For 3PLs shipping 50,000+ parcels a month · No dashboard · Live in an hour

Stop paying for your merchants’ oversized boxes and your carriers’ billing errors

Three weeks after a parcel leaves your dock, DPD or DHL bills you because the box was bigger than the merchant declared. Your weekly client invoices are already closed, so you absorb it: typically 2–4% of freight spend, every month. ParcelDuty reconciles every carrier invoice against your WMS, bills each merchant-caused surcharge back with the scan attached, and files your carrier credit claims before the dispute window shuts. Nothing to log into. Draft lines appear in Xero, Sage or NetSuite.

Run the free 24-hour audit → Read the API docs

Drop one closed carrier invoice and a WMS export. In 24 hours you get every unrecovered £, down to the tracking number.

The merchant surcharge loop

One mirror, £16.50 a time

A merchant lists a 120 cm mirror in Shopify as 10 × 10 × 10 cm. The carrier’s scan measures it at 124 × 42 × 18. Nineteen days later a £16.50 Non-Conveyable penalty lands on your invoice, on every order. The billing run is closed. You eat it.

ParcelDuty catches the mismatch, drafts a £18.48 re-bill line in your ERP with the scan attached, and writes the real dimensions back to the SKU so it never happens again.

✓ Draft line in ERP: +£18.48 Scan proof attached

01. The problem

Where the margin goes between day 0 and day 21

When a parcel leaves your warehouse dock on day 0, your WMS estimates shipping costs using unverified merchant SKU weights. Three weeks later, the carrier’s scan tunnels dump a 150,000-row invoice onto your portal and sweep your bank account via direct debit. By then, your merchant invoices are closed, your finance team is buried in broken Excel VLOOKUPs, and your 3PL absorbs the difference.

Surcharges that arrive after you’ve already invoiced the merchant

The mechanic

A warehouse packer grabs a large box when medium boxes run out, or a merchant lists a 120cm mirror as 10x10x10cm in Shopify. Three weeks later, DPD or DHL hits you with a £16.50 Non-Conveyable (NCV) penalty, an £8.50 Address Correction (ADC), or a Volumetric (DIM) weight jump.

The financial cost Because your weekly client billing run is already closed—and merchants refuse to pay retroactive lump-sum bills without line-item proof—you eat 100% of the penalty, erasing the profit of the next 30 orders.

Carrier billing errors you have 14 days to dispute

The mechanic

Carrier billing mainframes misfire on 1.2% to 2.5% of parcel volume. They apply £3.80 Residential Surcharges to commercial business parks, bill the public fuel index instead of your capped contractual tier, double-bill tracking numbers across consecutive weeks, and charge for unvoided Manifested-Not-Shipped labels.

The financial cost You have a strict 14-to-21-day contractual window to submit formatted credit claims before the charges become legally final. No human finance team can audit 200,000 lines in time.

Fake weights and undeclared batteries in merchant catalogs

The mechanic

Onboarding DTC brands sync messy Shopify catalogs directly into your WMS: 0.01kg placeholder weights and unflagged Section II Lithium-Ion batteries (UN3481) or flammable cosmetics.

The financial cost Fake weights systematically under-bill freight on every order until caught, while a single undisclosed battery or aerosol flagged at an air hub triggers £1,000–£5,000 statutory carrier fines and account probation.

02. What it does

No dashboard. Recovered margin lands in your ERP as draft invoice lines

Your finance and operations teams don’t need another login screen with 50 filter buttons. ParcelDuty operates with no dashboard and nothing to log into: it ingests raw data from your existing stack and writes verified financial entries directly into your system of record.

POST /v1/billing/reconcile

Re-bill every merchant-caused surcharge, with proof they won’t argue with

• Multi-pass entity resolution

Links fragmented, multi-row carrier CSVs and invoice files against your WMS dispatch logs across rolling 90-day windows—resolving master vs. child barcode mismatches and isolating orphaned "ghost shipments" printed outside your WMS.

• Merchant re-bills

Automatically generates draft invoice lines in Xero, NetSuite, Sage, or QuickBooks for every merchant-fault surcharge, applying your exact client-specific markup tiers.

