Your fulfillment data belongs to your brand, but the contract decides whether you can take it with you. Confirm export rights, formats, and costs in writing before you sign, because exit day is the wrong time to learn that your order history only lives inside your 3PL's system.
What data does your 3PL hold?
Your store and order system hold the customer-facing records: orders, addresses, payments, and service history. The warehouse system holds a second set that never touches your platform, and it is the set brands discover too late.
- Inventory counts, bin locations, and adjustment history
- Receiving records: what arrived, when, and with which discrepancies
- Per-order fulfillment detail: pick, pack, and ship timestamps, tracking, and exceptions
- Billing detail behind each monthly total
- Returns inspection results and disposition decisions
- SKU setup: dimensions, storage rules, and work instructions
If a dispute ever turns on what was actually received or actually shipped, the evidence sits in this second set.
What should the contract say about your data?
Put the data terms next to the service terms, and make each one checkable.
| Contract term | What to confirm |
|---|---|
| Export rights | You can export your own data during the relationship, not only at exit |
| Format and delivery | A standard file or API export, not screenshots or PDF reports |
| Ongoing access | Read-only reporting access while you remain a customer |
| Exit deliverables | A final export within a set number of days after the last shipment |
| Retention | How long the 3PL keeps your records after you leave |
| Cost | Whether the exit export is included in the agreement or billed as a project |
Two lines carry the most risk. If the only promised format is "reports," you have agreed to screenshots, and screenshots cannot load into a new warehouse's system. If the exit deliverable has no deadline, the export competes with the 3PL's remaining customers for attention.
For what the billing detail should contain, the 3PL pricing breakdown lists the charges that belong in it.
What happens to your data during the switch?
A move runs on two data sets at once, and the order matters.
- Reconcile inventory counts at the old site before the first outbound shipment at the new one, so neither system gets blamed for a discrepancy the other caused.
- Pull the final export after the last shipment leaves the old site, while your access is still open.
- Run tracking and order-flow tests on the new side while the old export is still current, so gaps surface while both teams can fix them.
- Confirm the old 3PL's access is closed after the final export, and file the export with your other signed records.
Keep billing under review through this window. The parcel audit cadence applies to warehouse invoices too: reconcile charges against the counts and orders you just exported.
Who holds your shipping records?
This is where transportation ownership shows its value. When parcel and freight contracts sit in your brand's name, your rate terms, shipping history, invoices, and claims records live in accounts you own. Change warehouses, and that record moves with you unchanged.
When the warehouse holds the carrier accounts instead, your shipping history is the 3PL's reporting. It leaves with them, and reconstructing transit performance, claims outcomes, and per-zone costs from memory is slow and imprecise. Keeping the contracts in your name keeps the evidence in your name too, and it keeps two decisions separate: you pick the warehouse on how it runs fulfillment, and the rates decision stays separate.
What should you settle before you sign?
Data terms are cheap to negotiate before a signature and expensive to recover after one. new3PL is an independent advisory and placement firm that keeps transportation contracts in the brand's name and treats data and exit terms as signing requirements; treat it as one neutral option if you want a second set of eyes on those terms.
FAQ
Who owns the data stored in a 3PL's system?
The data is normally yours; the argument is over access, format, and cost. Put all three in the contract instead of assuming the default.
Can a 3PL refuse to hand over my data?
It can withhold only what the contract allows it to withhold. Without explicit export terms, you negotiate from zero on exit day.
Should I export data during the relationship, not just at exit?
Yes. A regular export keeps your records current and proves the export process works before you actually need it.