What Onboarding with a New 3PL Should Looks Like (Best Practices) and Red Flags to Watch Out For
Bringing on a new 3PL partner is one of the most critical steps an ecommerce brand takes as it scales. A strong 3PL onboarding process sets the tone for the entire relationship—it determines how quickly operations stabilize and how well your fulfillment provider understands your business. Done right, onboarding creates clarity, smooth integration, and confidence that your logistics partner can deliver on promises. Done poorly, it leads to delays, hidden costs, and painful customer experiences that are hard to recover from.
Below is an outline of best practices every 3PL should follow during onboarding, along with the red flags that may signal an unstable partnership.
3PL Onboarding Best Practices Every Ecommerce Brand Should Know
1. Productive and Informative Kickoff Meeting with Key Stakeholders
Successful onboarding starts with alignment. The kickoff meeting should bring together all key stakeholders to define roles, set expectations, and establish clear communication channels.
This is also where the transition to working with this new 3PL happens. You will cease working with the sales team and be introduced to the integration, operations teams, and customer service teams, who will manage your business day-to-day. By getting the right people in the room and defining clear next steps, your 3PL sets expectations upfront, ensuring your team knows exactly how to work with them moving forward.
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2. Dedicated Specialists Throughout the Process
Strong 3PL onboarding gives your brand direct access to department specialists who oversee critical parts of your supply chain. This may include operations, transportation, shipping, returns, or specialty areas like temperature control or inventory management.
Engaging these experts early reduces roadblocks later, since technical and operational details are addressed before they can cause issues. Having specialists involved from the beginning isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s a critical step toward smooth operations and long-term success with your new 3PL.
3. Setting Up Project Management Tools
You’ll want to ensure that you have a centralized place to track and monitor the many projects that will be shared between you and your new 3PL. Everything from packaging changes to carrier issues, to integrating with new sales channels.
The onboarding process will get you all set up with an operations dashboard used for visibility and tracking. Both your integration team, customer service team, and your own brand need to be able to have full visibility and customization within any project management tools. This will help you all collectively track progress, tasks, and milestones.
4. Inventory Data and System Readiness
Inventory setup is one of the biggest hurdles in a 3PL onboarding process. Moving inventory to your new fulfillment center is only half the battle—you also need clean, accurate data before any orders can ship.
For example, Shopify (and many ecommerce platforms) don’t allow two 3PLs to connect to the same storefront at once. That means your item catalogs must be complete and properly formatted before testing begins.
During integration, you should work with your 3PL to confirm:
- Which ecommerce platforms you’ll connect to (Shopify, Amazon, TikTok, etc.)
- Any restrictions or limitations on those integrations
- Whether middleware or APIs are needed
- How troubleshooting will be handled to avoid interruptions
Getting inventory and data right from the start prevents delays that can snowball once you go live.
5. Clear Documentation and SLAs
Too often, brands focus only on inventory and pricing and overlook operational procedures. A good 3PL should provide detailed documentation during onboarding, including:
- Receiving standards
- RMA (returns) processes
- Escalation paths
- Billing cadence and invoice timing
Your Service Level Agreement (SLA) is also a cornerstone of success. It defines the KPIs and guarantees you’ll need to hold your 3PL accountable. Reviewing SLAs early ensures there are no surprises later if performance doesn’t meet expectations.
6. Testing and Soft Launch
Testing orders is a core aspect of integration with a new fulfillment provider. Their integration team should work with you to conduct user acceptance testing (UAT) before launch, validate all packaging and how your orders flow within any automation tools. They should be ensuring all carriers and shipping services are properly integrated. Select Ship).
Soft launch orders aren’t just a one-time thing. There are many checkpoints to ensure accuracy and connectivity. Your 3PL should be doing multiple tests and getting orders exactly perfect before they go live.
7. Forecasting and Promo Planning
Forecasting is a critical part of your 3PL onboarding checklist. Plan to send your 3PL lots of information, this includes your projected forecasts for the next year, including any sales cycles, product launches, new SKUs, seasonal turnover, promotions, or peak season ideals.
Your 3PL should ask a lot of questions too, to better understand your brand and the order ebbs and flows you expect. They’ll need to plan warehouse, storage, and labor capacity to meet your needs, so the more accurately and the more often you can share forcast data, the better.
8. Post-Integration Continuity
The integration period should be short, by design. A few weeks maximum to get all systems connected and all teams synced. During integration your 3PL should be setting up how your will work with them for months, and hopefully years ahead.
The integration time is really the interim between signing a contract and going live with orders.
During integration you should expect a smooth handoff from the integration team to account management. This will mean setting weekly meetings with your customer service team once orders have started shipping. And making sure all key stakeholders who will manage the fulfillment has ongoing visibility the correct dashboards and reporting tools.
What are Some Red Flags to Catch When Integrating with a New 3PL?
There may be red flags on both sides of the partnership. It’s important to know what to look for in your new partner’s operations, and what a 3PL might be looking for from your brand.
What is a 3PL looking for? Your fulfillment provider will primarily be looking for any inconsistencies in your inventory. Some red flags for a 3PL include an incomplete item catalog, lack of barcoding on units or lots for items that need lot control or missing or inconsistent ship methods (especially with TikTok, Instagram, Fair, Thrive, or similar ecommerce platforms).
They’ll also be looking for accurate and complete information about your fulfillment needs. This includes packing instructions, business rules, special kitting for inserts or promotional items. A lack of communication about anything requiring custom rules and coding will create issues down the line if not ironed out during integration.
Many brands want integration to go as quickly as possible, but it’s a critical time to fill in these details, otherwise future issues are sure to arise. To a 3PL these inconsistencies signal a lack of operational attention to quality.
Red flags a brand should look out for. For a brand, here are some of the red flags to watch out for with a new 3PL:
- Lack of transparency or centralized tracking tools. Onboarding involves dozens of moving parts. If your 3PL doesn’t provide a dashboard, project management tool, or a way to track progress, you’ll be left in the dark about where things stand.
- Insufficient personnel or role assignments. If there aren’t enough people to run your operations this will cause inconsistency with your orders. This is especially the case if you have inventory distributed across multiple nodes.
- Delayed or lacking IT and integration testing. This can signal a lack of investment in systems and connectivity. A 3PL who treats testing as a low priority will have last-minute problems arise when orders go live.
- No Clear SLAs or Documentation. If your 3PL can’t provide written standards for receiving, returns, billing cadence, or escalation paths during onboarding, that’s a serious red flag. Lack of documentation usually means lack of accountability.
Bottom Line
Choosing a 3PL isn’t just about price or warehouse space—it’s about how well they can onboard your brand and set you up for long-term success. By knowing what a good 3PL onboarding process looks like and spotting red flags early, you’ll protect your operations, your customers, and your growth.
This post was written by Maureen Walsh, Marketing Manager at DCL Logistics. A writer and blogging specialist for over 15 years, she helps create quality resources for ecommerce brands looking to optimize their business.
Tags: Fulfillment Costs, Omnichannel Fulfillment
