A meter that runs quietly, grain by grain, and only ever presents itself at the end.
Nothing is charged until a parcel is paid
The screens where storage is counted all repeat the same sentence, and it is the one to hold on to: “Storage fees are settled together with shipping.” You read it on the Warehouse screen, on the dashboard, on an item’s own sheet and on the “How it works” page. On a quote, and on a parcel’s sheet, the figure has stopped being a counter and become a line to pay — there it appears simply as “Storage fees”, with no sentence beside it. Fees are worked out as you read them and written down only when they are billed. That has four consequences worth knowing before you look at your first counter.- Asking for a quote does not charge anything. Storage is billed when a parcel is paid, never when a quote is issued. Being quoted for three carriers does not bill you three times.
- On a bill it is one line, for the whole parcel. It is called “Storage fees”, and it is never split into an invented share per item.
- A line worth zero is not shown. If a quote carries no storage line, you owe nothing for storage on that parcel.
- There are only two moments in the whole service where money leaves your card: paying a parcel’s quote, and asking us to open a dispute. Storage is never a third one.
The figure is frozen when the quote is written. A quote carries the storage it counted at the instant it was issued, and paying it later never recalculates that number. If you pay four days after receiving the quote, those four days are not added.What is frozen is that quote, not the meter. Let a quote lapse and ask for a new one, and the new one counts the days that have gone by since. This is the same rule that makes a quote reliable: the rates that built it travel with it, and nothing about it changes behind your back.
Storage is computed, never typed — it follows from a date, so nobody can get it wrong by hand. A quote can nonetheless carry an amount set by hand, and that amount replaces the calculation outright: it is how we can waive the storage on a parcel. Whatever the figure, it reaches you the same way as everything else — as the “Storage fees” line of the quote, at the amount actually charged, in front of you before you pay.
When the counter starts, and it is later than you think
The clock does not start when your parcel reaches us. It starts when the inspection is settled — either you press “Everything is fine”, or the reply deadline passes and we approve for you. The days we spend opening the parcel, photographing it and waiting for you to look are ours. Billing them would mean charging you for the time we took.Everything that moves the clock, and everything that does not
A started day is a day — but it is counted in elapsed time, not in calendar dates. An item that enters at 23:50 and leaves at 00:10 pays for one day, not two. The unit is the started day, per item: not per parcel, not per kilo, not per shelf.
The rate card
Each step down costs more than the one above it — and the last one is never reached.
What that adds up to, day by day
The third tier is out of reach with the settings in force. The ceiling of €50.00 falls on day 178 — €6.00 for the first tier, plus 88 days at €0.50 — and the abandonment threshold falls on day 180. The €1.00 rate written for “beyond 180 days” therefore never charges anybody anything today. It only starts to matter if the ceiling is raised.
The ceiling is per item, not per parcel. Two pieces that have both reached it carry €50.00 each. And every figure on this page is the setting in force today: they are adjustable, and an amount agreed with you for your workspace takes precedence over the general one. What does not move is the shape of the thing — free days, then tiers, then a ceiling, counted per item.
Reading the counter on the screens
Every item card carries its counter, and it changes on its own.
On an item’s own sheet, the “Storage” section explains the principle — “The first
{n} days are free. After that, fees accrue per day and per item, and are settled when you ship.” — and “How it is calculated” opens the arithmetic line by line: “From day {de} to day {a}: {montant}”, and where it applies, “Capped at {montant}”. The total shows as “Storage fees” or as “No fee so far”.
The same figures are aggregated for your whole stock in a block on the Warehouse screen, opened with “Show details”: “Running total”, “{n} item(s) counted”, “{n} free day(s)”, “Cap per item: {montant}”, “Rate card applied”, and the tiers as “through day {jour}: {montant} per day” and “beyond: {montant} per day”. Each line then says where that piece stands: “then {montant} per day”, “Tier in {n} day(s)”, “Cap reached”. Your warehouse reads that block field by field.
Elsewhere in the service, the same figure surfaces three more times:
Keeping this line at zero
Storage is the one line of a bill that is entirely in your hands. Four habits keep it at zero, and none of them asks for vigilance.1
Answer inspections quickly, and know what that starts
Your reply is what sets the clock going. Answering fast does not cost you free days — the days before your reply were never yours to spend — but it does mean you know when the sixty days began.
2
Read the “Soon chargeable” block, not your inbox
It sits on the dashboard. It holds the pieces whose free period ends within fifteen days — and the ones already past it, which show a red “Free storage has ended” instead of a countdown. Each line already carries the button that fixes it: “Group into a parcel”.
