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Integrations and Public API Overview

See which outside systems the Tai TMS connects to - carriers, tracking, load boards, accounting, payments - and how its public API works.

This article gives a high-level catalog of the kinds of outside systems the Tai TMS connects to — carriers and rating, tracking providers, load boards, accounting, payments, fuel, and factoring — and explains that the Tai TMS also offers a versioned public API so customers and partners can integrate their own systems with it.

Overview

The Tai TMS is built to sit at the center of your freight brokerage and exchange data with the outside systems you already use, so information doesn't have to be re-keyed by hand. It connects to carriers for rating and dispatch, to visibility providers for tracking, to load boards for posting available freight, to accounting and payment systems for billing and settlement, and to specialized services for fuel pricing and factoring. In addition to these built-in connections, the Tai TMS publishes its own public API — a documented, versioned interface that lets your team or a technology partner build custom integrations that read from and write to the Tai TMS directly.

How it works

Categories of built-in integrations. The Tai TMS groups its outside connections by what they do. At a high level, these categories include:

  • Carriers and rating engines — getting live rate quotes and dispatching loads to carriers. This spans real-time carrier and marketplace rate lookups as well as capacity and pricing intelligence services.
  • Tracking / visibility providers — pulling a shipment's current status, location, and milestone dates. The Tai TMS supports both direct carrier tracking (a large number of carriers) and third-party visibility networks.
  • Load boards — advertising your available freight to carriers, then updating or removing those postings. The Tai TMS can post, repost, and remove loads across multiple boards.
  • Accounting systems — syncing invoices, bills, and financial records into your accounting platform.
  • Payments and settlement — processing carrier and customer payments, including credit-card gateways and carrier-payment services.
  • Fuel — looking up fuel-surcharge and fuel-related invoice amounts from a fuel-pricing service.
  • Factoring — working with factoring companies so carrier payments and invoices are routed correctly.

Alongside these, the Tai TMS integrates with supporting services such as carrier onboarding and compliance networks, document OCR (reading data off uploaded documents), dock/appointment scheduling, and shared-inbox/communication tools.

Each integration is turned on per organization and works quietly in the background: when you rate, dispatch, track, post, bill, or pay, the Tai TMS reaches out to the relevant outside system, brings the result back, and records it on the shipment.

The public API. For customers and partners who want to connect their own software, the Tai TMS offers a public API — a stable, documented web interface. Through it, external systems can perform core operations such as rate quoting, booking and managing shipments, checking shipment status, managing driver-tracking sessions, and working with customers, carriers, invoices, bills, payments, commissions, staff, organizations, and load-board data. The public API also accepts inbound notifications (webhooks) from integration partners, so partner systems can push updates into the Tai TMS. Access is controlled with an API key issued to you, and the API is documented so your developers can see exactly what operations and data shapes are available.

The public API is offered in more than one version. A newer version (v2) is published alongside the original so that new capabilities can be added without changing the shapes existing integrations already depend on. Newer areas exposed through v2 include, for example, driver-tracking session management — starting, updating, refreshing, canceling, and messaging a driver-tracking session for a shipment from your own system — alongside expanded carrier, organization, and accounting operations. Your integration keeps using the version it was built against.

Rate limiting. To keep the public API fast and fair for everyone, requests are subject to rate limits enforced at the network edge before they reach the Tai TMS. Limits apply per organization and per API key, and they cap how many requests you can make over rolling per-minute, per-day, and per-month windows. Well-behaved integrations rarely notice them; a client that sends bursts of traffic beyond its allotment will have the excess requests rejected until the window resets. If your integration is being throttled, slow your request rate or contact Tai to review your limits.

