If you are collecting quotes from three or four fulfillment providers right now, you have probably noticed that no two of them are formatted the same way. One quotes a bundled per-order rate. One breaks out nine line items. One sends a PDF with a pick fee and nothing else. 3PL pricing is quoted, not published, which makes apples-to-apples comparison genuinely hard.
This page fixes that. Below is every cost category that appears on a California fulfillment invoice, what triggers each one, and a worked monthly example so you can see how the arithmetic stacks. By the end you will be able to take two quotes that look nothing alike and force them into the same shape.
The lines on a fulfillment invoice
There are seven cost categories. Everything else is a variation on one of them.
| Line | What it charges for | How it is measured |
|---|---|---|
| Receiving | Getting your inventory into the building and into the system | Per pallet or per unit |
| Storage | The space your inventory occupies while it sits | Per bin, shelf or pallet position, per month |
| Pick and pack | Producing a finished, labelled parcel | Per order, plus per additional item |
| Shipping | Carrier postage | Per parcel, by billable weight and zone |
| Returns processing | Receiving, inspecting and restocking a returned unit | Per unit |
| Kitting and assembly | Bundling, subscription boxes, gift wrap, special handling | Quoted per project |
| Amazon FBA prep | Labelling and prep to Amazon’s requirements | Per ASIN, per unit |
That is our full list, and you can see the same categories written out on our pricing breakdown. If a quote you are holding has a category that is not on this list, ask what it is. If it has fewer than five, ask what got bundled and where.
Receiving: what you pay for the day your container lands
Receiving covers the physical work of accepting a shipment: breaking it down, counting it, inspecting it, scanning barcodes, entering it into our warehouse management system, and issuing a receiving report the same day.
It is charged per pallet on floor-loaded or palletised freight, and per unit on smaller inbound shipments. A 12-pallet container costs 12 units of receiving. A 400-unit parcel shipment from your manufacturer costs a per-unit rate.
Two things drive this line up, and both are inside your control. Freight that arrives unpalletised takes hours to break down instead of minutes. Freight that arrives without an accurate packing list has to be counted blind, and any discrepancy has to be documented before it can be put away.
The single cheapest thing you can do to lower your receiving cost is send a packing list that matches what is actually in the container. That is not a fee we invented. It is labour hours, and you are paying for them either way.
Storage: you are renting positions, not square footage
Storage is billed on the space your inventory actually occupies. Per bin for small items, per shelf for medium, per pallet position for bulk. You pay for positions in use. Empty positions are not charged.
This is the line that surprises people, because it is the only one that does not scale with sales. If your orders drop 30 percent in February, your pick and pack line drops with them. Your storage line does not. Slow inventory costs the same to store as fast inventory.
Look at your storage line as a percentage of the cost of goods sitting in those positions. If you are paying to store a SKU for eight months, the storage cost is real margin, and the fix is usually a smaller reorder quantity rather than a cheaper 3PL.
Pick and pack: the line that scales with orders
This is the per-order fee for pulling the items, packing them, applying the label and handing the parcel to the carrier. Standard poly mailers and corrugated boxes are included in ours. Custom branded boxes, printed inserts and gift messaging are quoted separately, because they are a separate purchase.
Most quotes structure this as a first-item rate plus a lower rate for each additional item in the same order. A single-item order costs one pick. A four-item order costs one pick plus three additional picks, because someone is walking to three more locations.
Two questions to ask about anyone’s pick fee. First: is packaging included, or billed at cost plus a handling percentage? Second: what happens to the rate at your peak month volume? Our pick and pack fulfillment rate does not carry a peak season surcharge, and you should confirm the same in writing with anyone else you are considering.
Shipping: this is the carrier’s number, not the 3PL’s
Postage is passed through. We buy at our volume rate and you pay that rate, which is normally below what you would get shipping the same parcels on your own account. You can also ship on your own carrier account if you have already negotiated something better.
Here is the part that costs brands real money, and it has nothing to do with which 3PL you pick.
Carriers do not bill the weight of your parcel. They bill the greater of actual weight and dimensional weight, which is a calculated figure based on the space the parcel occupies. UPS calculates it by multiplying length by width by height to get cubic size in inches, then dividing by a divisor: 139 for daily rates, and 166 for retail rates. FedEx uses 139 for shipments within the US, Puerto Rico and internationally.
Run your own box through it. A 14 by 12 by 8 inch box is 1,344 cubic inches. Divided by 139, that is a dimensional weight of 10 pounds. If your product weighs 3 pounds, you are paying 10 pound postage on a 3 pound product, on every order, forever.
Move to a 16 by 12 by 10 box and it is 1,920 cubic inches, or 14 billable pounds. Two inches of extra void fill cost you four pounds of postage per parcel.
USPS applied dimensional weight only above one cubic foot and used a more forgiving divisor, which made it the cheaper option for bulky, light parcels. That gap has closed. In a filing with the Postal Regulatory Commission, USPS said it would align its dimensional weight divisor to industry standards for Priority Mail Express, Priority Mail, USPS Ground Advantage and Parcel Select, effective July 12, 2026.
Carriers have also changed how they round fractional dimensions in the last year. Before you re-spec a box that sits close to a threshold, check the current rounding rule in your carrier’s service guide, because a box that measures 12.2 inches may not be billed as 12.
If you take one thing from this page, take this: right-sizing your carton will save you more money than switching 3PLs for a lower pick fee. We would rather tell you that than win your business on a comparison you are going to regret.
Returns processing
Charged per unit for receiving the return, inspecting it, photographing it where the condition is disputed, and restocking it. Items are processed within 48 hours of arrival, and anything unsellable is flagged and reported the same day rather than quietly written off.