3
Take the grouping suggestions offered for this reason
The Warehouse screen proposes groupings, and one of its three reasons is precisely “These items are about to leave free storage.” Next to it, what the grouping saves you on the consolidation fee alone: “About
{montant} saved”.4
Ship in batches, on a rhythm you choose
Sixty free days is roughly two months of buying. A workspace that ships once a month never sees a storage line at all — and pays the €10.00 consolidation fee once a month, instead of once per find.
The reminders, and where they stop
You are warned three times before the free period ends — 15 days, 7 days and 1 day ahead of it — by an e-mail titled “Soon chargeable”, whose subject readsYour free storage ends in {jours} day(s).
It says: {n} item(s) in your warehouse leave free storage in {jours} day(s). and then “After that, fees accrue per day and per item, and are settled when you ship. Grouping your items now avoids them.” Its button is “See my warehouse”.
Four rules govern those reminders, and all four exist to stop the service becoming noise.
- One e-mail per item, not per client. Thirty pieces crossing the 15-day mark on the same day means thirty messages. And each one speaks of a single item: the count inside the sentence always reads 1.
- One reminder per pass, the most urgent one due. You will never receive the 15-day and the 7-day notice on the same day. And a milestone already sent is never sent again for the same piece.
- A milestone is noticed within minutes, not instantly. The pass that watches these dates runs every ten minutes, so a reminder can arrive shortly after the day turns.
- Once the free period has passed, we stop. No reminder follows the fees. They are visible on the item, in the warehouse block and on every quote — and a message at that point would propose no gesture you could not already see.
This is one of the three messages that also ring the bell in the application. The other two are a published inspection and a parcel’s quotes being ready. The two abandonment messages are letters only, deliberately: those are facts you need to learn when you are not in front of the screen. Every person in your workspace receives them, each in their own language — and reshipping is the one place in the product where the default, for someone who has never chosen, is English.
If an item is never shipped
An item held 180 days passes the abandonment threshold. Passing it does not destroy anything: it makes the piece a candidate, and a person then has to decide, and to write down a reason.1
The threshold is passed, and it is recorded once
The background pass marks the item as a candidate — once, never repeatedly — and sends you the warning e-mail. Nothing has left your warehouse at this point.
2
You get “Last reminder before abandonment”
“{titre}” has been with us for a long time and is nearing the storage limit. Past that limit, it leaves the stock for good. Then the way out, in the message itself: “To keep it, simply ship it: put it in a parcel and request a quote.” The button is “Ship this item” and it opens that exact piece.3
A person decides, with a written reason
Abandonment is never a timer. It is a human gesture, and the reason is required — it goes to our audit log, and it is what we re-read if you later ask where your goods went. A background job able to destroy property on the strength of a mistyped setting is not a job we run.
4
You get “Item abandoned”
“{titre}” passed the storage limit and has been removed from stock. This is final. And, plainly, about the money: “Storage fees accrued up to that date remain payable. Your other items are not affected.”- An item already inside a parcel cannot be abandoned. It has to be taken out of the parcel first — which means a piece you have grouped is, by that fact alone, out of reach of this whole section.
- A threshold set to zero produces no candidates at all, never all of them. Reading “0 days” as “everything can go” would turn an erased setting into a destruction list.
- Abandonment is terminal. The state cannot be reopened: the piece has been destroyed or given away, and reopening it would mean nothing physically.
A bill, worked out to the cent
Here is a real bill, with a storage line in it, from end to end. Three items grouped into one parcel. One of them has been with us 75 days, the other two fewer than 60. You ticked three packing options and asked for insurance on a declared value of €207.00. We typed in a Colissimo price of €34.50. No discount. Everything else is at its standard setting.Only one of the three items paid storage, and only for fifteen days. The two younger pieces were still inside their free period, so they contributed nothing — and because a line worth zero is not shown, a parcel of items that are all still free carries no storage line at all.Note also what the €10.00 consolidation fee is doing here: it is flat, so those three items shipped separately would have carried it three times, €30.00. That is why waiting and grouping is never the expensive choice, and why an item’s storage is often cheaper than the postage it saves. Consolidation and quotes reads the rest of this bill line by line.
The same piece, if it had waited longer
The item above cost €3.00 at 75 days. Held on, it would have read:What surprises people
The free clock does not start when your parcel lands
The free clock does not start when your parcel lands
It starts when the inspection is settled — by your reply, or by the deadline passing. Everything before that is on us. Which means a piece that sat in the inspection queue for a week has not used a single one of its free days.
Being inside a parcel does not pause the meter
Being inside a parcel does not pause the meter
A parcel being prepared is not a parcel that has left. The item is still on our shelf, and the days still count — right up to the moment a quote freezes the figure. A parcel you build and never pay for holds its items in the meter, not out of it.
