Purpose: in this article we explain how we invoice you for your shipments. In addition, we also give you an overview of other charges.
How do we charge you for your labels?
At Sendcloud you are billed for the creation of the label. This means that if you create labels for parcels that you end up not shipping, Sendcloud will still charge you for those labels if you don't cancel them.
All users that ship with Sendcloud pre-negociated rates (including those with a Free plan) will pay some common charges. Users with a paid subscription will have to pay additional charges. For an overview on the charges associated with label creation, read the relevant section below:
Common charges for all users
- Label cost: Shipping costs. Unless you have connected your own shipping contract with a carrier and have your own rates, you will be shipping with Sendcloud pre-negociated rates. If you ship with your own rates, the shipping costs shown in Sendcloud will be of 0.00 EUR.
- Cost of associated products (if applicable): The price of using any of our additional services will be invoiced on top of the shipping costs. These include Sendcloud insurance and the use of tracking SMS to update your clients. These services are optional.
Additional charges for users with a Lite plan or higher
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Label price (label processing fee): This is a fee that you pay per created label, including Unstamped Letters. Keep in mind that these are not the shipping costs but the price for the creation of the label with our software. If you cancel the label, the label fee will also be cancelled. The price of the fee depends on your subscription plan: Lite (+ 0.09 per label), Growth (+ 0.08 per label), Premium (+ 0.07 per label).
This doesn't apply to our Legacy subscription plans.
Shipping allowance excess for users shipping with their own carrier contract
Depending on your current active subscription plan, there is a maximum number of shipping labels that you can generate on your own carrier contract. If you exceed your monthly shipping allowance, you will receive an additional charge of €0.15 (€0.12 for Legacy plans) per label created above your limit. More on this here: What happens if I exceed the shipping allowance for my current subscription?
VAT charging (for belgium users)
The VAT amount will be charged if you do not fill in your VAT number in your Sendcloud panel, before issuing an invoice. In this situation, we also do not pay this amount back once you have filled in your VAT number, as we, Sendcloud, have already paid the VAT amount. See our article How do I change my invoice address and VAT number to fill in your information now. Once this is done you can request VAT-free invoices for the upcoming invoices: Can I get a VAT-free invoice?
Label cancellation
If you have not used a shipping label, you can cancel it within 42 days after its creation to get a refund. Read our article How do I cancel my shipment? for more information about label cancellation.
Surcharges applied by carriers
Many carriers apply surcharges for specific services, shipments that do not comply with their terms and conditions, remote areas or fuel, among others. For some carries, some surcharges are already included in the total indicative price of the label, but most of them are excluded. To see the surcharges that each carrier applies, look for your carrier in our carrier page and read the article dedicated to surcharges.
Keep in min that these extra charges are applied by the carrier itself and invoiced by Sendcloud once the carrier shares those surcharges with us. This means that surcharges usually show up on a later invoice than the shipping costs. Read more here: Surcharges FAQ and How can I prevent surcharges?
Paid subscriptions
Apart from the costs associated with label creation, users with a paid subscription (from our Lite plan onwards) will be invoiced their subscription fee.
When do we invoice you?
Shipping costs and other associated products
Shipping costs and the cost of our additional products (insurance or tracking SMS) are invoiced every two weeks, on Monday. This invoice includes all the relevant costs of the previous two weeks. This applies to all users who ship with Sendcloud rates.
Paid subscriptions and label fees
Users that have a paid subscription (Lite, Growth, Premium) will be invoiced a subscription fee on the 1st of each month. This is a fixed amount per month. You can compare our different plans and prices on our website.
Additionally, on the same day (1st of each month), we will invoice the label fee, which depends on the amount of labels you created the month before. We exclude the labels that you have cancelled and not used.
For more specific information about how we invoice your subscription, read our article FAQ about subscription invoicing.
Please note that there are differences for our Legacy plans. Read this article if you have a Small Shop, Large Shop or Business legacy plan. Users with one of our legacy plans may have a yearly subscription, invoiced only once per year.
Where can you find your invoices?
If you want more insight into your invoices you can view them in your Sendcloud account in Settings > Financial > Invoicing. Find the invoice that you want to view and click View details. Here you can view the invoice details and download your invoice in PDF or CSV format.