What is 3pl Software?

3PL software (third party logistics software) makes it possible for third party logistics companies to manage, execute and oversee their overall business. It has functional components such as 3PL warehouse management software, 3PL inventory management software and 3PL billing software.

What is warehouse management for 3PL?

Warehouse management is an essential part of 3PL services. Since warehouses and fulfillment centers are the hubs in a supply chain, managing them in the right way is almost everything to a 3PL. Warehouse management to a 3PL means managing inbound operations (receiving, directed putaway, inventory control and reporting) and outbound operations (order picking, packing, shipment) for multiple clients with client speciic workflows.

what are the main features of a 3PL Software?

3PL Software must be comprehensive to manage the needs of all components throughout the supply chain such as warehouses, labor and equipment resources, transportation, billing and integration to various components of the supply chain management software suite. A 3PL Software should sit on top of all 3PL operations like an umbrella. It should oversee the execution of all operations in the supply chain as well as measure and track the overall 3PL performance. Key feeatures of a 3PL software are warehouse management for multiple clients and multiple warehouses, productive labor management, supply chain collaboration across various supply chain systems, accurate and effective 3PL billing and supply chain planning based on warehousing operations.

What is difference between a warehouse management software and 3PL Software?

Warehouse management software is a component of a 3PL software. 3PL software includes warehouse management, 3PL billing, supply chain collaboration, order fulfillment and supply chain performance components. Warehouse management software is the key function of a 3Pl software considering that warehouses are the hubs of a 3PL supply chain and the source of all supply chain operations.

What is the best third party logistics 3PL software?

Logiwa is one of the best third party logistics software in the market. Its ability to manage multiple clients in multiple warehouses make it stand out in the competition. Features like inventory sharing and order routing across multiple warehouses make a fulfillment operations very effective. A 3pl logistics software should be able to set client specific workflows and algorithms in which Logiwa is very powerful. Even if both B2B and B2C clients are in the same warehouse, Logiwa can offer various workflows to make each of them very efficient. Logiwa's capability of 3PL billing also makes it very powerful vis-a-vis clients. Considering the complexity of activity based pricing, Logiwa offers a very advanced and dynamic billing structure to bill clients accurately and effortlessly.

Cloud-Based 3PL Warehouse Management Software System|Logiwa 3PL WMS

In contrast, small and medium sized companies, warehouses and logistics providers can’t. This makes automation and efficiency incredibly urgent.

Logiwa 3PL warehouse manager system helps companies stay competitive without going out of business by:

Automating direct-to-consumer (DTC) orders
Enabling hassle free picking and packing
Finding the best shipping rates through integrated carriers
Creating streamlined workflows and eliminating process gaps

Logiwa 3PL software can also help improve customer satisfaction levels. Amazon raised the bar both in terms of shipment information and delivery times, resulting in lots of happy online shoppers who have become accustomed to Amazon’s level of customer service.

Logiwa integrates into your order management system and carriers, ensures orders arrive to end consumers on time while also providing real-time information about the location of a package in response to client inquiries.

It's an excellent alternative to billing on the first of the month, which usually involved complicated pro-rated billing. You can track by various units of measurement, such as volume, pallets, bulk, and weight.

Billing for all of those services on the other hand? Not so much.

Don’t Lose through Inaccurate 3PL Billing

The billing process shouldn’t eat into your company’s profit margins; but for many businesses, it does. With a range of services and customized billing cycles, you must routinely conduct manual interventions. This increases the risk of error and forgotten invoices, leading to lost revenue and jeopardized cash flow.

Most 3PL WMS solutions offer basic warehouse operations such as putaway and picking. Logiwa 3PL Software provides additional value-added services and can be customized to include them for billing purposes. For example, you may need build-to-order tracking if you assemble products or configure-to-order for installing and setting up software to fulfill customer orders. Kitting is another common function if your customer requires packing multiple products in a kit that is viewed as a single item in the inventory.

Automate Activity Based Billing

With sophisticated client billing automation functions in your 3PL warehouse software, you can automatically account for charges including:

Storage billing
Inbound billing
Outbound billing
Value Added Services

Logiwa 3PL billing software can also accommodate a range of billing schedules based on your contracts including:

Daily billing
Weekly billing
Monthly billing
Prorated billing
Anniversary billing

Plus, you can easily produce reports and billing statements and create your invoice in your accounting system.

