A 3PL rate card is the list of prices you charge each client for storage, handling and extra services, and every line on it should be specific enough that a month-end invoice can be traced back to it. Most cards are built from the same parts: storage, handling in and out, picking, packing, despatch and value-added services, each priced against a unit you can count.
The hard part is rarely the numbers. It is agreeing the unit, the moment a charge is triggered and the record that proves the work happened. Get those three right and the rate card does its job, which is to make the invoice dull. Get them wrong and you spend the last days of every month arguing with a client about pallets nobody counted.
Before you publish any rate, check how VAT applies to each service. The position depends on the service and the client, so confirm it with your accountant and the VAT rates guidance on GOV.UK. El UK Warehousing Association is also a useful reference point for how the sector describes its services.
What goes on a 3PL rate card?
A rate card works best when every activity your team performs has a line. If a task takes someone’s time or touches a client’s stock, it should either carry a price or sit explicitly inside another price. The usual sections are:
- Storage: charged per pallet, location, volume or floor area over a set period. The next section covers the options.
- Handling in: receiving, checking and putaway, usually priced per pallet or per carton received.
- Handling out: picking, packing and despatch, priced per order, per order line or per unit, depending on how the client sells.
- Special services: labelling, kitting, returns processing and any one-off task a client asks for outside the core flow.
- Value-added services (VAS): the extras that turn a warehouse into a fulfilment partner, such as bundling, gift wrapping or assembly.
- Surcharges and minimums: weekend work, urgent despatch, a minimum monthly charge and the cost of restacking a damaged pallet.
Any charge that is not on the card will be disputed, so the card should say when a charge applies as well as how much it is. “Per pallet received” needs a definition of a pallet received. “Per order” needs a definition for the awkward case where one customer order splits across two despatches. Spell out both. Your invoices also have to meet the rules for VAT invoices, which the HMRC pages set out, and the Logistics UK site is a good place to check how other operators describe these services to clients.
How do you charge for storage?
Storage is where most rate card arguments start. It is the charge a client sees every month and the one they check first. There are five common methods. Pick one per client or per product, and write the rule down.
Storage charge methods compared
| Método | What you bill | Works best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per pallet per week | Each pallet position held, for each week or part week | Full pallet storage and bulk stock | Part weeks: decide whether a pallet in for two days pays a full week |
| Per location per period | Each occupied location, whatever sits in it | Racking where product is fixed to slots | Empty locations: decide whether they carry any charge |
| Per cubic metre | Volume the stored goods occupy | Bulky or irregular goods | Dimensions must be captured at receipt and kept accurate |
| Per square metre or square foot | Floor area reserved for a client | Bulk floor storage and dedicated areas | A client who fills the space loosely pays the same as one who fills it tightly |
| Peak and minimum | Peak: a higher rate in a set season. Minimum: a floor charge per month | Seasonal clients, or clients with small volumes | Dates for peak and how the minimum is applied must be written into the terms |
Per pallet per week is the simplest method to explain, and the one a client can check against their own stock report. Per location suits a warehouse that fixes product to slots. Per cubic metre and per square metre suit bulky or odd-shaped goods, but they depend on measurement discipline at the dock. Whichever you choose, the counting rule matters as much as the rate. Decide the stock snapshot time, whether receipt day and despatch day both count, and how part weeks round.
Peak and minimum charges protect you on either side. A peak rate recovers the cost of extra space and labour in a busy season. A minimum stops a client with two pallets paying less than it costs to hold them. Both need dates and thresholds written into the card, not agreed on a phone call.
Minimums belong on handling lines too. A small client’s single order can take as long to pick and pack as a much larger one, so a minimum per order stops the work being priced below what it costs. State which minimums apply to which lines, so the client can see the logic rather than meeting it for the first time on an invoice.
If you want official context on the sector, the Office for National Statistics publishes data on transport and storage businesses that you can use when you review your storage rates each year.
How do you apply storage and handling charges on a schedule?
In Clarus, fixed time-based fees such as a minimum pallet agreement or a monthly service charge can be set up as recurring charges on a client’s charge card. You choose a daily, weekly, monthly or end-of-charge-window frequency, and an overnight process raises the charge and passes it to invoicing. Clarus’s documentation notes that recurring charges are not tied to stock movements or balances, so they suit fixed fees rather than charges that depend on what you hold.
