Warehouse RFP Template

Section 1About Our Business and This Requirement

The following describes our business and what we are asking you to quote. Please reflect these figures in your proposal, and tell us where you believe they are wrong.

Write this section before you contact anybody. A bidder who cannot tell whether you are replacing an incumbent, opening a new region, or testing the market will price for the worst of the three.

• Company: [legal name], [what we sell], [B2B / DTC / retail / mixed]
• Why we are issuing this RFP: [new requirement / replacing an incumbent / adding capacity / adding a region / consolidating providers]
• Current arrangement: [self-operated / named number of 3PLs / no current provider]
• What is driving the timing: [contract expiry / seasonal deadline / a move / growth]
• Target go-live: [date], with first receipts expected [date]
• Term we are looking for: [1 year / 3 years / evergreen with notice]
• Decision-makers: [titles of everyone who has to approve]
• What would make us choose one bidder over another: [rank cost, service level, location, systems, and flexibility in your own order]

That last line costs you nothing and changes the proposals you get. A bidder who knows service level outranks price will stop trying to win on price.

Section 2Volume and Inventory Profile

Please price against the following. Where a figure would change your pricing materially if it moved, say so and state the threshold.

This is the section that decides whether the rates you are quoted survive contact with reality. Give real numbers, including the embarrassing ones — a 3PL that discovers your true peak in month two will reprice, and you will have no leverage left.

• Annual units shipped: [number], trending [up / flat / down] at [rate]
• Orders per day: [average], [peak day last year], [date that peak fell on]
• Peak-to-average ratio, and how many days a year peak actually holds: [detail]
• Lines per order: [average], [maximum]
• Units per line: [average]
• SKU count: [active], [total including seasonal and dormant]
• Inventory on hand: [units], [pallets], [cases], at [average] and [peak]
• Inventory turns per year: [number]
• Storage profile: [pallet-rack / floor-stack / shelving / bin], and the split between them
• Inbound: [containers per month], [truckloads per month], [parcels per month], [palletized or floor-loaded]
• Outbound mix: [percentage] parcel, [percentage] LTL, [percentage] FTL, [percentage] retail routing-guide compliant
• Returns: [percentage of outbound], and what has to happen to a returned unit
• Product characteristics: [dimensions and weight range], [hazmat classes if any], [temperature requirements if any], [lot or serial tracking required], [expiry-dated], [high-value or theft-prone]
• Seasonality: [describe the shape of the year, not just the peak]

Section 3Facility and Location Requirements

State the facility you are proposing, by address. If you intend to place us in a building you do not yet operate, say so explicitly and give the date it comes online.

Ask for the address, not the market. A proposal that says "our Midwest campus" is describing a network, and you will be assigned to whichever building has room in the week you go live.

• Required market or transit requirement: [named metro], or [percentage] of our customers within [number] days of ground transit
• Proposed facility address: [bidder to complete]
• Building size, and the space allocated to us: [bidder to complete]
• Clear height, column spacing, and rack configuration: [bidder to complete]
• Dock doors, levelers, and trailer parking: [bidder to complete]
• Is the building owned or leased by you, and when does that lease expire?
• Is this a dedicated or shared/multi-client operation?
• Certifications held at this specific building: [FDA registration / cGMP / organic / AIB or SQF / C-TPAT / FTZ / ISO], with certificate numbers and expiry dates
• Security: perimeter, access control, camera coverage and retention period, guard hours, inventory cycle-count discipline
• Fire protection: sprinkler type and density, and whether it supports our commodity classification and stack height
• Temperature and humidity control: [ambient / cool / cold / frozen], and how it is monitored and alarmed
• Expansion room: how much more of our volume this building can absorb without a move
• Can we visit before award, and can we visit unannounced afterwards?

The certification questions have to be building-specific. A corporate certification held by the parent company means nothing about the facility your inventory sits in, and this is the single most common way a compliance requirement is quietly missed.

Section 4Services Required

For each service below, indicate exactly one of: included in the rates quoted / available and separately priced (state the price) / available through a subcontractor (name the function, not necessarily the company) / not offered.

Delete every line you are not buying before you send this. A bidder asked to price twenty services you will never use produces a worse proposal, more slowly, and hides the four that matter.

• Container devanning and floor-loaded unloading
• Receiving, inspection, and discrepancy reporting, with the turnaround time from dock to available-to-promise
• Putaway and directed storage
• Each, case, and pallet picking
• Packing, including whether we supply the materials
• Branded or custom packaging, inserts, and gift messaging
• Kitting, light assembly, and bundling
• Labelling, ticketing, and price marking
• Retail compliance: routing guide adherence, ASN, EDI, GS1 labelling, and who pays a chargeback when one is issued
• Parcel manifesting and carrier selection, including whose carrier rates are used
• LTL and FTL outbound coordination
• Returns processing, inspection, disposition, and restocking
• Cycle counting and annual physical inventory
• Lot, serial, and expiration tracking with FEFO or FIFO enforcement
• Hazmat handling and storage, at the classes we ship
• Temperature-controlled handling and cold-chain documentation
• Rework, relabelling, and recall support
• Disposal or donation of unsellable inventory
• Freight brokerage or managed transportation

Section 5Systems, Integration and Visibility

Describe the systems that will hold our inventory data and the integration you propose, including implementation effort in hours and any recurring cost.