If you’re a retailer, adding more warehouses to your supply chain is a key part of growing your business. It’s also how you embrace an omnichannel retail strategy. Of course, this introduces new challenges. Managing one warehouse is challenging enough as it is. Without the right people, processes, and tools, managing several can be a complicated nightmare.

Consolidate Inventory in Multi-Warehouses

Similarly, if you’re a third party logistics company, your network might include several warehouses for countless clients. Losing track of items or falling behind is not an option. Without the right systems in place, a mere spike in business can overwhelm the most experienced companies.

What you need is access to a cloud based multi-warehouse WMS that provides visibility over your entire warehouse ecosystem. This system must provide real-time inventory data for the entire network, calculate safety stock, and trigger purchase orders accordingly.

A web based multi-warehouse 3pl management software must also provide accurate data on your best selling items within specific channels and across all of your channels combined. These insights allow you to develop effective strategies for allocating goods to certain warehouses.

Assign Orders to the Right Warehouse

In addition, your cloud based 3rd party logistics software should streamline the flow of orders from your sales channels to your order pickers. It should include integration for popular channels like Amazon FBA, Shopify, and eBay. Plus, a great system allows automatic order routing, so customer orders are instantly sent to the best warehouse for each job.

Finally, 3PL system should empower you to employ 3PL best practices. As your warehouse grows, embracing strategies like cross-docking, zone picking and wave picking can enhance warehouse productivity, streamline workflows, and eliminate warehouse waste.

Satisfy Customers through Customer Portal

With the right 3pl warehouse management system, your warehouse can offer an enhanced experience of logistics operations to your customers. The first step is a tailored customer portal that can be accessed from any laptop, tablet, or mobile phone. A great 3PL management system also provides you with a white label service so you can customize portals to include your customers’ logos and brand colors.

Report Real-time Data

Of course, customers want more than just access to business data. They want accurate inventory and real-time inventory information about their inventory. With the right 3PL system portal, your customers can access both real-time information as well as historical information on their products, inbound and outbound shipments, invoices, custom reports, and more.

Create Automated Workflows With a 3PL Software

Even the simplest warehouse consists of several moving parts. When updating inventory, warehouse managers must account for the inbound and outbound movement of goods. To pick goods for orders, workers need to be scheduled and a suitable order picking methodology has to be selected (e.g., wave , cluster, batch) based on the current business need.

To do this well, a third party logistics software is necessary. A 3PL system enables warehouse managers to create pick lists based on defined pick methodologies. It allows warehouse owners to incorporate mobile warehouse barcode scanners and RFID scanners into their warehouses as order volumes increase and become more difficult to track.

The best 3pl system allow warehouses to introduce end-to-end efficiencies by introducing smart order routing for order management and packing algorithms for the shipping process.

Eliminate Waste through Intelligent Warehouse Layout Design

Motion waste is the unnecessary movement of people. In other words, your workers are working hard, but they’re not working smart. In many cases, this isn’t their fault. The warehouse is simply set up in an unhelpful way. If two machines used consecutively are placed on either end of the warehouse, workers have to cross the entire space to complete a task.

With transport waste, products move around unnecessarily. A common type of transport waste is double handling, like when incoming stock is put in an intermediate holding area only to later be put on the pick face shelf. Another example of transport waste is needing to shift items off a shelf in order to access items behind it.

Waiting waste occurs when workers have to stop a process in order to wait for the completion of another process. For instance, if a worker needs to use Machine A, but it’s still in use, that product - and the worker - must wait to continue work, introducing an additional inefficiency.

3PL Warehouse Management Software is the Brain of Your Warehouse

If rearranging your warehouse is out of the question, a robust warehouse management system can help you make the most of your existing layout by:

Creating a warehouse daily checklist to ensure equipment is properly functioning and aisles are clear so that workers and forklift operators can safely and efficiently navigate the warehouse
Making the most of directed putaway algorithms so your workers take the most efficient path
Enabling automated receiving tools that read incoming packages (using barcodes or RFID) and reconcile your purchase orders with your received goods

With a sophisticated 3PL warehouse management system, you can make the most of your existing warehouse layout design.