• One-click proof receipts

Every re-billed surcharge line includes a proof URL (proof.parcelduty.com/tx_...) displaying the WMS dispatch declaration alongside the carrier’s certified Legal-for-Trade laser scan dimensions and timestamp. Merchants pay without arguing with your account managers.

• Automated carrier dispute payloads

Isolates duplicate billing, unshipped labels, and commercial-dock residential errors (verified against our commercial address graph) and outputs pre-formatted carrier credit claim files before your 14-day dispute window closes.

// Executable cURL request

curl -X POST https://api.parcelduty.com/v1/billing/reconcile \

-H "Authorization: Bearer ***" \

-H "Content-Type: application/json" \

-d '{

"carrier_csv_payload": "...raw carrier invoice...",

"wms_csv_payload": "...wms dispatch log export...",

"markup_margin_pct": 12.0

→ Outputs: Re-Bill Lines JSON + proof URLs + Carrier Claims CSV

POST /v1/billing/accrue

Catch the surcharge the moment the label prints, not three weeks later

• Stop retro-billing months later

Instead of waiting 21 days for the carrier invoice to discover an oversize penalty, /v1/billing/accrue inspects your dispatch webhook the moment a label prints at the pack bench.

• Historical scan dimension matching

Even if a merchant enters fake dimensions in Shopify, ParcelDuty cross-references the item's EAN/UPC barcode and historical carrier scan data to predict the exact volumetric weight jump, non-conveyable fee, remote area postcode charge, and live fuel index.

• Same-week invoice capture

Appends the predicted surcharge directly onto the merchant's current weekly billing run while the order is still fresh—and automatically writes the true scan dimensions back into your WMS master SKU table so the error never repeats.

// Predictive accrual payload

{

"declared_billable_weight_kg": 0.85,

"predicted_carrier_billable_weight_kg": 2.82,

"predicted_dimensions": {"length": 36.2, "width": 28.1, "height": 13.9},

"bulge_expansion_applied_pct": 12.0,

"predicted_accrual_surcharges_eur": 16.50,

"surcharge_breakdown": {"NCV_OVERSIZE": 16.50},

"wms_sku_table_patched": true

}

POST /v1/skus/preflight

Block bad SKUs before they reach your dock

• Pre-warehouse gatekeeper

Intercepts new merchant SKU catalog syncs before a single unit is received at your loading dock.

• Volumetric sanity check

Flags missing or statistically impossible weights and dimensions (e.g., a "Full-Length Wooden Mirror" listed at 0.2kg) using verified optical carrier scan data.

• Dangerous goods quarantine

Automated token and catalog inspection flags suspected regulated goods (UN3481 lithium batteries, aerosols, high-alcohol perfumes) and locks the SKU in quarantine until the merchant uploads a valid SDS (Safety Data Sheet).

// Quarantine Alert Payload

{

"sku": "DRONE-4K-PRO",

"quarantined": true,

"quarantine_reason": "Statutory Hazmat: UN3481 Lithium-ion battery detected without SDS certification.",

"statutory_risk": "£1,000–£5,000 IATA/ADR carrier violation hold",

"required_action": "Require merchant upload Section II SDS before warehouse receipt."

}

03. Ask it anything

Ask your freight ledger a question in Slack, Claude, or Teams. Get the answer before the pricing review

Your commercial team already lives in Slack, Claude and Teams. ParcelDuty ships an MCP server on top of the API, so they can ask the freight ledger a question and get the answer with the numbers, before the pricing review.

MCP Tool Active

#freight-commercial • Slack App Channel

Commercial Director (3PL) 11:42 AM

"We have a quarterly pricing review with Aura Home at 2 PM. How much did they cost us in unbilled DPD surcharges last month, which SKUs caused it, and what happens to our margin if we cap their Non-Conveyable pass-through at £12?"

ParcelDuty APP 11:42 AM

query_merchant_leakage · simulate_rate_card_margin

Total unbilled leakage (Sept): £7,840.20 across 412 shipments (DPD Next Day).

