The 3PL onboarding doc you should send new clients in week one

A few years back I sat in on a new-client kickoff that lasted thirty-two minutes. It was a phone call. The ops manager and the client's logistics lead talked about pallet counts, vaguely agreed a per-pallet rate, said the first inbound was Tuesday, and hung up. The first ASN landed in a WhatsApp message on Monday night ("80 pallets, 11 SKUs, mostly the usual"). By week six the account had three open invoice disputes, one missing pallet that wasn't actually missing (it was on the wrong client code), and a customer who was already quietly talking to a competitor.

That account didn't die because the warehouse was bad. The warehouse was fine. It died because nobody had written anything down.

The single highest-leverage document a 3PL produces is the one most operators don't bother with: the client onboarding doc. Not a contract — the contract is for lawyers. Not an SOP binder — that's for your team. The onboarding doc is the thing you send the client in week one that says "here is exactly how we're going to work together, in plain English, so neither of us is guessing in month four."

Call it whatever you want — handbook, playbook, manual. What matters is that it exists, that it's sent in the first week, and that it covers the fourteen things below. Each section: what to include, and the typical mistake operators make.

1. Who's who

Names, roles, contact methods. Your day-to-day operations contact (the person who actually answers WhatsApp). Your finance contact. Your escalation contact (the person to call when the other two have failed). And — this is the one everyone forgets — your after-hours number and the rules around when it's appropriate to use it.

On the client side, ask for the same four roles. Get a name and a mobile for each. If they only give you one person, push back. Single-point-of-contact relationships break the first time that person is on holiday during peak.

Typical mistake: Treating this as a formality and only listing the account manager. Six months in, your warehouse manager is fielding finance queries at 9pm because nobody told the client who to email about invoices.

2. Service scope

What's in, what's out, and how to request additions. Not a sales-deck list of capabilities — a literal scope statement for this client. Ambient pallet storage, standard pick-pack, single-carrier outbound. Or: temperature-controlled, kitting, multi-carrier, returns processing. Whatever you've actually agreed.

Then a list of what's out: no hazmat, no over-2.4m-tall pallets, no Saturday inbound without 48 hours' notice. And the process for adding scope mid-contract — who emails whom, how long it takes to quote, lead time to start.

Typical mistake: Writing "as agreed in the SLA" and leaving it there. The SLA is in a contract drawer. Nobody on the operations floor reads it. The onboarding doc should restate scope in plain language so a warehouse supervisor reading it on a Tuesday morning knows whether to accept the unexpected pallet of lithium batteries.

3. Receiving SOPs

The ASN format you require (CSV template, EDI 856, portal entry — pick one and link to it). Lead time before goods arrive — typically 24-48 hours for standard, 72 for anything outside scope. Your daily cut-off for booking inbound slots. Your tolerance for ASN variance (we accept ±5% on quantity without flagging, anything beyond becomes an exception).

Then the what triggers a problem list: damaged outer cartons, missing labels, undeclared mixed-SKU pallets, temperature breach, missing paperwork. For each, what you do (photograph, quarantine, notify within X hours) and what you charge for.

Typical mistake: Spending six paragraphs on the ASN format and zero on what counts as a problem. The first time you reject a shipment, the client should already know it was coming.

4. SKU master setup

What fields you need before you can receive anything: SKU code, description, dimensions (L×W×H in mm), weight, pallet-tie/high, hazard class, country of origin, customs commodity code, lot/batch tracking y/n, serial-tracking y/n. Then the question almost nobody answers explicitly: who owns the SKU master?

You, or them? If it's you, what's your SLA for adding a new SKU (typically 24 hours from completed form)? If it's them, how do they push updates — portal feed, API, daily CSV? Both options are fine. Pick one.

Typical mistake: Letting SKU master ownership stay ambiguous because nobody wants the work. Three months later you've got two SKUs with the same code, three with no dimensions, and one the client swears they told you about but isn't in your system.

5. Storage and bay assignment

Where their stock lives. Not literally ("bay A12-03") but in terms of policy: dedicated bays only, mixed bays allowed within their account, mixed bays with other clients allowed (with appropriate segregation), or float-stock that goes wherever there's room. Your transfer rules: who decides when stock moves from a reserve location to a pick face, how transfers are charged (or whether they're free up to a limit).