Logiwa 3PL software eliminates this problem by using Electronic Document Interchange (EDI). Unlike email, which is freeform and unstructured, EDI has predetermined formats for different types of information exchanges, including purchase orders, invoices, and advance ship notices (ASN). These information exchanges use a structured format for sending confirmation notices.

As a result, data can flow through using computers. A PO receiving and confirmation process that might have taken a couple of business days can now be run in a matter of minutes. Similarly, businesses can promptly send accurate invoices since all information is shared within the same system.

Introducing EDI capabilities allows businesses to run both B2B and B2C fulfillment operations more efficiently. A sophisticated 3PL warehouse management system enables warehouses to integrate easily with third-party EDI vendors like Amazon Vendor Central, B2BGateway, CommerceHub, SPS Commerce, and Wayfair.

Inventory cycle counts are a common method for conducting physical counts. Instead of counting the entire warehouse’s inventory in one go (which you should do at least once a year) this method counts sections of the warehouse inventory throughout the year. The most popular method of cycle counting is ABC counting.

With the ABC approach, your warehouse divides items into different classes of importance (Class A, Class B, and Class C) with Class A being the most important. Class A items are counted most frequently, Class B items are counted second-most frequently, while Class C items are counted the least often.

How products are classified depends on the priority of your warehouse. Some warehouse managers rank items based on how quickly they move, since their inventory turnover rate is higher. Other warehouse managers focus on the dollar value of items, since preventing theft, loss, or damage of these items is more important.

Logiwa 3pl logistics software helps you to count your warehouse instantly and periodically.

As a 3pl software systems provider, Logiwa assigns a dedicated onboarding specialist to achieve a smooth implementation.

A great training session is tailored to employees’ needs. It understands how their current workflow will be changing and walks them through exactly how to complete their work. On the other hand, poorly designed training sessions provide general information that make new tools frustrating and inaccessible to experienced workers.

A 3PL software provider will help you tie warehouse training into your warehouse implementation. The 3PL warehouse software implementation manager will provide documentation for the system and help you organize and conduct warehouse operations training on the new systems.

An inventory management system integrated with a 3pl warehouse system is the best way to track inventory. Your 3pl inventory management software should also automatically integrate with your clients' sales channels including Amazon, Shopify, Oberlo, and more.

If you fulfill for brick-and-mortar stores, your 3PL software should also tie into your clients' point-of-sale systems so that inventory is automatically updated.

Unsure where to start? Consider assessing your pick method. Picking is an extremely labor-intensive task. As a result, it’s also one of the most expensive parts of running a warehouse. But, with the right picking method, you can make the most of the time your workers spend walking the warehouse floors.

Popular pick methods include:

Wave picking
Batch picking
Zone picking
Cluster picking
Zone picking (Pick and pass)

A popular method among large warehouse is wave picking because it takes scheduling into consideration. Items to be picked are scheduled in waves that are tied to criteria like the packaging requirements for a group of products or the shipping schedule of carriers. This way, high priority items can be picked earlier in the day so they’re prepped in time for outbound trucks. Similarly, warehouses can also achieve smarter workforce planning by determining how many workers to schedule at different points in the day.

A similar idea applies to the putaway process. While the putaway process doesn’t get as much attention as the picking process, it’s just as important. Putaway is another labor intensive task that affects the efficiency of the rest of the warehouse. After all, workers can’t pick, pack, and ship items that aren’t on the shelves. To streamline this process, warehouses can take advantage of putaway path optimization methods.

Optimizing walking paths for pickers and linking picking to various schedules is impossible to do at scale without a proper warehouse management system. With a 3pl warehouse manager software, waves are easily scheduled and walking paths quickly optimized.

Logiwa’s 3PL warehouse management software with professional consultation can lead to improvements in your inbound and outbound staging area, putaway, picking, packing, and shipping processes, warehouse automation, and more.

Introducing a new 3PL management software into your 3rd party logistics business can be daunting. That’s why we offer a dedicated implementation consultant to walk you through the process. We’ll deliver a seamless onboarding experience that includes assistance with user and role configuration, warehouse set up, product and item set up, location and bin set up, customized label design, and customized notifications.

This makes proper billing and collection even more important. In a multi-client warehouse, it can be difficult to stay on top of all billing operations. Forgetting to send an invoice impedes cash flow and essentially gives your customers an interest-free loan.

