byrd invoice audit

byrd publishes no price list, and says so on purpose. Its pricing page opens by explaining why you will not find standard fulfilment prices on it, and its fulfilment page repeats the point: no off-the-shelf price list, an individual quote, no base fee for services you do not need. What byrd does publish is two things most quote-only 3PLs keep private: a complete pricing structure - every service broken into its named charging bases, with a sample invoice offered up front - and a full set of Terms and Conditions that contain something genuinely unusual, a formula. byrd's storage charges are not fixed in your offer and left alone; they are recalculated monthly against a published ratio of how much stock you hold to how fast you ship, with published thresholds at which byrd may raise them, and published amounts it may add. So a byrd invoice is checked in three places: your Offer, line by line; the published pricing structure, basis by basis; and the Terms, formula by formula. Below is what byrd publishes, and the checks that follow from it.

What byrd publishes: a structure, a formula and a rulebook

From byrd's pricing and fulfilment pages and its Terms and Conditions of Sale and Delivery (byrd technologies group), as published when we checked in November 2026:

• The contract stack is published, and its order matters. The contractual subject-matter is the Agreement, the Offer - byrd's commercial proposal describing the services and the charges for them - and the Conditions, and in a conflict they prevail in that order: Agreement first, then Offer, then Conditions (Article 3). Every charge on the invoice should therefore trace to the Offer; the Conditions supply the adjustment machinery around it.
• Every line item is billed separately, on published charging bases. Goods receipt: per parcel or pallet, with additional cost for sample-counting on LOT-tracked or organic products. Storage: a monthly rate per storage shelf or pallet. Picking: an order base price plus a cost per additional pick, with an optional charge for branding materials. Packing: a packaging workload charge, plus packaging material only if you use byrd's - use your own material and there is no material charge; send pre-packaged parcels and you pay a single pick fee. Shipping: a rate by the option chosen (small-parcel products such as Warenpost, Kleinpaket and Lettre Suivie; standard; express; international), plus a service fee that covers dispatch support, damage claims, lost-parcel management, label printing and customs processes. Returns: two different stacks depending on who caused the return (below). Value-added services - B2B pallet shipping, serial number tracking, kitting, inventory counts, disposal - are charged on top, with serial number tracking expressly carrying an additional inbound processing fee.
• Storage reprices itself monthly, by formula. Article 6: the storage charges in your Offer are revised monthly by a Ratio - your inventory quantity held across warehouses divided by your total forecasted weekly volume, where the forecast is based on your historical performance over the last three months. byrd calculates the Ratio monthly. The published consequences sit at the slow-moving end; the lower tiers of the scale sit in a Ratio document the Conditions link to, so the thresholds below are the ones the Conditions themselves state in words.
• Charges move on published tracks - some with notice, some without. Article 6 again: byrd may adjust charges with at least one month's written notice (carrier price adjustments and wage/labour increases are the named drivers), and may apply an inflation adjustment to all non-shipping costs once a quarter, based on the consumer price index of the corresponding country. Fuel surcharges, other dynamic surcharges and storage charges are expressly carved out as dynamic - they can change at any time without notice.
• One contract, five centre countries, and byrd chooses who performs. byrd states that it operates fulfilment centres in Germany, Austria, France, the UK and Poland, serving the rest of the EU cross-border from there, with 20+ carriers (DHL, DPD, GLS, Austrian Post, Colissimo and Royal Mail among them, varying by location). The Conditions add the machinery behind that statement: byrd is entitled to provide all services itself or through subcontractors of its choice, including warehouse agents and carriers, in various countries (Article 10); a "Warehouse" is premises where your goods are stored by byrd and/or its approved subcontractors (Article 1); byrd may relocate your warehouse assignment - including your stock location - at its own discretion across its network at any time, informing you when a location is relocated (Article 5); and you have no direct line to the subcontractor, because communication about the services runs exclusively between you and byrd (Article 10). The contracting group itself spans eight named companies - Vienna, Berlin, Paris, Patras, Milan, Warsaw, Barcelona and London (Article 1).
• Billing weight is the higher of two numbers, rounded up. Article 7: the weight and size taken into account for billing is the higher of the parcel's actual (volumetric) dimensions or its actual weight, rounded up - and byrd states item limits of 15 kg per item, 120 cm in length and 250 cm in girth, unless otherwise agreed.