This is also where you state your storage billing unit. If you bill in pallet equivalents rather than physical pallet counts, this is the section to explain it — what 1.0 PE is, how part-pallets are measured, where to see the daily PE figure. See the pallet equivalents explainer for the longer version; the onboarding doc should compress that to a paragraph.

Typical mistake: Skipping the mixed-bay policy. Six months in the client finds out you've been mixing their stock in a shared bay with another account's product and gets territorial about it. The right time to have that conversation is week one, not after a stocktake.

6. Inventory accuracy commitments

The number you commit to (typically 99.5% piece-level, or 99.8% location-level) and what it actually means. Your cycle count cadence — perpetual ABC, periodic blanket, blind vs. open counts. How variance is investigated: the threshold that triggers a recount, the threshold that triggers an adjustment, who signs off on adjustments above £X.

Then: how variance is settled. This is the bit operators dodge because it involves money. If a variance can't be reconciled, who absorbs it? Most 3PLs have a liability cap (typically the lower of replacement cost or X% of monthly fees). State it in plain English.

Typical mistake: Promising 99.9% accuracy without a cycle count programme that can maintain it. Then when the year-end count shows 98.2%, you're arguing about scope. Be honest about what you can hold and how.

7. Outbound SOPs

Order cut-off times by carrier (received by 14:00 ship same-day with DPD; by 11:00 with pallet networks; bulk by noon two days ahead). Your pick-pack lead time. Label requirements: who provides them, what format, how variants are handled (gift messages, regulatory inserts, customer-specific tape).

The accuracy commitment — pick accuracy (% of lines picked correctly), pack accuracy (% of orders packed correctly), and on-time-ship (% of in-cut-off orders dispatched same-day). Three different metrics. Don't conflate them.

Then exception handling: what happens to a backorder, a partial shipment, an out-of-stock at pick time. Who decides whether to short-ship, hold, or split.

Typical mistake: Writing the cut-off times but not the exception flow. The client uploads 400 orders at 13:55. Half have a SKU that's out of stock. Now what? If your doc says "out-of-stock at pick triggers short-ship with notification by 17:00 the same day, unless flagged hold-for-stock on the order," everyone knows what's happening.

8. Carrier and shipping

Preferred carriers with rate cards (yours or theirs?). Their carrier account numbers if they're shipping on their own contracts. Service levels, insurance defaults, and how dimensional weight is calculated for surcharge tiers — because you will argue about this with someone eventually.

The exception flow: a parcel goes missing, a pallet is refused on delivery, a shipment is held in customs. Who calls the carrier — you or them? Most clients want you to own the carrier relationship because they hired you to make it go away. If that's your model, say so and price it. If it's their account on their carrier and your job is purely to hand the parcel over, say that too.

Typical mistake: Letting the carrier exception flow stay implicit. The client thinks you'll chase missing parcels. You think they will. Three weeks later a customer is screaming and nobody has phoned DPD.

9. Returns and reverse logistics

The RMA process — does the end-customer go through the client or directly to you? What information arrives with a return (RMA number, original order ref, reason code)? How are returns booked, where are they staged, how long do you hold them before disposition?

Then the decision authority: who decides whether a return goes back to sellable stock, into the B-grade pool, or to disposal? For low-value items, most clients want you to make the call against a rule set ("any returned cosmetic with seal intact returns to stock; any opened item to B-grade"). For high-value items, they may want a per-return decision. Document which.

Typical mistake: Treating returns as an afterthought because the contract focuses on inbound and outbound. Returns are where SKU master errors, pricing disputes, and inventory variance all converge. They deserve a full section.

10. Communication cadence

The daily report (receipts, dispatches, exceptions, pending orders, current PE utilisation — sent at 17:00 by email). The weekly review (call or written summary, KPI snapshot, week-ahead forecast). The monthly QBR — quarterly in name, monthly in practice for the first six months — covering performance against SLA, billing reconciliation, and any scope or volume changes coming.

State who joins each meeting, what the agenda is, and who owns the actions. A meeting without an action log is a coffee chat.

