Same-shift order fulfillment with carrier cutoffs published per origin node. Vancouver HQ runs to a 4 PM PT same-shift cutoff.
What order fulfillment covers
Order fulfillment is the base layer every other fulfillment service builds on. Below are the five steps that run on every order, with the data signal that proves each step actually happened.
Pallets get scanned against the inbound ASN before they cross the dock line. If quantities do not match the ASN, the trailer holds for reconciliation and your account manager gets notified the same shift. Receipt-to-pickable on a published SLA, scoped per account.
No floor stacking, no "we know where it is" memory. Every SKU lives in a specific bin location and gets put away with an RF-scanner confirmation. The location enters the WMS in real time so customer-service can see exact inventory the moment the put-away closes.
Every pick is scan-confirmed against the SKU at the bin. Visual picks drift toward industry-norm accuracy. Scan-confirmed picks run materially higher. We do not run visual picks, ever, including for same-day rush lanes where it would be faster.
Insert orientation, void-fill choice, tissue color, thank-you card placement. Every packout variant gets photographed during onboarding and the spec is locked before order one ships. No generic packout drift after the first few weeks.
EasyPost rate-shop across UPS, FedEx, USPS, Purolator, Canada Post, and DHL on every parcel. Cheapest acceptable service for sub-$50 orders, fastest service for over-$200, overrides for promised-by dates. Cutoff to carrier in the same shift.
Who this service is for
Order fulfillment fits a specific stage and shape of business. Below are the four brand archetypes we run this service for. If your operation does not match one of these, the discovery call usually surfaces the mismatch in the first 15 minutes.
Single-channel Shopify or BigCommerce store, 60 to 1,200 orders per day, looking to switch off a 3PL that ships next-business-day or has stopped returning emails. Wants published cutoffs, scan-confirmed accuracy, and a Slack channel with the warehouse manager.
Has lived on Amazon FBA for two or three years, is adding a Shopify storefront for margin reasons, needs DTC pick-pack that does not require FBA prep workflow on every order. Wants a 3PL that knows DTC packout standards and runs Amazon side-by-side without confusion.
Just lost peak season to a 3PL whose accuracy dropped to 96% in November or whose cutoff slipped by three hours. Needs to migrate inventory cleanly mid-quarter, run a metered ramp, and have published thresholds rather than promotional language.
Monthly or quarterly recurring box with 3,000 to 80,000 active subscribers. Needs predictable batch pick-pack on ship-window days, branded insert handling, and tight QC on multi-SKU kits where a wrong-item ship is a churn event.
What goes wrong at other order-fulfillment 3PLs
If you are evaluating order-fulfillment 3PLs and you cannot get straight answers on the five points below, ask harder. These are the failure modes we hear about every week from brands re-platforming away from a cheap setup.
The website says "fast fulfillment" but the SOW says cutoff is 11 AM and orders after that ship the next business day. A 2 PM order on Friday sits until Monday. Your customer-service team inherits the angry tickets and your repeat-purchase rate quietly drops. Most 3PLs in the cheap tier run this way because it lets them batch-pick once per day with minimum labor.
The standard pick-pack workflow is scan-confirmed, but the same-day or rush lanes get visual picks because it is faster. Accuracy on those lanes drops materially. The wrong-item ship rate climbs on the orders that are most price-sensitive to a return. The brand never sees the breakdown because the 3PL reports blended accuracy.
The 3PL has a negotiated UPS contract and routes every parcel through UPS, regardless of whether USPS would be meaningfully cheaper on a 2-pound box to a residential ZIP. The brand overpays on the long tail and has no visibility because the 3PL bills shipping at "their cost plus a margin" without showing the rate breakdown.
The SOW promises 24-hour receipt-to-pickable. The reality is the receiving zone is understaffed two days a week and pallets stack up at the dock through Wednesday. Your sales site shows "in stock" because the WMS thinks the inventory landed, but the actual units are still on a pallet and pick attempts return short. Cycle counts catch it 10 days late.
Onboarding includes a packout walkthrough and photo approval. Order one ships looking great. By week four the third-shift packout team is doing it from memory, the brand insert orientation is upside-down half the time, and the void-fill is generic kraft paper instead of the branded crinkle. The brand finds out from a customer screenshot on Instagram.
How we run order fulfillment at Vertex
An order lands in our WMS in near-real time after your customer hits "buy." Shopify, Amazon Seller Central, TikTok Shop, BigCommerce, and any direct API integration push order webhooks that fire into Datex (our WMS of record). As a fallback the order API gets polled on a short interval, so a dropped webhook never strands an order on payment-gateway latency. Address validation runs against the USPS and Canada Post APIs and AVS fraud-score checks happen before the order enters the pick queue. Flagged addresses hold for a scrub window with a notification to your account manager.
