3PL SLA Reporting

When a 3PL report arrives late, the problem has already spread

If your 3PL sends performance numbers once a month, you are driving by looking in the rearview mirror. You might learn that on-time shipping dipped, inventory accuracy slipped, or receiving backed up, but you learn it after the fact, when the business cost is already locked in. That is why people search for 3PL SLA reporting with such urgency. They are not shopping for spreadsheets. They are shopping for control.

Most brands do not wake up wanting to police their logistics provider. They want to sell products, launch campaigns, and expand channels. The trouble starts when orders miss cutoffs, retailers send chargebacks, or customers start asking why tracking has not moved. At that moment, the brand needs answers that are specific, fast, and credible. A 3PL that cannot explain performance with clean SLA reporting is asking you to accept uncertainty as normal.

What 3PL SLA reporting actually covers

SLA reporting is not one metric, and it is not only about outbound shipments. It is the full chain from inbound receiving through pick, pack, ship, and the accuracy that keeps the whole system from wobbling. Joel Malmquist, VP of Customer Experience at G10 Fulfillment, defined the scope plainly: "An SLA is a Service Level Agreements for Receiving, Outbound, and B2B." That definition matters because a brand can miss its outbound promise due to an inbound failure that happened days earlier.

Malmquist also described what those SLAs look like as operational timelines. "For receiving, the SLA is covers the time from the moment that we get a container on the dock with inventory in it, and how much time we have to count that in, and stow it away into the locations that we're going to pick from." For direct-to-consumer orders, he tied service level to the clock that customers and marketing teams actually plan around. "For D2C, which is an order through Shopify or on the merchant's website, if it's before noon, we're going to ship that order the same day."

Why SLA reporting is where many 3PL relationships break down

In a healthy relationship, reporting reduces friction. In a strained one, reporting becomes a battleground. The pattern is familiar. The 3PL says the SLA was met, the brand shows customer complaints, and everyone argues about definitions. Good 3PL SLA reporting prevents that by making the measurement rules clear, then showing the transaction detail behind the headline number.

Maureen Milligan, Director of Operations and Projects at G10 Fulfillment, described the pain that new clients often carry in with them. "Most of the customers who come to us from another 3PL, their challenges have always been access to their data, order accuracy and efficiency, and basically just meeting the committed requirements." When the customer cannot see the data, they cannot validate the story, and they cannot explain issues internally. That is how logistics becomes a recurring fire drill.

What strong SLA reporting looks like to an operator

The best SLA reports are not long, and they are not vague. They answer the questions that operators actually ask. What percentage shipped on time, by channel. Which orders missed, and why. Which steps are slowing down, and whether the delay is getting better or worse week over week.

Milligan explained why real-time and near real-time visibility changes the customer experience. "What these real-time portals provide our customers is 100% visibility." She also described how the customer can follow work as it happens instead of waiting for updates. "They can actually watch those progressions going on." When a report is backed by live status, it stops being a debate and starts being a tool.

Why scan-based execution makes SLA reporting believable

A report is only as trustworthy as the data underneath it. In fulfillment, the most dependable data comes from scanning, because scanning records what physically happened. When processes are paper-based or loosely tracked, SLA reporting turns into a narrative, and narratives can be spun.

Bryan Wright, CTO and COO of G10 Fulfillment, described the difference between strong systems and weak ones in terms that are hard to ignore. "A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point that you touch it." He explained that the goal is not just knowing that inventory exists, but knowing its state as it moves. "At any point in time, I know that Bobby has this product on fork 10 right now, and if I needed to go find that product, I just got to go find Bobby on fork 10." That kind of traceability is what allows a 3PL to defend a service level claim with facts instead of confidence.

Why 3PL SLA reporting must separate warehouse completion from carrier reality

A classic fulfillment argument starts with the word shipped. Many 3PLs say an order shipped when the label printed or when the order was marked complete. Customers, meanwhile, define shipped as the moment the carrier actually has the package and tracking moves. If your reporting blurs that line, you can show a perfect SLA while customers experience delays.