Typical mistake: Promising a daily report and then sending it inconsistently until the client stops expecting it. Either commit to the cadence and resource it, or don't write it down. The doc loses credibility the moment you miss a promised report.

11. Billing model

Exactly what they're charged for. Storage: per PE per day (or per pallet, or per cubic metre). Handling in: per pallet received, per case, or per movement. Handling out: per order, per line, per unit, or per movement. Accessorials: pallet wrapping, labelling, kitting, returns processing, special handling — itemised with unit rates.

Invoice cycle, payment terms, late-payment process, dispute process. Restate the rate card in the doc — not a link to a PDF buried in the contract drawer. If you bill by pallet count, you'll already know the problems; seven ways pallet-count billing fails 3PLs covers the ones that turn into disputes.

Typical mistake: Hiding the accessorial rates in a separate document the operations team can't find. The client gets a £400 line item for "exception handling" and asks what it is. Your account manager has to ring the warehouse to find out. By the time they get back to the client, trust is gone.

12. System access

The client portal — URL, who has logins, role-based permissions (read-only finance vs. full ops). API keys, endpoints, rate limits, where the docs are. Data export options — can they pull their own inventory snapshot, order history, billing line items, exception log? Daily? Real-time?

Two-factor setup, password reset process, SLA on access requests (typically same business day for new users, four-hour for password resets).

Typical mistake: Setting up the portal but never showing the client how to use it. They keep emailing you for stock reports they could pull themselves. Spend twenty minutes on a screen-share in week one and save yourself a hundred email threads.

13. KPIs and SLAs

The five numbers you report every month. A standard set: inventory accuracy (piece-level), pick accuracy, on-time-ship %, inbound put-away time (hours from receipt to live), and order cycle time (hours from order received to dispatched). Five numbers, one chart per number, twelve months of history once you have it.

Then your two SLAs — the things you're contractually committing to, with consequences if you miss. Most 3PLs over-promise here. Two is enough. Pick the two that matter most to this client (often on-time-ship and pick accuracy). The other three are reported but not penalty-bearing.

Typical mistake: Reporting fifteen KPIs and committing to none. Nobody reads fifteen. Five reported, two committed, targets and methodology spelled out — that's a document the client respects.

14. Escalation

What triggers an escalation: a missed SLA two weeks running, a stock variance above the agreed threshold, a service incident with customer-facing impact, a billing dispute over £X. How to log it — usually an email to a dedicated address that creates a ticket. Response time tiers: P1 (response within 1 hour, resolution path within 4), P2 (within 4 business hours), P3 (within next business day).

And the human bit: who escalates to whom. The client's ops lead emails your ops manager for P3. The client's GM calls your ops director for P1. If the only number the client has is your account manager's mobile, every P1 incident at 11pm becomes a problem of finding you, not solving the issue.

Typical mistake: Having no formal escalation path because the relationship is friendly. It's friendly until the day it isn't. Document the path while everyone still likes each other.

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That's the doc. Fourteen sections, ten to fifteen pages depending on how dense you write. Most operators look at the list and say that's a lot — then realise twelve of the fourteen are things they already know. The work is writing them down.

It's worth doing because this document is the first thing that signals you're a serious 3PL rather than a warehouse with a forklift and a phone. Clients who've used third-party logistics before recognise it instantly. Clients who haven't are quietly relieved that somebody has thought it through for them. Either way, you've set the relationship up to operate on definitions rather than vibes.

Most operators wing it in week one. They get the goods in, they get the orders out, they figure out the billing as they go. Then two months later everyone is chasing definitions — what counts as a movement, who owns the SKU master, what the response time should have been on that exception last Thursday — and the next eighteen months of the contract is spent re-litigating decisions that should have taken a week.

If you run a 3PL and you don't have an onboarding doc, the highest-return thing you can do this month is write one. The version you send the fifth client will be better than the version you sent the first. By the tenth, it's a competitive moat.

If you're running a 3PL on Loaditude, most of what's in this doc — PE-based storage, configurable SOPs, client-portal access, KPI reporting — is the platform's defaults rather than a custom build. The doc gets to be about how you work, not about explaining the workarounds.