The number to watch is not the per-unit rate. It is your return rate multiplied by your volume. At 900 orders a month, a 3 percent return rate is 27 units and barely registers on the invoice. At a 12 percent return rate, which is normal in apparel, it is 108 units plus the cost of the original outbound postage you will not get back.
Kitting, assembly and Amazon FBA prep
Both are quoted per project or per ASIN rather than from a rate card, because the labour is genuinely different every time. A two-item bundle in a printed sleeve is not the same job as a 14-piece subscription box with a rotating monthly insert.
Ask for the quote in labour terms: units per hour, and the rate. That is the only way to sanity-check it, and it is the only way to tell whether the number will hold when your bundle gets more complicated in Q4.
The lines that should not be there
We built our invoice around one rule: if we did not tell you about it before you signed, it does not appear on your bill. Five things you will not find on ours.
- Surprise charges beyond the $500 monthly invoice minimum, which we tell you about up front
- Peak season surcharges added retroactively to a holiday invoice
- Account management or support fees, because your named contact is included
- Charges for receiving reports or standard inventory counts
- Exit fees or long-term contract penalties
That list exists because those charges are common enough in this industry to be worth naming. We wrote separately about the fees that show up after you sign, and it is worth reading with your draft agreement open next to it.
A worked monthly invoice
Here is the arithmetic on a realistic account: a supplements brand doing 900 orders a month, 40 SKUs, an average of 1.4 units per order, 12 pallets received, 14 pallet positions occupied, and a 3 percent return rate.
The rates below are round numbers chosen to make the arithmetic easy to follow. They are not 6G Logistic rates and they are not a quote. Replace them with the rates on your own proposal and the structure still holds.
| Line | Calculation | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Receiving | 12 pallets at $25 | $300 |
| Storage | 14 positions at $35 | $490 |
| Pick and pack, first item | 900 orders at $3.00 | $2,700 |
| Pick and pack, additional items | 360 units at $0.50 | $180 |
| Postage | 900 parcels at $7.40 average | $6,660 |
| Returns | 27 units at $3.00 | $81 |
| Total | $10,411 |
Now look at the proportions, because this is the whole point of the exercise.
Postage is $6,660 of a $10,411 invoice, or 64 percent. Pick and pack is $2,880, or 28 percent. Receiving, storage and returns together are 8 percent.
Brands negotiate hardest on the pick fee. A 20 cent reduction on the first-item rate saves $180 a month. Cutting one billable pound off the average parcel through better cartonisation saves considerably more, and you can do it without changing providers at all.
All-in cost per order here is $11.57. Excluding postage, it is $4.17. When you compare quotes, compare both numbers, because a provider with a low pick fee and a bad carrier rate will lose you money.
The minimum, and who it disqualifies
We invoice a $500 per month minimum. If your charges fall below $500, we bill the difference. That is stated before you sign, every time.
Work out what that means for you. At the illustrative rates above, excluding postage, $500 is roughly 110 orders a month. Below that, you are paying for capacity you are not using.
So here is the honest version. If you are shipping 60 orders a month with no clear path to 200, we are the wrong choice and we will tell you that on the first call. Packing them yourself or using a provider with no minimum will cost you less. The point at which handing off fulfillment starts to pay for itself is a real calculation, and we have written up when outsourcing fulfillment starts to pay with the numbers.
Two more cases where we are not the answer. If most of your customers are on the East Coast and same-day or next-day delivery is your core promise, a national multi-node network genuinely beats four warehouses in Southern California. ShipBob and ShipMonk can put inventory in Pennsylvania and Texas. We cannot, and no amount of carrier optimisation closes that gap. And if you ship cold-chain or hazardous materials, we do not handle either.
Where we win is a West Coast customer base, SoCal inbound freight from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and a founder who wants to call a person rather than open a ticket.
How to compare two quotes that look nothing alike
Take both proposals and rebuild them into the seven lines at the top of this page. Then apply your own numbers.
- Your actual monthly order count, and your peak month
- Your actual average units per order, not your best guess
- Your actual pallet positions, which is inbound units divided by units per pallet, times average months on hand
- Your actual return rate from the last 90 days
- Your average parcel dimensions, run through the divisor arithmetic above
That produces one all-in monthly number and one excluding-postage number for each provider. Those two numbers are comparable. The proposals themselves are not.
Then ask both providers the same four questions. What is your receiving cutoff time. What is your order accuracy and how do you measure it. Who do I call at 4pm on a Friday in December. What happens, in writing, when you ship the wrong item.
For reference: our same-day processing cutoff is 2pm Pacific, our order accuracy runs at 99 percent or better, and you get a named contact rather than a queue.
Frequently asked questions
Seven categories: receiving, storage, pick and pack, carrier postage, returns processing, kitting or assembly, and marketplace prep such as Amazon FBA. Postage is normally the largest single line.
Because the cost depends on your unit count per order, product dimensions, storage duration and return rate, and no two accounts share all four. We send a complete line-item proposal within 24 hours of your inquiry instead.
We invoice a $500 monthly minimum. If your charges come in under $500, we bill the difference. At typical fulfillment rates that is roughly 110 orders a month excluding postage.
Carriers bill the greater of actual weight and dimensional weight. UPS and FedEx both divide cubic inches by 139 on standard accounts, so a light product in an oversized box is billed on the box, not the product.
Five things: monthly order volume including peak, SKU count, product dimensions and weight, your sales platforms, and any special handling requirements.
What to do next
Pull your last three invoices, or the two proposals sitting in your inbox, and rebuild them into the seven lines above. If the numbers do not reconcile, that is the conversation to have with your current provider before you go anywhere.
If you want ours, send us your volume, SKU count and where your customers are, and request a proposal. Complete line-item pricing back within 24 hours, not a call request.