The figures byrd does publish are the thresholds, fees and caps around the prices:

Published rule	byrd's figure
Storage Ratio at which byrd may raise the current month's storage charges	24 weeks or higher in a monthly calculation - increase of up to 100%
Further storage charge after the Ratio stays at 24 weeks or higher for 12 consecutive months	EUR 10 / GBP 10 per pallet per month and EUR 5 / GBP 5 per shelf per month, on top of the last invoiced amount
Storage protection at the start	No revision of agreed charges (including storage) during the first 6 months; the Ratio applies from the beginning of month 7
Notice for a charges adjustment	At least 1 month, in writing
Inflation adjustment	Quarterly, CPI of the corresponding country, non-shipping costs only
Your window to use the special termination right after a charges increase	14 days from being informed; after that the increase is deemed agreed
Exempt from that termination right	Fuel and other dynamic surcharges, and storage charges - changeable at any time without notice
Administrative fee for a non-DDP inbound delivery	EUR 100 per delivery, increasable on repeated non-DDP deliveries
Administrative fee for a return sent to a warehouse that did not fulfil the order	EUR 80 per order, plus pick, pack, shipping and storage to transfer it
Inbound delivery notice you owe byrd	At least 5 business days before delivery
Shipment Peak (a definition that affects charges reviews)	A day's shipments more than 25% above the average for that weekday over the last 8 weeks
Inventory accuracy byrd undertakes	Best endeavours for 98% per calendar year
Permissible Shrinkage and Breakage	Net deviations up to 2% (by volume: original inventory plus all incoming goods); compensation only above it
Warehousing liability cap	8.33 SDR per kg; maximum EUR 35,000 per Damage Event; EUR 70,000 per year for inventory-difference claims
Delay liability cap, if byrd is held liable at all	10% of the fulfilment costs for the delayed goods, excluding shipping, local charges and demurrage
Claim notice - visible loss or damage	In writing before or at final reception by the end customer
Claim notice - hidden loss or damage	Within 3 consecutive days after reception
Suit deadline	Within 1 year of reception/delivery, the due delivery date, or the loss/damage date, whichever is earliest
Conditions changes	Deemed agreed if you do not object in writing within 15 calendar days of notification; rejection gives a special termination right on 2 months' notice
Storage inspection right	On written request at least 10 business days ahead; at most 2 inspections per year

Checks that follow from byrd's own fee rules

1. Recompute the Ratio before you read any storage line. Storage is the only major charge byrd reprices by formula, so it is the first check, and it is fully recomputable from your own data: stock held across all warehouses, divided by forecast weekly volume built from your last three months' shipments. Three published boundaries decide whether a storage increase is legitimate. Timing: no revision of agreed charges at all during the first six months - the Ratio only applies from the start of month seven, so a ratio-driven storage increase in month four is outside Article 6 however accurate the arithmetic. Threshold: at a Ratio of 24 weeks or higher in a given month, byrd may raise that month's storage by up to 100% - up to, not by - so an increase beyond double, or a full doubling at a Ratio the Conditions place in a lower tier, needs the linked Ratio table produced and checked. Persistence: only after the Ratio has held at 24 weeks or higher for twelve consecutive months may byrd add EUR 10/GBP 10 per pallet and EUR 5/GBP 5 per shelf per month on top of the last invoiced amount - an earlier appearance of those per-unit additions, or their appearance without the twelve-month run behind them, fails the published rule. And because the Ratio divides by a forecast, a slow quarter mechanically raises your storage price even if nothing about your stock changed: the audit should show you the forecast byrd used, month by month, next to the shipments that actually happened.

2. Sort every increase into its track: notice, inflation, or dynamic. Article 6 runs three different adjustment tracks with three different rights. A carrier- or wage-driven increase needs at least one month's written notice, and it opens your special termination right - but only for 14 days after you are informed, after which the increase is deemed agreed, exactly the deemed-acceptance pattern that punishes slow invoice review. The quarterly inflation adjustment applies to non-shipping costs only, at the CPI of the corresponding country: an inflation uplift on a shipping line, or at a rate above the published CPI of the warehouse's country, is outside the clause. Fuel surcharges, other dynamic surcharges and storage sit on the third track - changeable at any time without notice and expressly excluded from the termination right - which means the protection there is not procedural but arithmetic: those lines can only be checked against the Offer and the Ratio, never against a missing notice. An invoice that blends the tracks - one percentage applied across everything - has almost certainly applied at least one track's rules to another track's charges.

3. Every invoice line must name its published charging basis in your Offer. byrd's pricing page is unusually specific about how each service is charged, which makes basis-swapping detectable. Goods receipt billed per unit where the Offer says per parcel or pallet; a sample-counting extra on goods that are neither LOT-tracked nor organic; a branding-material charge on orders with no branding material in them; a packaging-material charge in a month when you supplied your own packaging - byrd's own page says that if you do not need its packaging, it uses yours and does not charge for the material; a pick-and-pack stack on a pre-packaged parcel, where the published basis is a single pick fee. None of these requires a price list to dispute: each is a line billed on a basis byrd itself publishes as belonging to a different situation.

