Storage and handling billing, drafted from each client's rate sheet and the month's activity.

Each client's bill pulls from several places: storage snapshots or receipt dates, handling counts on every receipt and shipment, the orders, lines and units picked, labor and supplies logged as extra work, and the rate sheet or contract schedule that prices all of it. Your billing lead gathers the activity, checks it against the rates in force that month, adds what the floor logged by hand, applies any minimums and sends the invoice, usually with an activity report behind it.

In the test, AI works from copies of the same records and drafts each client's invoice: every line with its quantity, unit, rate and the rate sheet entry it came from, the activity behind it, and any charge it could not support listed apart. Nothing posts or sends. Your reviewer puts each draft beside the invoice your team issued.

When the storage month starts. One warehousing association's model terms charge storage per package or other agreed unit per month, and start the storage month when the warehouse accepts care, custody and control of the goods, whatever the unloading date or the date on the receipt. Unless the contract says otherwise, goods received from the 1st through the 15th owe a full month, goods received from the 16th to month end owe half a month, and everything still on hand on the 1st owes a full month again. The two sides can instead agree in writing to anniversary billing, where a storage month runs from a date in one month to the same date in the next. A trailer dropped in your yard on the 15th and unloaded on the 17th is exactly where those dates matter, so the draft names the rule and the date it used on every storage line.

What handling covers, and what it doesn't. In those terms, the handling charge covers the ordinary labor of receiving goods at the warehouse door, putting them away and bringing them back to the door. Unloading and loading labor is billed unless agreed otherwise, the extra cost of receiving damaged goods goes to the client, and goods ordered out in smaller quantities than they came in may carry an added charge for each order or each item of an order. Rate sheets turn that clause into per-order, per-line and per-unit pick fees, each counted differently. The X12 945, the warehouse shipping advice, exists to reconcile order quantities with shipped quantities, so the draft counts handling out from what shipped and shows both numbers when they differ.

Accessorials live on paper. The same terms list special services with their own charge: compiling special stock statements, reporting marked weights or serial numbers from packages, physical checks of goods and handling transit billing, along with dunnage, bracing and packing materials, receiving or shipping outside usual hours by prior arrangement, and physical inventories or cycle counts the client asks for. Much of that is logged on a work order, a dock sheet or an email instead of a system report. The draft lists each accessorial with the record behind it and holds any it can't find, so a real charge doesn't vanish and an unsupported one doesn't go out.

Minimums and valuation change the line. The model terms allow a minimum handling charge per lot, a minimum storage charge per lot per month, a minimum per mark, brand or variety when one receipt covers several lots, and a minimum monthly charge that applies to each account when one client keeps several. The January 2026 edition says the per-lot and per-account minimums may be made, where the 2020 edition said they will be, so old contracts and new ones can read differently. Article 7 of the Uniform Commercial Code lets a client ask in a record for higher warehouse liability on some or all of its goods, at an increased rate; the model terms bill that as an additional monthly charge. The draft checks whether each minimum actually replaces the activity charge, and carries a valuation charge only where a written request is on file.

The bill backs a lien, and what your reviewer watches. Article 7 gives a warehouse a lien on the goods it holds for storage, transportation, insurance, labor and other charges related to those goods. It reaches charges on the client's other goods only if the receipt or storage agreement claims it, and it is lost on goods the warehouse voluntarily delivers. The model terms ask clients to dispute an invoice in writing within 30 days of its date, and the 2026 edition adds that invoices are paid as submitted, without deduction or hold back. So each draft line names the goods and the period it covers. Your reviewer, usually the billing lead or account manager, checks rate sheet versions first, then storage dates and minimums, then every accessorial without a record. None of this is legal advice.

With your reviewer's approval, the next month's client bills go through the same drafting during a live run of about 30 days.

Each invoice waits for your billing lead to approve it, and goes to the client the way invoices go out today.

Comparison carries on through the live month. Any further job is your decision, priced separately.