Storage is charged on time, not on events. A pallet that sits in a location for three weeks should produce three weeks of storage, even if nobody touched it. A common approach is to run storage on a fixed cycle, usually weekly or monthly, and to record handling charges as the work happens.
A simple billing run looks like this:
- Take a stock snapshot at a fixed time each period, and keep it.
- Apply each client’s tariff to the snapshot, including peak rates and minimums.
- Add handling and value-added lines from the transactions completed in the period.
- Check the exceptions: unpriced tasks, zero-quantity lines and stock with no client assigned.
- Issue the invoice, and keep the run so you can reproduce it if a client disputes a line.
The labour saving from running this in a system sits in the administration, not on the warehouse floor. As Mathew Buttar, Head of Solutions at Clarus, puts it from the implementation side, stock still has to be moved, put away and picked, but nobody has to sit at a desk rebuilding the charges from it afterwards.
The clearest example we can point to is Almacén de St John’s Hall, a 3PL that cut its invoicing time by 90% once the re-keying from its WMS into the accounts package stopped. It now invoices weekly rather than monthly, so clients see costs sooner and queries get settled in days rather than weeks.
How does a WMS hold a rate card for each client?
A WMS that bills well keeps a separate tariff for each client, attaches that tariff to the client’s account and works out each charge from the transaction that caused it. The rate card becomes data rather than a document in a shared folder. Each rate is tied to a client, a service and a unit, so the system can answer “what would this client pay for this activity” without someone checking a PDF.
Rate changes need the same care. When you revise a tariff, the new version should apply from a stated date, and the old version should stay on record. That lets you rerun a past invoice exactly as it was issued, which matters the first time a client asks why a March charge looks different from an April one.
Transaction data is what makes that work. Every receipt, putaway, move, pick and despatch is recorded with a date, a time, the user and the stock involved. In Clarus, the grids in the system reflect actions that have already happened, and every capture is stamped against its transaction. A disputed line can therefore be traced back to the scan that created it, which is the audit trail a client will ask for.
Charging can also be a deliberate choice for each pallet. A cross-dock pallet that moves straight through can be left uncharged, or a charge can be set against it, depending on the client’s terms. A damaged pallet is a billable event too. Clarus’s implementation advice is that a damaged pallet should not go back into racking until it has been restacked and the cost charged to the client, and HSE guidance on warehousing and storage covers the safety side of handling and racking.
Before you build your billing process around any automated charge type, confirm with the Clarus team which charge types are switched on for your account. The facturación de clientes page and our guide to how to automate 3PL billing set out the approach, and a 3PL billing audit is a practical way to check your current process against it.
Where do rate cards go wrong?
Most rate card problems are not pricing problems. They are definition problems that show up later, on the invoice:
- Unclear units. “Per order” means different things to a client who ships one item and a client who ships a 40-line basket.
- Missing triggers. A charge with no defined trigger either gets missed or gets disputed.
- No version control. Rates change, and an invoice for March needs the card that applied in March.
- Terms agreed by email only. The card should be the contract, with email recording the changes.
- Vague peak and minimum rules. Clients read these as a surprise rather than a term they agreed to.
A rate card that survives a dispute has a version date, a named unit for every line and a record of which transactions produced each invoice line.
The verdict: a rate card is only as good as the record behind each line. Define the unit and the trigger first, then set the price.
Template: sample rate card layout
Template only. Every £X is a placeholder. Replace each one with your own agreed rate.
| Service | Unit | Rate | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Storage | Per pallet per week | £X | Part weeks charged as a full week |
| Storage, peak season | Per pallet per week | £X | Peak dates stated in the contract |
| Handling in | Per pallet received | £X | Each delivery counted once, however many pallets it holds |
| Recolección | Per order line | £X | State whether replenishment moves are charged |
| Embalaje | Per order | £X | Multi-box orders priced per box |
| Despatch | Per consignment | £X | Pallet networks charged separately |
| Damaged pallet restack | Per pallet | £X plus labour | Recorded before the pallet is restacked |
| Monthly minimum | Per client per month | £X | Applies where storage falls below the floor |
Habla con un experto en almacenes
If you’re reviewing your rate card or deciding how storage should be billed across your clients, it’s worth a conversation. We work with 3PLs and distributors across the UK to set up warehouse management software that fits the way you operate, not the other way around.
Ponte en contacto con nuestro equipo to talk through your requirements, or read about Clarus for 3PL operators.