Logiwa 3pl warehouse software helps prevent this from happening. It streamlines processes by keeping tabs on all tasks performed for multiple customers, ensuring no value-added activities are accidentally omitted from the invoice. When customers demand detailed information regarding charges, Logiwa 3PL software allows you to provide info on factors like storage fees, handling fees, kitting and custom labelling etc, so customers can see a complete picture of the fees.

Our 3pl warehouse software automates the billing management process. In a manual environment, an employee would have to create the billing statement, email it to the customer and await confirmation of receipt from the customer. Even then, the customer must perform several steps before they pay. After sending confirmation of receipt, the customer manually enters the information from the supplier’s invoice into their own system before processing it.

At best, this process can take a week. Considering the number of manual data transfers, it’s not surprising that invoice processing often takes much, much longer. Logiwa 3PL system with EDI functionality allows information to move smoothly, eliminating the need for manual data entry.

Logiwa 3PL warehouse management system supports tracking of entire supply chain such as inbound and outbound orders and shipments. The ability to enter sales and purchase orders is another useful feature that helps integrate information into a single network. Also, clients typically want to view other transaction documents, such as invoices, order forms.

The 3PL client portal supports the creation of advance shipping notices (ASNs) that clients use to alert their customers of shipments the warehouse is sending out. Many clients have complex ASN requirements, so offering a flexible, easy-to-use ASN tool for your clients allow you to serve those clients better.

The Most Connected 3PL Software on Cloud

Transform your warehouse into a new age fulfillment center with Logiwa 3PL System.

The Most Powerful & Integrated B2C/B2B Fulfillment Backbone For 3PLs

Logiwa 3PL platform's interface and integrations are incredibly flexible, allowing you to create rule-based solutions for your 3PL clients.

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See What Our Customers Say About Us

Logiwa is the most integrated 3PL platform available in the market today. But don't listen to us, hear it from our customers.

Automate Your Fulfillment Processes With Logiwa

With Logiwa's plug'n play integrations, you can connect your business to 70+ parties and streamline you supply chain.

Automated Client Billing

Advanced 3PL Software Features

Improve your fulfillment skills through advanced features within Logiwa 3PL Software. You should expect to go beyond your clients’ expectations and help them create a seamless supply chain.

Multi-Client and Multi-Warehouse 3PL Software

Fully Integrated All-in-One 3PL Software

Faster Fulfillment for Lower Cycle Time

Consignment Inventory Management

Branded Client Portal

Cost-Effective Operations with Logiwa 3PL WMS Software

What are the 3PL Manager Software Benefits

Explore Our 3PL Software Features in a Personalized Demo

Logiwa 3PL fulfillment software enables companies to manage multiple operations in the same facility in harmony. At the same time, our software allows you to execute advanced fulfillment strategies like wave-planning, cluster picking and cross-docking.

Battling the “Amazon effect”

Are Your Billing Processes Costing You Too Much?

Don’t Lose through Inaccurate 3PL Billing

Automate Activity Based Billing

How Can a 3PL Software Tool Solve Your Multi-Warehouse Efficiency Problems?

Consolidate Inventory in Multi-Warehouses

Assign Orders to the Right Warehouse

Does Your 3PL System Offer a Digital-First Customer Experience?

Satisfy Customers through Customer Portal

Report Real-time Data

Are Manual Processes Crippling Your Operations?

Create Automated Workflows With a 3PL Software

Is Your Warehouse Layout Designed For Success?

Eliminate Waste through Intelligent Warehouse Layout Design

3PL Warehouse Management Software is the Brain of Your Warehouse

How Much Do You Know About Straight-Through EDI Processing in Warehouses?

When Was the Last Time You Properly Counted Your Inventory?

Are Your Workers Up To Speed On Your 3PL Warehouse Management System?

Which 3PL Inventory Management Tool Do You Use To Track Your Inventory?

How Efficient Are Your Warehouse Processes?

Initiate Your Business’s Growth With Logiwa 3PL Warehouse Management System

Need for Increased Efficiency and Profitability

Supply Chain Visibility

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is 3pl Software?

What is warehouse management for 3PL?

What are the main features of a 3PL Software?

What is difference between a warehouse management software and 3PL Software?

What is the best third party logistics 3PL software?

Choose the only 3PL System you'll ever need for your warehouses

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