Business rules & limits

  • Integrations are enabled per organization. Each connection to an outside system is configured for your organization, so what's available to you depends on which integrations your organization has set up and turned on.
  • The catalog is broad but not universal. The Tai TMS connects to many carriers, boards, and providers across the categories above, but not to every possible vendor. Whether a specific carrier, board, accounting system, or payment provider is supported depends on the current integration catalog; new integrations are added over time.
  • The public API is versioned and kept backward-compatible. The Tai TMS publishes its public API under a stable version, and changes within a version are additive only — existing fields and behavior are not changed out from under integrators. When a change would break existing integrations, it is introduced as a new version rather than by altering the current one, so your integration keeps working.
  • The public API is documented and opt-in per operation. The available operations are published in the API's documentation. Not every internal capability is exposed externally; only the operations intended for external use appear in the public API.
  • API access requires a key. Calls to the public API are authenticated with an API key. Partner notifications (webhooks) use partner-specific authentication. Without valid credentials, requests are rejected.
  • The public API is rate-limited. Requests are capped per organization and per API key over rolling per-minute, per-day, and per-month windows, and the limit is applied at the network edge before the request reaches the Tai TMS. Requests beyond the allotment are rejected until the window resets. This protects overall performance and is expected behavior, not an outage.
  • Some integrations are pull-based. Tracking, for example, works by the Tai TMS actively requesting the latest status from the provider or carrier when needed, rather than the carrier continuously pushing updates. That means status reflects the most recent pull.

Frequently asked questions

What kinds of outside systems does the Tai TMS integrate with?

The Tai TMS integrates across several categories: carriers and rating engines (for quotes and dispatch), tracking/visibility providers (for shipment status and location), load boards (for posting available freight), accounting systems (for syncing invoices and bills), payment and settlement services (for carrier and customer payments), fuel-pricing services (for fuel surcharges), and factoring companies. It also connects to supporting services like carrier onboarding/compliance, document OCR, and appointment scheduling.

Does the Tai TMS have an API I can use to build my own integration?

Yes. The Tai TMS publishes a versioned public API that lets customers and partners integrate their own systems. Through it you can do things like request rate quotes, book and manage shipments, check shipment status, and work with customers, invoices, bills, payments, commissions, staff, organizations, and load-board data. It also accepts inbound webhooks from partner systems. Access is controlled with an API key, and the operations are documented for your developers.

Will my integration break when Tai updates the API?

No — the Tai TMS keeps its public API backward-compatible within a version. Changes within a version are additive only, so existing fields and behavior stay the same. If a change would break existing integrations, it is released as a new version rather than by changing the current one, so your existing integration continues to work until you choose to move to the newer version.

Can the Tai TMS post my available loads to load boards?

Yes. Load boards are one of the Tai TMS integration categories. The system can post your available freight to the boards your organization has connected, and it can also update (repost) and remove those postings. Which specific boards are available depends on the integrations your organization has configured.

Does the Tai TMS connect to accounting and payment systems?

Yes. The Tai TMS integrates with accounting systems to sync invoices, bills, and financial records, and with payment and settlement services (including credit-card processing and carrier-payment services) to handle customer and carrier payments. It also works with factoring companies so carrier invoices and payments are routed correctly. The specific systems available depend on your organization's configured integrations.

Is every carrier and vendor supported?

Not necessarily. The Tai TMS supports a broad set of carriers, load boards, tracking providers, accounting systems, and payment/fuel/factoring services, and the catalog grows over time, but it does not connect to every possible vendor. Whether a particular provider is available depends on the current integration catalog and what your organization has enabled.

How does tracking data get into the Tai TMS?

For tracking, the Tai TMS pulls the latest status and milestone dates from the carrier or visibility provider when an update is needed, then normalizes it into the standard Tai statuses. Because it is pull-based, the status you see reflects the most recent pull rather than a continuous live feed.

How is access to the public API secured?

Access to the Tai TMS public API is controlled with an API key issued to you, and inbound partner notifications (webhooks) use partner-specific authentication. Requests without valid credentials are rejected. This keeps your data accessible to your authorized integrations while blocking unauthenticated access.

Are there limits on how many public-API requests I can make?

Yes. The Tai TMS public API applies rate limits per organization and per API key over rolling per-minute, per-day, and per-month windows, enforced at the network edge before the request reaches the system. Normal integrations rarely hit them, but a client that sends large bursts will have the excess requests rejected until the window resets. If you are being throttled, reduce your request rate or contact Tai to review your limits.

Can I manage driver tracking through the public API?

Yes. A newer area of the public API (v2) lets your own system manage a shipment's driver-tracking session — starting, updating, refreshing, canceling, and sending a message to it — in addition to the core operations for quoting, booking, tracking, invoicing, and working with customers, carriers, and organizations. New areas like this are added under a newer API version so existing integrations keep working unchanged.