"We integrate with everything" is the standard answer and it is never false enough to argue with. The questions that separate bidders are who builds it, who fixes it when the other side changes, and what you can see without asking someone.

• Warehouse management system in use at this facility: [name and version, or proprietary]
• Systems we need connected: [our ERP / e-commerce platform / marketplaces / EDI partners / TMS / accounting]
• Integration method offered: real-time API, scheduled batch, flat file, or manual
• Who builds the connection, who maintains it, and at whose cost when the other side changes their API?
• Is there a documented API we can build against ourselves, and is access included?
• Client portal: what we can see, whether it is real-time, and whether it is included
• Inventory accuracy reporting: how it is measured and how often we receive it
• Standard reports provided, and whether we can build our own without paying for services
• Order status and tracking visibility for our own customers
• Data ownership: confirm our inventory and order data is ours, and state the format and frequency in which we can export it
• What happens to our data, and how quickly we receive it, if we terminate
• System downtime in the last twelve months at this facility, and what the fallback process is

Section 6Performance Standards

State the service levels you will commit to contractually, how each is measured, who measures it, and what the remedy is when it is missed. Please distinguish between a target you aim for and a level you will be held to.

That distinction is the whole section. Almost every proposal quotes 99.5% order accuracy; far fewer will write it into a contract with a consequence attached, and the gap between those two groups is what you are trying to find.

• Receiving turnaround: dock to available-to-promise, in hours
• Order accuracy: [percentage], and whether it is measured by order, by line, or by unit
• On-time shipping: [percentage] shipped same day against a [time] order cutoff
• Inventory accuracy: [percentage], measured by location or by SKU
• Shrinkage: the acceptable rate, and who absorbs loss above it
• Damage rate: the acceptable rate, and the claims process below it
• Returns processing time: receipt to disposition, in days
• Cycle count cadence and variance investigation threshold
• How each metric is reported, how often, and whether we can audit the underlying data
• Remedy when a level is missed: service credit, fee waiver, escalation, or termination right — and at what point each applies
• Continuous shortfall: how many consecutive periods below standard give us a termination right without penalty

Section 7Pricing

Please provide pricing as an itemised rate card rather than a blended per-order figure, and include a worked example applying it to the volumes in Section 2 for an average month and for our peak month.

Insist on the worked example. A rate card is a list of numbers you cannot compare across bidders; the same card applied to your actual volume is a monthly invoice you can. It is also where a cheap-looking card usually stops looking cheap.

• Receiving: priced per container, per pallet, per carton, or per hour — and what counts as one unit
• Storage: per pallet, per bin, per square foot, or per cubic foot; charged monthly, per period, or daily
• How storage is measured: month-end snapshot, average daily, or peak in period — and confirm which
• Minimum storage commitment, if any
• Pick and pack: first unit and each additional unit, by pick type
• Packaging materials: included, at cost, or at cost plus a stated margin
• Value-added services: per unit or per hour, with the hourly rate stated
• Returns: per return, and what is included in that
• Account management: included or billed
• Integration and setup: one-time cost, and what triggers a further charge later
• Parcel and freight: your rates or ours, and if yours, whether we see the actual carrier invoice
• Accessorials: the complete list, not examples — detention, after-hours receiving, special handling, pallet purchases, disposal, rush orders
• Minimum monthly charge, and how it is calculated
• Annual escalation: the cap as a percentage, and what index if any it is tied to
• Fuel or labour surcharges: how they are triggered and how they are calculated
• What is explicitly excluded from these rates

Ask for the complete accessorial list in writing, not a representative sample. Accessorials are where the difference between a quoted rate and an actual invoice lives, and a bidder who will not enumerate them in an RFP will not enumerate them later either.

Section 8Insurance, Liability and Compliance

Please state your position on each of the following, and attach current certificates of insurance for the proposed facility.

The limit of liability is the answer that most often surprises people. Standard warehousing terms frequently cap liability at a low figure per pound or per package — which can be a small fraction of what your inventory is actually worth. Find out before the fire, not after.