4. Returns are two different price stacks, and the split is causation. byrd publishes separate charging structures for carrier-caused returns (delivery problems: return shipping costs plus a surcharge, a base price per returned parcel, and returns processing - acceptance, data matching, status updates, condition recording) and customer-caused returns (a fee per label generated through the returns portal, carrier-dependent return shipping, a base price, and the same processing). The audit classification is therefore the first return check: a return the carrier caused - failed delivery, damaged in transit - billed through the customer-caused stack has been priced for the wrong party's failure. The second check is routing. The Conditions require returns to be directed to the warehouse that fulfilled the order; a return that lands at a different byrd warehouse attracts an additional EUR 80 administrative fee per order plus picking, packing, shipping and storage to identify and transfer it. When the routing was byrd's or its carrier's doing rather than your customer's, that fee's premise deserves a written question - and when returns regularly land at the wrong warehouse, fixing the returns-portal configuration is worth more than disputing any single EUR 80.

5. The network can move your stock and swap your performer - so compare warehouses against each other. Under the Conditions, the warehouse holding your goods may be run by byrd or by an approved subcontractor of byrd's choice, and byrd may relocate your stock across the network at its own discretion, informing you when it does. Your contract, however, is singular: one Offer, one set of charges, whichever warehouse performs. That makes cross-warehouse consistency a byrd-specific audit: the same order profile - same SKU, same pick count, same carrier service - fulfilled from two different warehouses in the same month should price from the same Offer bases. A warehouse whose receipt, pick or processing lines run systematically above its siblings is not a different price list; it is a deviation from the one you signed, and it will never be visible in any single warehouse's invoices read alone. Two smaller checks ride along: the contracting entity on the invoice should be one of the eight group companies named in Article 1, and a relocation you were never informed of contradicts the one procedural promise Article 5 makes in exchange for the discretion it takes.

6. Billable weight is a formula, and the inputs are yours. Billing uses the higher of volumetric dimensions or actual weight, rounded up. So for a sample of parcels, recompute: byrd's own product data comes from the characteristics you are obliged to declare - composition, classification, value, packaging, units per package, packaging dimensions, pallet type and height, weight (Article 7) - and byrd weighs each parcel itself. A systematic gap between the billed weight and the higher of your declared dimensions and the parcel's actual weight is where this charge leaks. The same article sets the physical limits - 15 kg per item, 120 cm length, 250 cm girth unless otherwise agreed - so oversize handling on an item inside those limits, or rejection-priced handling of one marginally over a limit you had agreed otherwise, should both be queried against the Offer.

7. Inbound has three published price traps, all avoidable and all checkable. First, notice: deliveries must be announced at least five business days beforehand through the online interface; a late or incomplete announcement entitles byrd to refuse the goods outright, and a delivery that misses the delivery standards is automatically excluded from the inbound SLAs, with additional processing costs charged at the hourly rate in the Offer. Second, customs terms: deliveries must arrive DDP; a non-DDP delivery on which customs charges fall on byrd or the warehouse draws a published administrative fee of EUR 100 per delivery, increasable if you repeat it - so a fee above EUR 100 on a first offence, or a EUR 100 fee on a delivery that was DDP, both fail the published figure. Third, barcodes: every individual SKU needs one; missing barcodes mean byrd may decline the goods or create and apply labels at extra cost - a labelling charge is legitimate only for SKUs that actually arrived unlabelled, which your own item data settles. Inventory counts sit in the same family: counts carried out at your request are invoiced to you, so a count line with no request behind it has no published basis.

8. Shrinkage compensation is annual, formula-based and easy to lose by doing nothing. byrd undertakes best endeavours for 98% inventory accuracy, and the Permissible Shrinkage and Breakage is a 2% allowance measured by volume - lost and damaged pieces, minus extra inventory found, against original inventory plus all incoming goods. Above the allowance, compensation is the number of excess lost/broken units multiplied by their average cost (production or purchase value under Article 16, excluding insurance, customs fees, taxes, freight and retail value) - paid by credit note, once per agreement year, within three months after each anniversary of your Delivery Date, subject to byrd's prior written approval, and deducted from the following invoice. Every element of that sentence is a check: a year whose deviation exceeded 2% with no credit note inside the three-month window; a credit note calculated on value rather than the published volume formula; an approved credit that never reduced a following invoice. Nothing in the mechanism pays out automatically on a monthly cycle, so a brand that never reconciles annually never triggers it.

