Afferent Rule overview

June 17, 2026
Developers

Routing Logic Directives (RLD) govern how shipments are manifested on shipper accounts according to business rules.

The purpose of this article is to detail Afferent Rules which are a class of RLD rules that affect rate requests and shipment creation requests made to common carriers for shipments tender.

Overview

Before a rate or create shipment request is made to a common carrier, defined business rules govern the contents of the payload request made to the carrier. This type is Afferent. Afferent Rules transform the contents of the original request to a target required, either according to internal business rules or to align with carrier api specifications according to match conditions specified within the Afferent Rule created within a RLD Template.

Afferent Rule Components

Multiple Afferent Rules can be created within a RLD Template, and include each of the following components.

Match conditions

Match conditions of criteria operators include the following types: All (AND), Any (OR), None (Not).

Match criteria

1. Sender

Sender fields available for match criteria, include the following:

Sender Name
Sender Company
Sender Address 1
Sender City
Sender State
Sender Postal Code
Sender Country
Sender Residential

2. Receiver

Receiver fields available for match criteria, include the following:

Receiver Name
Receiver Company
Receiver Address 1
Receiver City
Receiver State
Receiver Postal Code
Receiver Country
Receiver Residential

3. Package

Package fields available for match criteria, include the following:

Package Type
Package Quantity
Declared Value
Actual Weight
Package Length
Package Width
Package Height

4. Line Items

Line Item fields available for match criteria, include the following:

Line Item SKU
Line Item HS Code
Country of Origin

5. Options

Options fields available for match criteria, include the following:

Saturday Delivery
Cash on Delivery
Cash on Delivery Amount
Dropoff Type

6. Reference

Reference fields available for match criteria, include the following:

Reference 1
Reference 2
Reference 3

7. Rate

Rate fields available for match criteria, include the following:

Carrier
Service Name

8. Time

Time fields available for match criteria, include the following:

Day of Week
Time of Day

Each of the match criteria listed above is used either individually or in conjunction with other rules to create logic to control the match conditions to support the modification of information included in a given shipment included within a subsequent rate request or shipment creation request.

Tranformation

Modification of the information included within the payload of the shipment sent to the carrier targets any one of the following types. An is, the contents of the rate request or shipping label creation request includes the information set by the transformation rule.

1. Carrier Filter

Set fields avilable within Carrier Filter transformation is as follows:

Allowed Carriers

2. Sender

Set fields available within Sender transformation is as follows:

Sender Residential

3. Receiver

Set fields avilable within Receiver transformation is as follows:

Receiver Residential

4. Package

Set fields available within Package transformation is as follows:

Actual Weight
Package Type
Package Length
Package Width
Package Height
Declared Value

5. Options

Set fields available within Options transformation is as follows:

Cash on Delivery
Cash on Delivery Amount
Dropoff Type

6. References

Set fields available within References transformation is as follows:

Reference 1
Reference 2
Reference 3

7. Account Holder

Set fields available within Account Holder transformation is as follows:

Include or Exclude shipping accounts assigned to shipper

Afferent Rule Use Case

Common use cases for Afferent Rules for use within a RLD Template include some of the following:

Include or Exclude Shipping Accounts from a given rate or label creation request by sender origin.
Correct invalid set residential type given the service specified to the correct, target value.
Exclude Carriers from rate and shipment label requests given the type of product included within a shipment or HS Code specified.