The quoted rate and the paid rate are different numbers.

“We negotiated that rate down eight percent and the invoice went up.”

Rate cards are negotiated hard and then eroded by everything that sits outside them. Cost per unit moved is the number that matters, and it is rarely the number anyone manages against.

cost per unit handled
accessorials
backhaul
throughput
pick accuracy
cube utilization
3PL
dwell

Your words, not ours.

Where it concentrates here

Five places the money tends to go in warehousing and logistics. Each one is concentrated — a single agreement, a single queue, a single account nobody reviews — which is why sampling walks straight past them.

Accessorial charges — detention, demurrage, fuel surcharge, redelivery, liftgate — accumulating outside the negotiated rate and rarely reconciled back to it.
Empty running and unfilled backhaul treated as a fact of the network rather than a cost with an owner.
Storage billed on racked positions that are substantially air, because the pallet profile changed and the racking did not.
Agency labor premium normalized into the run rate after a peak that ended two years ago.
Third-party logistics contracts with minimum volume commitments that are no longer met, and shortfall charges nobody has modeled.

Not every warehousing and logistics is the same business

Third-party logisticsContracts with rate cards that list some activities and not others, so the unlisted ones are performed and never billed.
Cold chain and temperature-controlledEnergy as a major operating line, and product loss exposure where a temperature excursion becomes a claim.
Freight brokerageMargin per load against carrier cost that moves daily, with accessorials absorbed rather than passed through.
E-commerce fulfillmentPriced per order on an assumed basket and pick profile that the client's actual orders stopped matching.
Bonded, FTZ and customsRecordkeeping obligations where the penalty is not a fee but a suspended privilege.

Where this data actually lives

Manhattan, Blue Yonder or Körber at the top end; Softeon, Deposco or 3PL Central in the mid-market
A separate TMS — MercuryGate, Kuebix — or brokerage on spreadsheets
Customer EDI or API integrations, each with its own exception handling
A billing engine that is often the weakest link between what was done and what was invoiced

Named because it changes what the intake asks for. An extract from one of these has known gaps, and the review is built around them rather than surprised by them.

Reported in your numbers, not ours

cost to serve per client
cost per order
storage utilization
dock-to-stock time
accessorial capture rate
pick accuracy
labor cost per unit
energy cost per pallet position

The obligations that set the deadlines

Customs recordkeeping and FTZ inventory reporting where applicable
FDA or USDA registration for food-grade and pharmaceutical storage
DOT and FMCSA compliance on any owned fleet, and the CSA score
Client-facing SOC 1 or SOC 2 reports, where contracts require them
Hazmat certification and training records where relevant

What the review would ask you for

9 requests written for warehousing and logistics and asked of nobody else — 3 of them core. They sit alongside the operating spine every business has — finance, revenue, receivables, payables, contracts, people, IT, operations, risk, commercial and governance — which is 107 further requests.

Volumes by site, lane and month Core Inbound, outbound, units and weight.
Cost per unit handled and per order shipped Core By site.
Freight spend by carrier and lane Core With accessorial charges broken out. Accessorials are where quoted rates and paid rates part company.
Space utilization and storage cost Racked, floor, and third-party overflow.
Warehouse labor Permanent versus agency, productivity, overtime.
Pick accuracy, damages and shrinkage With the cost of each.
Returns processing Volume, cost per return, disposition.
Fleet Owned and leased, utilization, maintenance, fuel, telematics.
Third-party logistics contracts Rate cards, minimum volumes, term and notice.

Anything you do not have can be skipped in one click, with a reason. The intake is completed in the client portal, which saves each answer as it is given and can be returned to as often as you like.

When this stops being interesting and becomes urgent

A client contract renewal without a cost-to-serve model to negotiate from
An energy cost step change in a cold chain operation
A WMS migration, which exposes every unbilled activity at once
A major client onboarding whose profile does not match the pricing assumption
An acquisition, where per-client contribution margin is the first request

Who this involves

Signs it: Owner, president or CFO
Resists it: Operations managers whose site-level cost becomes comparable
Has been asking for it: The commercial lead, who suspects which accounts lose money

Who commissions it

Supply chain directors, network managers and CFOs. Phase one is priced before phase two is discussed, the report is yours either way, and we take no vendor commissions or referral fees on anything we recommend.

See the proposal and the price Talk it through first

The proposal sets out the sequence week by week, what we would need from you, and what it costs for your number of operating units. No call required to see the number.

Closest to this

Operations that share more with warehousing and logistics than the sector label suggests.