Billing Engine
Every billable event, rated and invoiced. No spreadsheet in the middle.
Momentum's billing engine turns warehouse activity — orders, picks, labels, receiving, storage days, supplies and ad-hoc work — into billable events, rates each one against that client's rate card, and assembles draft invoices on the client's own billing cycle for review and approval. Each client is invoiced on terms or prepays a balance that every approved invoice draws down.
Monthly cycle · Aug 1 – Aug 31
| Line | |
|---|---|
| DTC order — first pick | $17,419.20 |
| Additional picks | $2,711.50 |
| Storage — pallet days | $2,594.70 |
| Receiving — cartons | $1,136.80 |
| Kitting — gift set assembly | $1,178.00 |
| No rate: oversize cartonReview | Exception |
The problem
Why is 3PL billing so hard to get right?
Because the rates live in contracts, the activity lives in the WMS, and the invoice gets built by hand in between. Every client has its own card — first pick priced differently from additional picks, kitting by the unit, receiving by the carton or the hour, storage by the pallet, the bin or the cubic meter — and the WMS export never lines up with it cleanly.
- Invoices rebuilt from CSV exports every cycle
- Ad-hoc work tracked in Slack, email and memory
- Storage estimated instead of measured
- No clean way to show what an invoice line came from when a client disputes it
How it works
How does Momentum calculate a 3PL invoice?
- 1
Configure each client's rate card
Line items by category — receiving, storage, fulfillment, kitting, shipping, returns, labor and supplies — with tiers, minimums and effective dates. Describe a rule in plain English and Momentum drafts the structured version; nothing saves until you approve a deterministic preview.
- 2
Capture activity as events
Orders and labels sync from ShipHero every 5 minutes, pick and pack scans every 15. Receiving counts and billable floor work come in from the warehouse app. Storage accrues nightly from real location snapshots. Each becomes one event in a ledger that can't double-count.
- 3
Rate and assemble drafts
Events are rated against the rate card in effect and assembled into a draft invoice on the client's cycle — weekly, monthly, anchor-day, or weekly with a month-end true-up. Anything the engine can't rate is listed as an exception on the draft, never silently dropped.
- 4
Approve and export
Finance reviews and approves. Approval locks the underlying events, so re-running a period can't change an invoice you've already sent. Approved invoices export to QuickBooks.
Capabilities
What's in 3PL Billing Engine
What each piece does, in plain terms.
| Capability | What it does |
|---|---|
| Client-specific rate cards | Per-line pricing, tiers, minimums and effective-dated versions for every client. |
| Plain-English rule authoring | AI drafts the rule from your description; a deterministic engine does the math. The money path never calls a model. |
| Nightly storage accrual | Pallet, location or weekly cubic-meter storage measured from daily snapshots and prorated onto invoices. |
| Receiving from dock counts | Units and cartons counted on the floor bill against the client's receiving lines automatically. |
| Ad-hoc charges with approval | The floor logs the work unpriced; finance prices and approves it. Pending charges never bill. |
| Credits and adjustments | Role-gated credits with reasons, applied to the next invoice or settled against a claim. |
| Invoice on terms or prepaid, per client | Choose how each client pays. Switching a client later never rewrites invoices already approved. |
| Prepaid balances | The client funds a balance up front and each approved invoice draws it down; voiding an invoice reverses the draw. Every deposit, draw and refund sits in a ledger that can't be edited. |
| Balance in the client portal | Prepaid clients see their balance, what has already accrued against it this period, and how much to add when it runs low. |
| Shadow billing | Run Momentum next to your current billing and diff every line before cutting a client over. |
| Launch-readiness board | A per-client checklist — approved rates, accounting mapping, WMS mapping — so no client goes live half-configured. |
What changes
Invoices you can defend
Every line traces back to the order, label, scan or storage day that created it.
Billing runs from a review queue
The cycle becomes approving drafts and clearing exceptions instead of rebuilding a spreadsheet.
Work gets billed even when nobody remembers
Receiving, storage and floor work are captured as they happen, not recalled at month-end.
Connects to
- ShipHero
- QuickBooks Online
- Momentum floor app
FAQ
3PL Billing Engine: common questions
Does Momentum replace ShipHero's billing?
Yes, that is what it's built for. Momentum reads activity from ShipHero and does the rating and invoicing itself against rate cards you control. Shadow billing lets you run both side by side and compare every line until the numbers match.
Which billing cycles are supported?
Calendar-month, weekly, anchor-day cycles (for example, the 15th to the 14th), and weekly billing with a month-end true-up. Each client runs on its own cycle.
How does Momentum bill storage?
Storage accrues every night from real location occupancy in the WMS — by pallet, by location or bin, or by weekly cubic-meter measurement — and is prorated onto each client's invoice for the period. There's no month-end estimate to argue about.
Can clients prepay so we don't front carrier costs?
Yes. Put a client on a prepaid balance: they fund it up front, and each approved invoice — postage, fulfillment, storage and everything else on it — draws it down, so carrier bills are paid from their money instead of yours. The draw happens when the invoice is approved on the client's cycle, not label by label. Both you and the client see what has accrued against the balance and how much to add.
Does AI set prices or change invoices?
No. AI is used only to turn a plain-English rule into structured configuration, and nothing saves until a person approves a deterministic preview of its effect. Rating and invoicing are pure calculation.
Can clients see how an invoice was calculated?
Clients see invoices and line-item detail at their sell price in the client portal. Costs, margins and markup rules never cross into the portal.
See what your last billing cycle missed.
Early access starts with a walkthrough and shadow billing on a few clients — compare every line before you switch.