Home Depot Routing Chargeback: Collect Freight, Their Way

Executive Summary & Quick Answer

Executive summary: Routing violations are different in kind from ASN violations: they happen before any EDI document exists. On collect shipments — freight Home Depot pays to move — Home Depot decides the carrier and the routing, through its transportation management system. Ship on a carrier you picked, skip the routing request, or bypass the TMS, and the $250 offset posts regardless of whether the freight arrived perfectly. The violation is also a gateway defect: freight that bypasses the TMS has no TMS Ship ID for its ASN, so one routing shortcut routinely produces a second offset downstream. The routing guide lives in the Supplier Hub; the discipline lives at the moment someone books a truck.

Quick answer: Home Depot's routing chargeback is a $250 offset assessed when a collect shipment is not booked or routed through Home Depot's designated transportation management system, or moves on an unauthorized carrier. Routing compliance is mandatory for all collect shipments — book through the TMS and use only the assigned carrier.

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Deep Dive: Who Books the Truck on Collect Freight

The dividing line is freight terms. On collect shipments, Home Depot pays the freight — which means Home Depot owns the routing decision. The supplier's job is to submit the routing request through Home Depot's TMS and load the carrier that comes back. Three distinct failures land under this one violation:

Failure	What happened	Where it starts
Unauthorized carrier	Freight moved on a carrier Home Depot didn't assign	Dock/booking desk
TMS bypass	Shipment never booked through Home Depot's TMS	Booking process
No routing request	Nobody submitted the request; freight moved anyway	Order-to-ship workflow

The compliant sequence, and what each step feeds:

PO (EDI 850) ──► routing request in HOME DEPOT TMS
                        │
                assigned carrier + TMS Ship ID issued
                        │
        ship on THAT carrier ──► Ship ID onto the 856 ──► clean receipt

Note what the diagram implies: the TMS booking is upstream of the ASN. Skip it and you don't just take the $250 routing offset — you have no TMS Ship ID to put on the 856, which is its own $100 violation. Routing shortcuts cascade.

Why suppliers take the shortcut anyway: the assigned carrier's pickup window doesn't fit, the order is running late and a faster carrier "saves" the delivery date, or a new shipping clerk simply doesn't know collect freight has different rules. All three feel locally reasonable and all three invoice at $250.

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Business & Financial Impact

• $250 offset per violation — flat, per occurrence, independent of shipment size.
• The cascade is the real cost: a TMS bypass typically drags a $100 TMS Ship ID offset with it, and an off-guide carrier scramble made to "save" a delivery date can still miss the window — stacking routing and on-time penalties on the same shipment.
• No performance defense: the freight arriving on time and intact does not cure the violation. The offset prices the process deviation, not the outcome.
• Concentrated in exceptions: routing violations cluster around rush orders, carrier no-shows, and new staff — the moments when someone improvises. The baseline process is usually fine; the exception path is where the fines live.

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Root Causes (Ranked)

1. Shipping via an unauthorized carrier — the assigned carrier was inconvenient, late, or unknown to the booker, so freight moved on someone else. The most common and most deliberate cause.
2. Not routing the shipment through Home Depot's TMS — the booking process ran through the supplier's own transportation workflow, treating collect freight like prepaid.
3. Routing request not submitted — a workflow gap: the order reached ship-ready with no routing request on file, and the dock shipped rather than waited.

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Step-by-Step Prevention Workflow

1. Split the workflow on freight terms at order entry. Collect POs route down a different path than prepaid — one where the Home Depot TMS booking is a required step, not tribal knowledge. The 850's terms drive the fork automatically.
2. Submit the routing request as soon as the shipment is planned. Late requests create the pressure that leads to off-guide carrier decisions. Early requests give the assigned carrier's schedule room to be workable.
3. Hard-gate dispatch on the TMS booking. No TMS Ship ID on the shipment record = the order cannot ship-confirm. This single control blocks the TMS bypass and the unauthorized carrier at the same choke point.
4. Handle carrier failures inside the system. When the assigned carrier misses pickup, the answer is a re-request through the TMS — not a dock-level substitution. Document the miss; don't inherit the fine.
5. Keep the routing guide current at the desk. The guide lives in the Supplier Hub. Whoever books freight checks it there — not from a printout that predates the last change.

collect PO ──► routing request (TMS) ──► carrier assigned
                                             │
                          dispatch gate: TMS booking on file?
                              │yes                │no
                              ▼                   ▼
                        ship on assigned      HOLD — book it

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Routing vs Related Home Depot Violations

Violation	Trigger	Typical fine
Routing violation	Collect freight off-TMS or on an unauthorized carrier	$250 per violation
TMS Ship ID	Ship ID missing/wrong on the 856 — often because routing was bypassed	$100 per ASN ($350 with late ASN)
On-time delivery (MABD)	Arrival after the must-arrive-by date	10% of items not shipped (below 90% on-time)

Routing sits upstream of both: the TMS booking produces the Ship ID the ASN needs, and the assigned routing is the plan the MABD clock is measured against.

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Supplier Checklist

• Order workflow forks on freight terms; collect POs require the TMS path
• Routing request submitted at shipment planning, not at ship-ready
• Dispatch hard-gated on a TMS booking / Ship ID on the shipment record
• Carrier no-shows handled by TMS re-request, never dock substitution
• Routing guide checked in the Supplier Hub, not from stale copies
• New shipping staff trained on collect-vs-prepaid rules before solo booking

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FAQs

What is Home Depot's routing chargeback? A $250 offset assessed when a collect shipment is not booked or routed through Home Depot's designated transportation management system, or moves on an unauthorized carrier. Routing compliance is mandatory for all collect shipments.

Does the fine apply if the shipment arrived on time? Yes. The offset prices the process deviation — the wrong carrier or the TMS bypass — not the delivery outcome.

The assigned carrier missed the pickup. Can we ship on another carrier? Not on your own authority. Rebook through Home Depot's TMS and document the carrier's miss. A dock-level substitution is an unauthorized-carrier violation even when it rescues the delivery date.

How does a routing violation cause other chargebacks? Freight that bypasses the TMS has no TMS Ship ID, so its ASN fails that check too — a $100 offset stacked on the $250 routing fee. One shortcut, two fines.

Where do we find the current routing rules? In the routing guide in Home Depot's Supplier Hub. Book collect freight from the live guide, not from saved copies.

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