Logistics SLA Reporting

When logistics reporting is vague, the costs get very specific

Logistics problems rarely start with a dramatic failure. They start as a slow drift: receiving takes longer, order queues age, carrier pickups get tight, and customer support starts seeing more "where is my order" messages. If your logistics SLA reporting is weak, you do not see the drift until it becomes a miss, and a miss has consequences that are never vague.

For D2C, the consequence is churn, refunds, reships, and higher support costs. For B2B, the consequence is chargebacks, canceled orders, and strained retailer relationships. The point of logistics SLA reporting is to catch the drift while it is still a small operational issue, not a business crisis.

What logistics SLA reporting actually includes

Many teams treat SLA reporting as outbound only, but logistics is a chain. If you only report on the end of the chain, you miss the upstream constraints that make the end fail. Joel Malmquist, VP of Customer Experience at G10 Fulfillment, described the scope plainly: "An SLA is a Service Level Agreements for Receiving, Outbound, and B2B." That statement is the blueprint for logistics reporting because it tells you where the service clocks live.

Receiving SLAs cover how quickly inbound inventory becomes available. Outbound SLAs cover how quickly orders are processed and staged. B2B SLAs cover the additional compliance and documentation rules that make or break retailer shipments. When those pieces are reported together, the brand can see cause and effect instead of guessing.

Why cutoffs are the heart of logistics SLAs

Customers and retailers experience logistics as time. They do not experience your internal workflow charts. They experience whether the shipment moved when it should have moved. That is why cutoffs must be explicit in SLA reporting, and why cutoff compliance should be reported daily.

Malmquist described a common D2C promise in clock terms. "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." A logistics SLA report should show how many orders qualified for the cutoff, how many met it, and where the misses occurred. That turns a marketing promise into an operational metric that can be improved.

Why the word "shipped" can ruin your logistics report

Logistics SLA reporting breaks when the definition of shipped is sloppy. Many systems call an order shipped when the label prints or the order is marked complete. Customers and retailers call it shipped when the carrier has it and tracking moves. If you blend those definitions, your report will look better than your customer experience.

Malmquist explained the gap 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." Logistics SLA reporting should therefore separate warehouse completion from carrier acceptance, and it should track the gap between them. That gap is often where dock congestion, missed pickups, and carrier variability hide.

Receiving reporting is the leading indicator most brands wish they had earlier

Receiving is not glamorous, but it controls availability. If inbound inventory sits on the dock, it is not really inventory you can ship, even if it is physically in the building. That is why receiving must be part of logistics SLA reporting, not an internal note.

Malmquist described receiving in terms that translate directly to reporting. "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." A strong report includes age on dock, count completion time, stow completion time, and exception categories, so teams can see whether the issue is labor, process, or inbound variability.

Accuracy is a logistics SLA issue, not only a warehouse issue

Logistics does not end when a box leaves the building. If the box is wrong, you have created a reverse logistics problem that costs more than the original shipment. That is why logistics SLA reporting should include accuracy metrics, not only speed.

High accuracy at scale is rare, which is why it is worth reporting clearly. Malmquist described the accuracy level he saw at G10 and why it stood out. "We have over 99.9% ship accuracy of these orders, which when you look at it on a unit level, such as unit shift versus unit errors, I almost couldn't believe it when I came here, how well we're doing on B2B shipping." Accuracy reporting should be layered by order, line, and unit, because each layer reveals different failure modes.

Why scan events make logistics SLA reporting credible

A logistics report is only as credible as the data that feeds it. In warehouses, the most credible data comes from scan events, because scans record physical reality. Manual updates create reporting gaps that look small until they compound into major disputes about what happened.

Bryan Wright, CTO and COO of G10 Fulfillment, described why scan-based tracking changes the game. "A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point that you touch it." He explained how granular that tracking can be. "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." When logistics SLA reporting is built from scan events, you can drill from a KPI to a transaction trail without guesswork.

Why B2B logistics reporting must include compliance milestones

Retailers are not forgiving, and they do not care that you tried. In B2B, logistics SLAs include compliance milestones like labeling, routing guide adherence, and EDI timing. If those steps are late or wrong, the shipment can be rejected, fined, or canceled, even if it arrived physically on time.

Wright explained why this needs to be built into the system and the reporting. "Our WMS system was written from day one around B2B, which is very different." He described the operational requirements that must be tracked. "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." Logistics SLA reporting for B2B should show these compliance events as measurable milestones, not as hand-waved assurances.

How strict retailer deadlines make reporting a revenue protection tool

In retail, time windows are not suggestions. They are rules with penalties. Holly Woods, Director of Operations at G10 Fulfillment, described the reality clearly. "Target has a deadline for delivery and that's it, no exceptions. They'll just cancel the order." That is why logistics SLA reporting cannot be a monthly report that tells you what you lost. It must be a daily view that helps you keep orders alive.

Woods also described how compressed timelines can get when inbound arrives late. "When it came in, it had to be completed, received, shipped, labeled, ready for routing to a carrier by that next morning." A strong reporting system highlights those compressed windows early, so the operation can prioritize correctly, rather than discovering the miss after the cancellation email arrives.

Visibility is the part of reporting that changes behavior

Logistics SLA reporting is most powerful when customers can see it, not just when the warehouse can. When customers have to email for status, they lose time and confidence. When they can see progress, they can plan and communicate without waiting.

Maureen Milligan, Director of Operations and Projects at G10 Fulfillment, described what customers gain from real-time access. "What these real-time portals provide our customers is 100% visibility." She explained what that looks like day to day. "They can actually watch those progressions going on." Connor Perkins, Director of Fulfillment at G10 Fulfillment, described the broader reporting view customers want. "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." Reporting plus visibility is what turns SLAs from a contract phrase into a managed system.

Where G10 fits if you need logistics SLA reporting you can use daily

If your business depends on cutoffs, fast fulfillment, and retailer compliance, logistics SLA reporting has to be specific, timely, and drillable. G10 focuses on scan-based execution, customer-facing portals, and operational reporting that covers receiving, outbound, carrier handoff, and B2B compliance milestones. The goal is fewer surprises and faster fixes, because the cost of an SLA miss is rarely limited to one late box.

If you want to see what logistics SLA reporting looks like when it is tied to real transactions, ask for a walkthrough of a live day in the portal, including one exception case. You should be able to start with an SLA metric, click into the underlying orders or POs, and understand exactly where time and risk sit in the process, so you can grow without turning logistics into your biggest uncertainty.