish to counter, click Submit counter to submit. Click Back to Original Offer to discard your proposed changes and return to the original counteroffer.
Your customer will receive an in-platform notification and an email letting them know that they have a counteroffer. They can then approve, deny, or send another counter.
If your customer counters again, you will receive an in-platform notification and an email.
If your customer approves the offer, you will receive an in-platform notification and an email.
Approving a request
If you are able to accept your customer’s request, or once you have countered back and forth and arrived at an agreed-upon offer, click Approve request in the Fuel Request window. You may also include Notes to your customer.
You will see a summary window of the approved request. Click Ok to close.
Once approved, you and your customer will both receive an on-platform notification and an email receipt for the transaction. An in-platform notification will take you to the following modal showing a transaction summary:
Upon customer approval, or approval on your side of the transaction, the reservation process is complete.
The reservation will now show up in the Activity manager with all reservation details. You can also create an e-shipment once the fuel has been delivered by navigating to the Deliver/Receive manager.
Up next
After delivering your customer's fuel (or after customer pickup) the transaction will need to be closed out. Visit our article on Closing out a transaction to learn more.