Glossary / Pick and pack
Glossary
Pick and pack
The core fulfillment charge: retrieving the items in an order and packing them to ship.
What it means
Usually priced as a base per order plus a rate per additional unit — $2.50 for the first item, $0.35 for each one after. Some contracts price per line rather than per unit, which is a different number for the same shipment.
What goes wrong
Per-unit billed as per-line, or the base charged on every unit instead of once per order. On a high-volume month the gap compounds quietly: a $0.35 error on 40,000 units is $14,000 that never looks like anything.
The arithmetic
1,000 orders · 3,200 units
Contract · $2.50 per order, $0.35 per additional unit.
As written
1,000 × $2.50 = $2,500.00
2,200 × $0.35 = $770.00
----------
$3,270.00
Additional rate applied to every unit
1,000 × $2.50 = $2,500.00
3,200 × $0.35 = $1,120.00
----------
$3,620.00
Difference $350.00
One month. The rate is right, the count is wrong,
and nothing on the invoice looks unusual.How to check it
Take the order count and the unit count separately. Base × orders, plus additional rate × (units − orders). If the invoice used units for both, it is wrong.