• Warehouse legal liability coverage: limit per occurrence and in aggregate
• How your liability for our goods is capped — per pound, per package, per occurrence, or by value — and what it would pay on a total loss of our inventory
• Whether we are expected to carry our own coverage on stored goods, and at what limit
• General liability, auto, workers' compensation, and umbrella limits
• Whether you will name us as an additional insured, and provide notice of cancellation
• Cargo coverage while goods are in your custody in transit, if applicable
• Cyber liability coverage, given you will hold our order and customer data
• Your claims process: who we notify, in what window, and the typical time to resolution
• Regulatory registrations relevant to our product: [FDA / DEA / TTB / EPA / state licensing], held at the proposed facility
• Data protection: how our customer data is handled, where it is stored, and who has access
• Subcontractors: whether any part of this scope is subcontracted, and whether their insurance flows through to us

Section 9People and Operations

Describe how our account will actually be run day to day.

• Named account manager, and how many other accounts that person carries
• Who we call at 4pm on a Friday when a shipment has to move, and who covers that person
• Escalation path, with names, titles, and response-time commitments by severity
• Operating hours, days per week, and what after-hours or weekend work costs
• Whether our work is performed by your employees, temporary labour, or a mix — and the ratio at peak
• Annual turnover rate in the warehouse workforce at this facility
• Training given to staff handling our product, and whether it is product-specific
• How you staff up for our peak, and by when that decision has to be made
• Business continuity: what happens to our orders if this facility is unavailable for a week
• Meeting cadence you propose, and what is reviewed at each

The account manager's other-accounts number and the turnover rate are the two questions bidders least expect. They are also the best available predictors of what year two feels like, which is not something the rate card tells you.

Section 10Implementation and Onboarding

Describe your onboarding process from award to steady state. For each phase, state the elapsed time, who is responsible, and what you need from us before it can begin.

• Contracting and account setup
• Systems integration build and testing
• SKU and item master data load, including the format you require from us
• Inventory transfer from our current location or provider, and who bears that freight cost
• Process documentation and standard operating procedure sign-off
• Pilot or parallel-run period, and what constitutes acceptance
• Go-live approach: all at once, by channel, or by SKU group
• Stabilisation period, what is covered during it, and when normal billing begins
• Total elapsed time from signature to first shipment: [bidder to complete]
• Total hours of our team's time required, by role
• What onboarding costs, and what could make that number change

Ask for our hours as well as yours. A transition priced at zero on the bidder's side can still cost you a quarter of someone's year, and that cost never appears in the comparison unless you ask for it here.

Section 11Contract Terms to Clarify

Please state your position on each of the following in your response rather than deferring them to negotiation.

Every one of these is cheap to ask now and expensive to ask after award, when you have told the other bidders no and have nowhere left to walk.

• Initial term, renewal structure, and whether renewal is automatic
• Notice period for termination for convenience, on each side, and any cost attached
• Termination for cause: what counts, and what cure period applies
• Exit assistance: how long you will continue to operate after notice, at what rate, and on what terms our inventory is released
• Whether any lien is asserted over our goods, and under what circumstances
• Volume commitments or minimums, and what happens if we fall short
• How rates are adjusted mid-term, and what notice we receive
• Limitation of liability and any consequential-damages exclusion
• Indemnification, in both directions
• Confidentiality, and whether you may name us as a customer publicly
• Assignment and change-of-control: what happens to this contract if you are acquired
• Governing law and dispute resolution
• Which legal entity signs, and whether it is the entity operating the facility

The exit and lien questions are the two worth refusing to sign without. Inventory you cannot retrieve on a timetable you control is not really an asset, and the time to establish the terms of its release is while you are still an attractive prospect.

Section 12References and Submission Requirements

Please provide three reference customers meeting the following criteria, at least one of which is currently operating in the facility you are proposing for us.

• Comparable order volume — within 50% of ours
• Comparable product profile and handling complexity
• In production with you for at least eighteen months
• At least one reference who has been through a peak season with you

We will ask those references about: accuracy and on-time performance against what was promised; how the first ninety days actually went; what a bad week looks like and how it is handled; whether the invoice matches the rate card; how accessorials have trended; whether the account team has changed; and what they would do differently.

The facility-specific reference is the one that matters. A national provider's best reference may sit in a building six states away, run by different people, on a different system.

• Response due: [date]
• Format: [PDF / this document completed / both]
• Pricing format: itemised rate card plus the worked example required in Section 7
• Reference list with contact names, titles, and direct contact information
• Site visits: we expect to tour the proposed facility before award, on [date range]
• Questions about this RFP may be submitted to [name and email] until [date]. Answers will be shared with all bidders.
• Primary contact: [name], [title], [email], [phone]
• Decision timeline: shortlist by [date], site visits by [date], award by [date], target go-live [date]

We are evaluating fit rather than the lowest headline rate. Where part of our requirement is a poor match for your operation, please say so — it will not count against your response, and it is more useful to us than a price we will not end up paying.