Primary Culprit: SKU-AURA-MIRROR-88

Declared: 10x10x10cm | DPD scan: 124.5x42.0x18.0cm → triggered £16.50 NCV penalty on 100% of orders.

Simulation Result: Capping NCV pass-through at £12.00 results in a -£4.50 net loss per mirror (-£1,854/mo).

• Recommended Action: Keep 100% surcharge pass-through.

04. Setup

Live in under an hour. Nothing to install, nothing to change in your WMS

Your IT team does not need to write a webhook, touch the WMS codebase or change anything on the warehouse floor. Read-only connectors and an SFTP drop-zone do the work.

┌───────────────────────────┐       ┌───────────────────────────┐
│   1. YOUR EXISTING WMS    │       │  2. CARRIER BILLING RAILS │
│  Mintsoft / Peoplevox /   │       │  DPD / DHL / UPS / FedEx  │
│  Extensiv / Deposco / ERP │       │  Royal Mail / Evri / GLS  │
└─────────────┬─────────────┘       └─────────────┬─────────────┘
              │ (Read-Only API Key                │ (Auto-Forward Invoices / EDI
              │  or Scheduled Export)             │  to @tenant.parcelduty.com)
              ▼                                   ▼
┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                     PARCELDUTY ENGINE                         │
│  • Multi-Row CSV/EDI Normalizer & 90-Day Parcel State Ledger  │
│  • Commercial Address & Scan History Vault                    │
│  • Rate-Card & Merchant Markup Rule Engine                    │
└────────┬──────────────────────┬──────────────────────┬────────┘
         │                      │                      │
         ▼                      ▼                      ▼
┌─────────────────┐    ┌─────────────────┐    ┌─────────────────┐
│  3A. YOUR ERP   │    │ 3B. DISPUTE OPS │    │  3C. WORKSPACE  │
│  Xero / Sage    │    │ Ready-to-Submit │    │ Claude / Slack  │
│  NetSuite       │    │ Carrier Credit  │    │ & Teams MCP     │
│  Draft Lines    │    │ Dispute Files   │    │ + Proof URLs    │
└─────────────────┘    └─────────────────┘    └─────────────────┘

MINUTE 0–15

Connect your WMS (read-only)

Paste a read-only API key for Mintsoft, Peoplevox, Extensiv, Deposco, ShipHero, Linnworks, or Odoo into our CLI or encrypted onboarding vault.

MINUTE 15–30

Forward your carrier invoices

Add your dedicated invoices@[your-3pl].parcelduty.com email alias or SFTP credentials to your DPD, DHL, UPS, and Royal Mail billing portals.

MINUTE 30–60

Upload your rate cards

Drop your carrier rate cards and merchant markup rules into our ingestion bucket. We compile them into exact recovery rules and push your first batch of recovered draft lines to Xero/NetSuite the same afternoon.

05. Pricing

Priced below what you lose in a month

A 3PL shipping 200,000 parcels a month typically loses £20,000–£40,000 a month to unbilled surcharges and carrier errors. The audit tells you your number before you pay anything.

Reconcile

£2,500/mo

Billed annually

Up to 150,000 parcels / month

✓ Automated /v1/billing/reconcile across up to 4 carriers
✓ Automated merchant re-bill ledger + proof URLs
✓ Carrier credit claim generator
✓ Read-only WMS + ERP (Xero/Sage/NetSuite) sync

Run the free audit first →

Audit first, pay after

We run the audit on last month’s closed invoices before you sign anything. Activate, and the merchant re-bill and carrier dispute files from that audit are yours to import on day one.

06. Free audit

Find out what last month cost you

No sales call. Drop one closed monthly carrier invoice (DPD, DHL, UPS, FedEx or Royal Mail) and the matching 60-day WMS export over encrypted SFTP. Within 24 hours you get a three-page margin audit: every unbilled merchant surcharge, SKU dimension error and carrier overcharge, down to the tracking number.

Work email

Primary WMS

Monthly parcel volume

Your data

✓ Hosted in Frankfurt, EU only. Nothing leaves the region.
✓ Read-only access to your WMS. We never write to it unless you turn on SKU patching.
✓ Audit files are deleted 30 days after we send your report, unless you activate.