If you are like many third-party logistics providers, you are using a warehouse management system that may not be developed specifically for 3PL and the billing lacks some of the functionality needed to satisfy customer requirements.
Because of this, you may be experiencing:
- Revenue Leakage This can lead to substantial loss of revenue, as value added services may be under or inaccurately reported. Errors Your company may have resorted to workarounds, and manual notetaking that may not be adequate, accurate, or legible. When this is manually entered into the billing system, errors are produced.
- Customer Dissatisfaction The legacy WMS may force billing to be done in a way that is difficult for customers to understand or not in line with customer requirements.
- Labor Leakage The need to research and correct errors, collect additional information from warehouse associates, manually input billing, send invoices and other tasks may increase your labor cost.
Do you need a better way?
Answer These Questions And See If Your Current 3PL Billing System Is Helping or Hurting Your Business
1. Can your current 3PL billing system split costs between different entities such as internal departments, projects, or accounts without having to do this manually or using a workaround?
2. Does your current 3PL billing system have query functionality so that you can select any data element from any table or entity within the WMS as a billing attribute or parameter?
3. How long does it take to set up the billing for each new customer?
4. Are you currently using any form of workaround or manual operation to collect information about activities that need to be billed for the work you do for your customers?
5. Can you automatically produce and email invoices directly to your customers?
6. Can you track all charges on a customer basis?
7. Can your current 3PL billing system create multi-year contracts, with or without increases?
8. If a contract expires, does your 3PL billing system still execute billing automatically?
9. Can your current 3PL billing system handle uncommon billing strategies, or do you have to use tags and user defined fields, manual adjustments or workarounds?
10. Can your 3PL billing system bill for fuel surcharges and overtime fees without manual intervention?
11. Can you bill on a percentage or rate basis automatically?
12. Does your system include a 3PL billing wizard to make set-up easy and fast?
13. How many billing line items can your system handle? Is it unlimited?
14. Does your 3PL billing system force you to bill the customer a certain way because it cannot be configured?