Cancelling a parcel does not reset anything
Cancelling a parcel does not reset anything
The items go straight back to your warehouse, keeping the entry date they already had. Nothing is lost, and nothing is gained: cancelling and rebuilding a parcel is neither a way of clearing fees nor a way of doubling them.
A closed dispute can be where an item's clock finally starts
A closed dispute can be where an item's clock finally starts
A piece that went into a claim before it ever entered stock has no entry date. When the claim closes and leaves it with us, the entry date and the free-until date are set at that moment — otherwise it would have stayed free for ever, which is not a rule anyone would have chosen deliberately. A piece that already had a clock keeps the one it had.
Changing the rate card changes what the shelf owes
Changing the rate card changes what the shelf owes
What an item owes is worked out afresh every time it is read, from the rate card and the free period in force at that moment — and over the whole of its stay, not merely the days to come. Shorten the free period from 60 days to 30 and pieces that came in 45 days ago start owing money that same day; the next quote bills the new figure. What does not move is an amount already frozen on a quote. And the free-until date written on an item the day it entered stock governs the countdown you read and the reminders you get, not what you owe.
The ceiling arrives before the abandonment threshold
The ceiling arrives before the abandonment threshold
€50.00 is reached on day 178; the abandonment threshold is day 180. So there is a window of two days in which a piece is at its maximum cost and about to be flagged. Nothing about that is dangerous — but it does mean the number stops moving before the item’s stay does, and that a counter which has not changed for a week is not a counter that has broken.
Sorting by fees is sorting by age
Sorting by fees is sorting by age
Exactly, not roughly — both sorts read the same date, so they cannot produce two different lists. What that date is not, always, is a meter: a piece whose inspection is not settled yet sorts as the oldest thing you own and owes nothing at all.
We can waive storage, and it shows on the quote
We can waive storage, and it shows on the quote
A storage amount can be set on a quote as a commercial gesture. When that happens you see it where everything else is: on the quote, as a line, at the amount actually charged. There is no hidden second price list.
A dash is not a zero
A dash is not a zero
“—” means we do not know. “€0.00”, or “Free”, means it genuinely costs nothing. The service never uses one for the other, on this screen or on any other.
What this part of the service does not do yet
We would rather write it here than let you find out halfway through.No e-mail when your clock starts
An inspection approved by silence starts the free period without a word to you. The message for it is written and translated; the path that actually runs does not send it. Watch the countdown on the item.
The dated abandonment line never shows on a sheet
An item’s sheet has a sentence for it — “Without a shipment before
{date}, this item will be treated as abandoned.” — and it does not appear today, because the sheet cannot read the threshold. The dated warning you can trust is the “Abandonment approaching” block on the Warehouse screen.“How it works” shows no figures
That page has a slot for the free period, the reply window, quote validity and the abandonment threshold. All four lines are missing at the moment. The figures that are live are the ones on your items, in the warehouse block and on your quotes — and the ones on this page.
No reminder once the free days are gone
The three notices all fall before the end of the free period. Nothing writes to you afterwards to say the meter is running, however long it runs. That is deliberate, and it is also why this page exists.
No amount in any message
No e-mail of this service carries a storage figure — not the warning, not the abandonment notice, not the receipt for a paid parcel. Amounts live on screens.
Storage cannot be settled on its own
The only place a storage amount is ever charged is inside a paid parcel’s quote. An abandoned item’s accrued fees are stated as payable in the e-mail, and there is no screen in the service where you could pay them.
No history on an item
An item’s sheet has a “Details” section meant to carry its timeline, and it reads “No tracking yet.” whatever the piece has been through — including the day its clock started. Your record of what happened is the e-mails.
Reminders cannot be turned off
There is no unsubscribe link and no per-message preference in the service. Every person in your workspace receives every letter. Only the in-app bell has switches by type.
Every amount and every threshold here is the setting in force today, and each one is adjustable — including for a single workspace, by agreement. Adjusting one re-counts what is already on the shelf; only a figure already frozen on a quote is out of its reach. None of them was measured on a population of parcels; they are the terms we chose, not an average we observed. Where the product has a figure it cannot compute, it prints a dash rather than a guess, and this page does the same.
Where to go next
Your warehouse
The item sheet, the storage block read field by field, and every state a piece goes through.
Consolidation and quotes
Where the storage line lands, the rest of the bill, and paying once for the whole parcel.
Checks and photos
The inspection whose settlement starts your clock, and the reply window that governs it.
The e-mails we send you
Every message there is, what each one asks of you, and the rule of silence behind the rest.
When something is wrong
What a claim does to an item that stays in your warehouse, and what its outcome does to the clock.
What reshipping does for you
The two fixed fees, the whole journey, and every line a bill can carry.