Malmquist acknowledged the nuance directly. "The reason I don't say ship is because sometimes it will be marked as completed, but the carrier doesn't actually pick it up right away, but the tracking goes back to Shopify." Strong SLA reporting shows both. It shows when the warehouse finished the order, and when the carrier acceptance scan occurred, so you can isolate whether the bottleneck is inside the building or outside it.

Why B2B reporting needs different detail than D2C reporting

If you sell through Shopify, your SLA risk is usually speed and accuracy. If you ship to big-box retailers, your SLA risk includes compliance, routing guides, and paperwork, plus the fines that follow mistakes. A 3PL that only reports D2C style metrics will miss the issues that create B2B chargebacks.

Wright explained why B2B requires a different operational lens. "Our WMS system was written from day one around B2B, which is very different." He described the compliance requirements that reporting needs to track if you want to prevent chargebacks instead of merely counting them. "They have routing guides that make you specific labels on and put them in a specific place on the box, and you have to send EDI, ASN, electronic information in a timely fashion." Good 3PL SLA reporting shows whether those steps were completed on time, not just whether a pallet left the dock.

How SLA reporting protects revenue when retailers set the rules

Retailers do not grade on effort. They grade on deadlines, accuracy, and compliance, and they penalize misses with ruthless consistency. Holly Woods, Director of Operations at G10 Fulfillment, described the hard edge of that reality. "Target has a deadline for delivery and that's it, no exceptions. They'll just cancel the order." When a retailer can cancel, the cost is not only the chargeback. The cost is the relationship damage and the lost sell-through you were counting on.

That is why SLA reporting needs to be tied to proactive planning. Woods described how deadlines can compress when inbound inventory arrives late. "When it came in, it had to be completed, received, shipped, labeled, ready for routing to a carrier by that next morning." Reporting that highlights those risks early gives you a chance to flex labor, prioritize work, or adjust cutoffs before the window closes.

What you should expect to see in a modern 3PL reporting portal

Modern reporting is not just a PDF and not just an export. It is a portal that lets you see daily orders, SLA performance, and history, with the ability to drill down fast. Connor Perkins, Director of Fulfillment at G10 Fulfillment, described the visibility clients want in practical terms. "Our clients get best-in-class visibility and transparency. They can see their daily orders, they can see KPIs, and they can see historical transactions." That breadth matters because a single metric without context is a great way to hide a growing problem.

Perkins also pointed to a feature that seems small until you need it. "You have easy access to reporting and you can export to Excel, or really any format that you like you know directly from our WMS portal." Exports matter because brands need to reconcile billing, explain performance internally, and connect fulfillment metrics to marketing and forecasting. The portal view is the live picture, and the export is how you bring it into the rest of your business.

Why fast reporting also depends on how support is structured

Even with great reporting, exceptions happen. When they do, you need someone who can interpret what the data is saying and get the right internal teams moving. That is where many large 3PLs fall down, because the customer gets stuck in a queue while the warehouse keeps running.

Perkins described why a direct contact changes the experience when something goes sideways. "One of the benefits that you get with us would be having a dedicated account manager who is human. You're not put into a ticketing system with people coming in and out every day and working on your problem." Good SLA reporting tells you what is happening. A dedicated point of contact helps you turn that information into a fix.

Where G10 fits if you need 3PL SLA reporting you can actually use

If you are running D2C and B2B, or you are trying to grow into retail without losing your D2C engine, you need SLA reporting that keeps up with the pace of your business. G10 focuses on scan-based execution, customer-facing visibility, and operational reporting that can be drilled into quickly, so the story behind performance is clear. As Milligan described the outcome for customers who have been burned elsewhere, "For customers who have come to us from a bad 3PL relationship, they experience relief. They're suddenly seeing their business scaling, that the data supports what we agreed to, and then the trust begins to build."

If you want to spend less time arguing about what happened and more time preventing issues before they hit customers, ask for a walkthrough of a live SLA reporting view, including one normal day and one peak day. You should be able to see the metrics, trace a single order end-to-end, and understand exactly where time and risk sit in the process.