Pick-priority queue assignment runs on cutoff time, carrier service level, and order weight class, not on order timestamp. A same-day promised order placed late in the morning does not sit behind a standard order placed early. The WMS ranks the queue and pushes the next pick to the floor associate's RF scanner. The associate walks to the bin location displayed on the scanner, scans the SKU at the bin to confirm the pick, and the WMS records the scan against the order in real time. Every pick is scan-confirmed. Visual picks do not happen at any Vertex facility, including for same-day rush lanes where it would be faster.
Pack-station QC runs a weight-check against the expected weight (calculated from the SKU dimensions and weights in your catalog) before the parcel ships. If the actual weight differs from expected, the pack station pauses and the supervisor reviews. This catches missing-item and wrong-item errors that slipped past pick confirmation. For higher-value orders the pack station also captures a photo of the open parcel before sealing, which the customer-service team can pull if there is a delivery dispute. Brand-spec packout (insert orientation, tissue color, thank-you card, void-fill choice) gets photographed and approved during onboarding, and the pack station references the spec so packout does not drift.
Multi-carrier rate-shop runs via EasyPost against UPS, FedEx, USPS, Purolator, Canada Post, and DHL, plus any negotiated account you bring. The default rule is cheapest acceptable service within carrier rules, with overrides for promised-by dates and higher-value orders that get faster service. Labels print at the pack station promptly after rate-shop completion. Single-carrier locks do not happen at Vertex; brands overpay on the long tail when their 3PL routes every parcel through one carrier regardless of whether another carrier would be meaningfully cheaper.
Manifest queue and cutoff hold are run by the shipping lead, not a script. Carrier cutoffs are scoped per origin node and published in your onboarding doc. Vancouver HQ runs to a 4 PM PT same-shift cutoff. Orders packed by cutoff make the same-shift truck. Orders that miss cutoff roll to next-day with an automated customer-service notification to your support inbox so your team is not surprised. Dock seal capture, BOL exchange, and trailer handoff happen with the dock manager present and the seal number photographed and logged against the manifest. The dock manager owns the cutoff as a hard line.
After the parcel leaves our dock, the carrier-handoff timeliness checkpoint watches for first-scan latency. If a parcel does not get its first carrier scan inside the threshold, the exception desk gets a yellow flag and chases the carrier ops contact. The customer never has to ask "why does my tracking still say label created"; we catch the scan gap before your support inbox does. Delivery confirmations and exception flags (refused, undeliverable, lost-in-transit) land in the exception desk queue, which is reviewed on a regular cadence including weekends. Your customer-service team gets the resolution path before the customer notices.
Cutoff to carrier, live
Below is an indicative countdown to typical carrier cutoffs in your local time. Orders packed before each cutoff ship the same shift. Orders after the cutoff roll to the next dispatch with automated customer notification. Actual cutoffs are scoped per origin node on the discovery call.
Next cutoff
UPS Ground · 4:30 PM local
00
Hours
00
Minutes
00
Seconds
Orders confirmed before this cutoff ship on today's shift.
All same-shift cutoffs we run
Pricing snapshot
The four line items below cover the base order-fulfillment economics. Volume tiers, accessorial fees (kit-on-the-fly, GWP inserts, returns processing), and packaging line items get scoped on the discovery call against your actual SKU profile and order mix.
Pick + pack
from $1.05
starting per order, includes first item
Each add'l item
Custom
per additional pick on the same order
Storage
Custom
per cubic foot per month, ambient
Setup fee
$0
no implementation cost
Where this service runs
Order fulfillment is the base service at every Vertex facility. Same-shift cutoffs, a published receipt-to-pickable SLA, RF-scanner picks, multi-carrier rate-shop, and the same SLA thresholds run across the network. Cross-border lanes, customs clearance, and Section 122 surcharge handling are layered on top at facilities that serve them.
The location of your inventory affects ground-shipping zone math more than anything else. A single-node setup makes sense early on. Above a certain volume, splitting between an East-Coast and West-Coast node typically cuts blended ground-shipping cost meaningfully. The discovery call covers which node profile fits your order mix.
Ready for same-shift cutoffs?
Pick-and-pack starts from $1.05. Published receipt-to-pickable SLA. Same-shift cutoffs scoped per origin node; Vancouver HQ at 4 PM PT. RF-scanner picks with scan-confirmed accuracy. Multi-carrier rate-shop on every parcel. No setup fee, no annual contract.
