How to turn a 3PL quote into a rate card you can audit against

A 3PL quote is written to win your business: prices are grouped by service, starting rates are rounded, and the conditions sit in footnotes. To check an invoice you need the opposite, a rate card: one row per price, each with the unit it is charged by and the exact text it comes from. Here is how to rewrite one as the other.

1. One row per price, not per service

"Storage: $1.25 to $32.00 per month" is one service but many prices. Write one row for each bin size and each volume tier, because the invoice will bill exactly one of them. The same goes for returns ("$3.50 first item, $0.50 each additional" is two rows) and for anything priced by weight or service level.

2. Write down what each price is multiplied by

Every invoice line is a quantity times a rate, so the most useful column on a rate card is the unit:

• per order shipped, per unit picked, per return processed, per receipt of inbound stock;
• per pallet per month or per cubic foot per day for storage;
• per hour for receiving, projects and labor;
• by weight band for shipping and many flat per-order prices.

When the quote says "per pick", find out whether that means per item or per line of the order. The difference doubles some invoices.

3. Free allowances are prices too

"First five picks free", "2 hours of free receiving at onboarding" and "up to three picks included" decide when a charge may start. Give each allowance its own row, with the quantity that is free, so you can tell whether a line should exist at all.

4. Minimums: floor or fee?

A monthly minimum billed pay-the-difference adds only the shortfall: with a $750 minimum and $420 of fees, the top-up is $330. A minimum billed as a flat fee is added regardless. Write down which one your quote says, because the two lead to very different invoices in a slow month.

5. Record what the quote says is not charged

"No setup fee, no receiving fee, no account management fee" is as important as any price. Put these on the rate card as exclusions. Any of them appearing on an invoice is a charge the contract does not allow.

6. Keep the source text and the dates

Next to every row, copy the sentence or table row it comes from, and note the date the price took effect. When you dispute a charge, the quoted text is your evidence, and the date settles whether an old or a new price applies.

Let a tool do the first draft

Our free quote to rate card tool reads a quote, price list or contract and gives you every price as a row, with the text it comes from, ready to check. Then upload your invoices and we will check them against it.