In-House Fulfillment
Template

Your brand is scaling… fast. You may be considering investing in your own warehouse to handle order fulfillment. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of managing your own fulfillment.

 

Pros​

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• More control over your product and processes - It may give you peace of mind to have complete control and oversight of your product and fulfillment. You can easily pivot to new packaging, inserts, and other custom touches that may be a slowly adopted or prohibited by a 3PL.

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• You are able to easily manage inventory - Your inventory will always be readily at hand and you will never have to worry if the numbers in a 3PL’s system are accurate.

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• There is the potential for lower overall costs in the long run - While it may cost more upfront, if you have significant volume and experience managing a warehouse, you can lower your costs in the long run.

 

Cons

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• You have to find and lease a warehouse space - Depending on your space needs, finding a warehouse space can be fairly difficult and expensive. Not to mention, most lease terms are a minimum 3-5 years, so once you lease a warehouse space you will be stuck with it for a while.

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• You have to hire and train your own workers - One of the biggest tasks you will find difficult while managing a warehouse is hiring and training your own employees. It will be hard enough learning a Warehouse Management System (WMS), but now you have to teach employees the system as well as create standards of procedure (SOP). SOPs are important because warehouses often rely on temp labor during peak periods and temp workers need to know how to do things correctly. Without SOPs your order error frequency will skyrocket.

• You need to invest in additional software - If you have more than a few SKUs, it is crucial to utilize a Warehouse Management System and barcodes to accurately pick orders, track inventory, and eliminate clerical errors.

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• You’ll have to purchase various additional forms of insurance - In addition to insuring your product, you will now have to purchase Commercial General Liability insurance, Worker’s Compensation Insurance, and Property insurance.

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• Your accounting just got a lot more complicated - Now, you have additional workers to account for, prepaid assets to track, and additional accounts with carriers and software providers.

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• You’ll have less time to focus on actively building your brand - With all this being said, you can see how your main focus can easily become managing a warehouse as opposed to growing your business.

 

After reviewing the pros and cons, we need to figure out exactly how much it would cost to get started. We’ve created this pricing template to help e-commerce companies understand the costs associated with in-house warehousing and fulfillment. It’s important to know how to calculate your fulfillment cost per order so you can understand if it is worth attempting to manage your own order fulfillment. Luckily, there are only 3 easy steps to calculate your in-house fulfillment costs using our template.

 

 

How to use the In-House Fulfillment Costs Template:

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1. Enter your email in the form below to receive a free download link for the template.

2. Fill in basic information about your company and warehouse needs.

3. View your estimated monthly fulfillment costs!

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If you would like to compare the costs of in-house vs outsourcing fulfillment, check out our 3PL Cost Comparison Template!