9. The claim clocks are the shortest in this rulebook, and they run from delivery, not from discovery. Visible loss or damage must be notified in writing before or at the moment the end customer finally receives the goods; hidden damage, within three consecutive days after reception - failing which the goods are deemed delivered as described. Suit must follow within one year of the earliest of reception, delivery, the date delivery should have happened, or the loss/damage date. The warehousing caps then bound what a successful claim is worth: 8.33 SDR per kilogramme, EUR 35,000 per Damage Event, and EUR 70,000 per year where the claim rests on an inventory difference. Delay is weaker still: transit times in the Offer are stated to be non-binding, and even if byrd is held liable for delay, liability is capped at 10% of the fulfilment costs for the delayed goods, excluding shipping and local charges. Finally, compensation byrd owes can be settled by credit note and set off against sums you owe - so, as with shrinkage, the last step of every successful claim is verifying the credit actually lands on an invoice. A brand that discovers transit damage in its weekly returns review has, under the three-day rule, usually discovered it too late; the audit's real product here is a claims routine fast enough for Article 15.

One more set of clocks: the Conditions themselves can change

Article 3 lets byrd amend the Conditions unilaterally at any time, notifying you and posting the updated version; if you do not object in writing within fifteen calendar days of notification, the updated Conditions are deemed agreed. Rejection buys a special termination right on two months' notice. The document your invoices are audited against can therefore change under you on a fifteen-day silence - the same deemed-acceptance pattern as the charges track, applied to the rulebook itself. Archive every version byrd notifies, with its date: which version governed a given invoice month is a question that can only be answered from your own files.

Offboarding runs on the same hourly logic as everything else bespoke: if the agreement ends, the offboarding work - packing and removing your goods - is billed at the agreed hourly rate in the Offer, with packaging and transport-securing materials, disposal and onward transport charged separately (Article 9).

Raising a wrong charge with byrd

Everything runs through byrd: the Conditions make communication about the services exclusive between you and byrd, with no direct line to the subcontractor or warehouse that actually performed the work, so a disputed line is raised with byrd against the Offer and the Article it rests on. The claim clocks are the constraint. Visible loss or damage must be notified in writing before or at the moment the end customer finally receives the goods, and hidden loss or damage within 3 consecutive days after reception — miss either and the goods are deemed delivered as described. Suit must be brought within 1 year of the earliest of reception, delivery, the due delivery date, or the loss or damage date. What a successful claim is worth is capped in advance: warehousing liability at 8.33 SDR per kg, EUR 35,000 per Damage Event and EUR 70,000 per year for inventory-difference claims, and delay liability — where it exists at all — at 10% of the fulfilment costs for the delayed goods, excluding shipping and local charges. Compensation byrd owes can be settled by credit note and set off against sums you owe, so the last step of every dispute is checking that the credit note actually reduced an invoice. Two neighbouring clocks are not billing disputes but sit in the same rulebook: a charges increase can only be escaped through the special termination right within 14 days of being informed, and a change to the Conditions themselves only by written objection within 15 calendar days of notification. The Conditions are governed by German law, with amicable negotiation first and then the courts of Berlin.

Have us check it

Upload your last three byrd invoices and the Offer they were billed under - including any Ratio document byrd has supplied. We rebuild the storage Ratio month by month from your stock and shipment history, sort every increase into its Article 6 track, check each line against the published charging bases, reconcile the warehouses against each other, and run the annual shrinkage calculation the credit note depends on. Your latest invoice is audited free.

Feeproof is not affiliated with byrd.

To: byrd Billing & Account Management
Subject: Formal Billing Dispute – Invoice #[INVOICE_NUMBER] – [MERCHANT_NAME]
Date: [TODAY_DATE]

Dear byrd Billing Department,

Upon line-by-line reconciliation of invoice #[INVOICE_NUMBER] against our executed Master Services Agreement (MSA) and confirmed Rate Schedule dated [CONTRACT_DATE], we have identified [COUNT] billing discrepancies totaling $[TOTAL_OVERCHARGE_AMOUNT].

Summary of audited discrepancies:
1. [Line/Ref ID]: Billed [Rate/Service] at $[BILLED_RATE]. Agreed contract tier is $[CONTRACT_RATE]. Variance: $[OVERCHARGE_AMOUNT]. (Ref: Contract Section [SECTION_NUM])
2. [Line/Ref ID]: Unauthorized accessorial surcharge [NAME] of $[SURCHARGE_AMOUNT] billed without prerequisite contract triggers.
3. [Line/Ref ID]: Dimensional weight (DIM) billed at [BILLED_WEIGHT] lbs vs verified packaging volume of [ACTUAL_WEIGHT] lbs. Variance: $[DIM_OVERCHARGE].

Per our agreement, this dispute notification is formally submitted within the contractual dispute window. 

Please confirm receipt and apply a credit memo of $[TOTAL_OVERCHARGE_AMOUNT] to our account, or provide a revised invoice within 10 business days.

Sincerely,
[YOUR_NAME]
[MERCHANT_NAME]
[ACCOUNT_NUMBER / MERCHANT_ID]