The Challenge:

For third-party logistics, or 3PL, providers, contractual rate increases are essential to maintaining profits. Every account typically carries dozens, or even up to thousands, of item-level charges based on agreements covering storage, handling, picking, packaging and special services. These rates are often scheduled to increase annually, or sometimes more frequently, by a fixed amount or percentage.

Traditionally, managing these adjustments has been a painstaking manual process. Customer-service representatives (CSRs) have to:

• Track and remember anniversary dates for every client
• Review each contract and calculate new rates
• Key updates into the warehouse management system, or WMS, by hand
• Double-check for math errors and missed items

Updating rate increases manually can consume hours or even days of labor. And when an employee is out, or an anniversary date falls on a weekend or holiday, those updates can require CSRs to work on a day off, or the updates wind up getting delayed. Then transactions continue at outdated rates, resulting in lost revenue that’s difficult, and often impossible, to recover.

Manual updates also require downtime in the account to fully input the rate increase and leave the door wide open for costly errors, be they incorrect percentages or missed task-code changes for value-added services like stretch-wrapping.

The SC Codeworks Solution: Codeworks Enterprise

SC Codeworks’ WMS— Codeworks Enterprise— transforms rate maintenance from a manual chore into a smoothly automated, easily auditable workflow.

Using Enterprise, 3PLs can:

• Pre-set contractual increases: Enter percentage or flat-rate adjustments tied to anniversary or milestone dates weeks in advance
• Automate effective dates: Configure new rates to go live automatically, with no account downtime or staff intervention
• Apply item-level rules: Distinguish which items receive flat increases, percentage increases or unique surcharges
• Update special charges: Apply across-the-board increases to task codes such as labeling, repackaging or other value-added services
• Review and verify in minutes: Approve rate updates through a simple pre-change verification process that takes just 10 to 20 minutes
• Ensure auditability: Maintain an exact time-stamped record showing when each new rate became effective

By automating these processes, Enterprise eliminates the guesswork, stress and clerical errors that come with manual rate changes.

The Results:

For operations teams, the shift to automation translates into measurable results:

• Accuracy improvements approaching 100%, virtually eliminating missed revenue and the need to go back and correct old invoices
• Time savings of two to five hours per account annually, depending on the number of items and complexity of rate structures
• Reduced clerical burden, freeing up staff who otherwise often have to input rate increases during the busy holiday season
• Seamless audit compliance, with digital records available for every rate change

The Benefits:

Automating rate increases with Codeworks Enterprise brings both financial and operational gains:

• Reliable, on-schedule billing that protects revenue
• Stronger compliance and transparency for audits and customer disputes
• Fewer manual touches, reducing stress on CSRs and management
• Faster, cleaner cash flow from quicker invoicing
• Greater scalability—one setup supports every contract renewal moving forward
• Reduces stress, improving employee satisfaction and morale

Conclusion:

Managing rate increases manually is an outdated, high-risk process that costs time and revenue. Codeworks Enterprise replaces it with a streamlined, fully automated workflow that ensures every increase is accurate, on time and audit ready. By setting rate updates in advance and letting the system do the work, 3PLs can refocus staff on value-added operations and turn what used to be an onerous, time-consuming task into an efficient, one-and-done process.