What should you include in your cost comparison?
Start with the costs of in-house operations: rent and related premises expenses, labour, packaging materials, equipment and transport. Labour covers more than packing. It can also include receiving, stock counts, locating goods, resolving discrepancies and arranging handover for delivery. If the owner or marketing team helps with these tasks, record the time they spend so management can assess how those resources are being used.
List equipment and one-off investment separately from monthly expenditure. Use the same period and a reasonable allocation method for both options; otherwise, one side may include equipment investment while the other shows only day-to-day costs.
Check the unit used in an outsourced quotation
Hong Kong 3PL costs may be calculated using different units, such as storage space, stock volume, orders or individual items. Ask whether receiving is charged separately, what work is included in basic picking, whether packaging materials and transport are included, and whether a minimum charge applies. These are comparison questions, not a statement of Kube's fixed pricing structure.
Also ask how kitting, gifts, special packaging, additional checks and stock transfers are charged. Some tasks may not apply to your business, but any work you need regularly should be included in the same comparison.
Model both normal and peak periods
Do not estimate outsourced fulfilment costs using average order volume alone. Prepare expected stock, order counts, items per order and packaging combinations for both a normal period and a promotion. Ask providers to show how they calculate each scenario. If demand is uncertain, provide a range and state your assumptions.
Keep delivery destinations, parcel dimensions and weights, and service scope consistent when comparing quotations. If one quotation includes packaging materials and another does not, the total alone cannot tell you which is higher.
Do not count time saved as immediate cash savings
After outsourcing, the team may have more time for sales or product work, but this does not mean payroll costs will fall immediately. Separate direct costs that may be reduced, expenses that remain, and working hours that can be reassigned so management can see the different types of value.
Moving goods, reconciling inventory and preparing the handover may also create costs. Include these in the transition assessment instead of looking only at a month of stable operations.
How Kube can help
Share your SKUs, stock levels, order mix and packaging requirements with Kube to discuss which services and quotation items may apply.
Six types of work that may appear in a 3PL quotation
A quotation may include storage space, inbound receiving, picking and packing, B2B or retail order processing, value-added services, and delivery or marketplace dispatch arrangements. The billing unit may differ by item: charges could be based on space used, each inbound receipt, each order, each product or actual labour time. Ask for a breakdown of included work rather than comparing only a single total.
The same number of monthly orders can involve very different workloads. One hundred orders containing one small item each are different from one hundred orders with ten items per order that require sorting and relabelling. SKU count, items per order, packing materials, the B2C/B2B mix, peak fluctuations and special handling all affect the operation.
Kube scopes services and quotations according to each business's operating requirements and does not require a minimum monthly order commitment. Storage and any services used are still charged according to the agreed arrangement; this should not be understood to mean there are no minimum charges. Sharing normal-period and peak-period figures will usually give a more realistic cost discussion than providing an average order count alone.
