1. Purpose
Have the carrier invoice somebody else's account for a label you buy, so an order shipping under a retailer's routing guide is charged to that retailer rather than to you.
2. Scope
Setting third-party carrier billing on an outbound order, either on an order that already exists or while creating one, and reading the result. Connecting a carrier account in the first place is out of scope, and so is offering one to a child organization, which is SWI-006. Deciding who pays import duties on an international shipment is a separate setting, covered in SWI-019.
3. Roles & Responsibilities
Role | Responsibility |
|---|---|
Account manager or 3PL admin | Holds the routing guide, knows which orders bill to which account, and enters the account details on the order |
Warehouse operator | Checks the Carrier Billing badge before buying the label, and stops if it reads Sender when it should not |
Brand owner | Supplies the account number and its registered postal code, and confirms with the retailer that the account accepts third-party billing |
4. When you need this
Use this instruction whenever the carrier should invoice an account that is not yours. Typically:
A brand dropships into a large retailer, and the retailer's routing guide names its own carrier account for inbound freight.
A customer wants their own negotiated carrier rates used rather than yours, and pays the carrier direct.
A one-off shipment is being billed back to a supplier, a partner, or a customer's own account.
The giveaway is that somebody has handed you a carrier account number and a postal code and asked you to ship on it. That is exactly what this setting takes.
5. Key concept — third party is an instruction on the label, not an account you connect
This is the part that is most often misread, and getting it wrong sends people looking for a connection screen that they do not need.
What people assume | What actually happens |
|---|---|
Shipping on the retailer's account means connecting the retailer's account to Ship Side Kick. | You keep quoting and buying on your own connected account. Third-party billing is an instruction sent with the label that tells the carrier to charge a different account number. You never hold the other party's credentials. |
Entering the account once saves it against that customer, so it applies to everything they ship. | It is stored on the order, so it applies to that order only. Every new order starts as Sender, and the details have to be entered again. |
The full billing address is needed. | Only the account number, the postal code and the country are sent. There is no field for the street address and the carrier does not need one. |
Ticking the box changes the price we are quoted. | Rates are still quoted against your connected account. What changes is who the carrier sends the bill to. |
The postage will still appear on the customer's Ship Side Kick invoice. | It will not. A third-party billed shipment carries no postage line, because the carrier invoices the third party direct. Fulfilment, packaging and storage fees are unaffected. |
Unticking the box just switches it off and keeps the details. | Unticking clears the account, the postal code and the country. Re-ticking means typing all three again. |
6. Procedure — on an order that already exists
Switch to the organization that owns the order.
Go to Orders and open the order.
Find the Carrier Billing card. The badge on it reads Sender or Third Party, and Sender is the default.
Click the pencil icon beside the badge.
Tick Bill third party. Three fields appear.
In Account, enter the account number the other party gave you. This is required.
In Postal Code, enter the postal code registered to that account, not the delivery postal code. This is required.
In Country, choose the country the account is registered in. It defaults to United States.
Click Save.
Rates re-quote on their own straight after saving, for every ship task on the order that has not been completed. A brief message confirms that shipping rates are being refreshed. Wait for that to finish before buying the label, so the rate on screen is the one the instruction was applied to.
7. Procedure — while creating the order
Go to Orders and click New Order.
Fill in the order as usual, and open the Additional Details section.
Tick Bill third party.
Enter the Account, the Postal Code and the Country, as in section 6.
Finish creating the order.
Duplicating an order carries third-party billing onto the copy, including all three fields. That is the quickest way to repeat the setting across a run of similar orders, and it is also the thing to check on a duplicate that is meant to bill to sender.
8. Verification
The Carrier Billing badge reads Third Party.
The card shows the account number masked to its last two digits, with a button to copy the full number.
The postal code and country appear underneath it.
Rates refresh after saving, and a rate is still returned. No rates at all usually means the carrier itself is unhappy, not the billing instruction.
Once the label is bought, the shipment carries no postage line on the invoice. Fulfilment and packaging fees appear as normal.
9. Constraints and caveats
The setting lives on the order and nowhere else. There is no per-customer or per-organization default, and the visual automation builder has no action for carrier billing, so a customer who always bills to a third party needs it entered on every order.
Account and Postal Code are both required. Saving without either is refused.
Sender and Third Party are the only two options. There is no receiver or collect setting.
The order must still be open. Carrier Billing cannot be edited once the order is fulfilled, cancelled or ignored, so correct it before the label is bought rather than after.
You still need your own connected carrier account for the carrier you want to use. Third-party billing changes who is invoiced, not who quotes, and a carrier with no connected account will not appear at all. If the account belongs to a parent organization, it has to be published down first, per SWI-006.
The account must be open to third-party billing at the carrier's end. Ship Side Kick passes the details straight through, so an account that the carrier refuses fails at label purchase rather than at save.
The postal code is the one registered to the payer's account. A delivery postal code entered here is the most common reason a carrier rejects the label.
Unticking the box clears all three fields immediately.
10. Worked example
A 3PL fulfils for a brand that has started dropshipping into a large retailer. The retailer's routing guide names the retailer's own carrier account, and asks that every shipment be billed to it.
Observation | Reading |
|---|---|
The retailer supplies an account number and a billing address | Only the account number, the postal code from that address and the country are needed. The street and city are not captured anywhere. |
The brand's organization has no carrier account for that carrier | The blocker, and a separate job. The parent 3PL holds one and publishes it down, per SWI-006, before any of this can be set. |
The Carrier Billing card reads Sender on the first order | Correct and expected. Sender is the default on every order, and nothing has been entered yet. |
Rates are unchanged after ticking Bill third party | Correct. Rates are quoted on the connected account either way. The instruction only redirects the invoice. |
The first month's invoice shows fulfilment fees but no postage for those orders | Correct. The carrier bills the retailer direct, so there is no postage for Ship Side Kick to pass on. |
The account details are entered per section 6 on each retailer order, and the badge is checked at the pack bench before the label is bought. Because the setting does not persist per customer, the check at the bench is the control that catches a missed one.