taihn

Amazon FBA Inventory Guide: Your Best Partner in E-commerce

Which of these two e-commerce business models applies to you the most?

• You store your products in your own warehouse and organize shipping and customer service yourself.
• You outsource the lion’s share of product storage, shipping, and customer service to Amazon and focus on marketing and product development.

If you chose the second option (good choice!), then you need to learn all there is to know about Amazon FBA inventory management – the choice of 73% of all Amazon sellers.

What Is Amazon FBA Inventory?

Let’s start from the basics. Amazon FBA stands for Fulfillment by Amazon, implying that the company stores and ships your products to customers on your behalf. Instead of storing products in your own warehouse and organizing shipping by yourself, you can just send them to Amazon’s fulfillment centers, from where they will be sent to customers.

Once your products arrive at an Amazon fulfillment center, they are inspected and stored until a customer orders them. The moment an order is placed, Amazon handles picking, packing, shipping and customer service for you.

So, what’s your role here, then? 

You manage your FBA inventory either manually or with specialized inventory management software. This means you ensure all your products are in stock and up-to-date.

How Does FBA Business Work? A Setup of 3 Simple Steps

If you already sell products on Amazon, you already have your Amazon Seller Central account – a unified platform that you use to manage your inventory, orders, shipping, etc.

*If you are just starting, here is a guide to help you set up your Amazon selling business. 

With your products already listed on Amazon, you can easily switch to FBA stock by following these steps.

Here’s how to send inventory to Amazon FBA.

Step 1: Change Your Existing Listing’s Fulfillment Method

On the Manage Inventory page of your seller account, you should select any item(s) and click “Change to Fulfilled by Amazon” from the “Action on Selected” drop-down list. Further, you should verify your action by clicking “Convert” on the “Convert to Fulfilled by Amazon” page.

Specify Your New Listing’s Fulfillment Method

If you upload new listings that you want to manage with Amazon FBA Inventory, change the Fulfilled by value to Amazon. 

*If you want the same listing to be simultaneously managed by both Amazon and you, simply create two separate listings for each fulfillment method. 

Step 2: Prepare and Ship Your Products to Amazon Fulfillment Center

Before your products reach the Amazon FBA warehouse, you must ensure that they are correctly labeled and prepared to match Amazon’s requirements. That’s because many products can get damaged in transit, and Amazon implies strict FBA inventory requirements for packaging and labeling to avoid that.

You can access product prep requirements in the “Prepare products” step when creating a shipment for your products to reach the FBA warehouse. Click on the Prep required tab to see which items need preparation and which criteria they should meet.

There is also a Prep may be required tab for the products for the prep guidance, which is not available. Here are the products that probably weren’t shipped to Amazon before and, as such, need special attention.

You can select the prep categories for such products manually from the drop-down list or mark them as No prep required.

Do It Yourself or Let Amazon Do It for You

Depending on the products you sell, you might be required to wrap your products in a poly bag, bubble wrap, over box or apply other special packaging. If you want to avoid the hassle, ask Amazon to prepare your products for you with an additional fee. To do that, select Amazon in the Who preps? column and check the fees to ensure you have enough budget. 

Note! If the product which requires preparation arrives at the Amazon FBA warehouse without the required preparation, you will be charged for unplanned prep services. 

Step 3: Successfully Ship Your Products to Amazon Warehouse

It’s the last step to becoming an FBA seller! Now you have to ship your products to the Amazon Fulfillment Center. To do that, you need a shipping plan that will list all the details about your shipped products’ quantities, packaging types and so on. You can create a shipping plan from the Send/replenish inventory tab. Further, follow the below steps.

Set Quantities of the Shipped Products

Choose the products you want to send to the FBA warehouse and set the quantities of each. Further, mention the ship-from address (which can be any location or even the supplier’s warehouse) and specify the packaging type for the products that will be shipped.

• Individual products are single items of varying quantities and conditions. For example, if you are a bookseller, individual products will be books with varying ISBNs and prices.
• Case-packed products are multiples of the same item packaged together, where each package has the same quantity in the same condition. For example, if you are a bookseller, case-packed products will be books with the same ISBN and price in a bundle.

Label Products for Easy Tracking

Amazon is a barcode-driven system where it tracks every product using its unique barcode, which should be printed and placed on each of your packages. You can either print them yourself or ask Amazon to label the products for you (for an extra fee).

If you choose the first option, ensure that you print barcodes with a printer that has a resolution of 300 DPI or greater. This will ensure that the barcodes are clearly visible and can be easily scanned. 

Further, place your barcodes on your shipped items carefully so that there won’t be any misreads. For instance, barcodes should not be placed near metallic objects and should be away from cutouts or folds. You should avoid placing barcodes on a curve or corners of the packaging as well, as this can cause scanning errors.

If there are additional barcodes on your products’ packaging, carefully close them so that the only visible code is the one from Amazon.

Review Shipments to Amazon FBA Warehouse

There are two ways to organize your shipment to the Amazon FBA warehouse:

• All the items in the approved shipping list are sent to the same FBA warehouse
• Items are split and sent to two different FBA warehouses.

The second option is more popular because it allows Amazon to distribute your products across its warehouses better and, therefore, ship them faster when orders are placed from various locations.

Once your shipping list is approved, the View Shipments section appears clearly, informing how many shipments have been created, under which tracking numbers, along with expected arrival venues and dates.

No shipment is done before you approve shipments! In case you are not satisfied with the automatically generated shipments, you can change them manually (add/remove items or locations) in the same section.

You can also sign up for the FBA Inventory Placement Service, which will receive all your shipped products at once in a single location and then distribute them to different fulfillment centers for you with a per-item service fee.

Note! Whatever option you choose, the to-be-shipped items are expected to be at your specified ship-from address and your approved date. Otherwise, you won’t be able to send the shipments and it will fail at Amazon’s end.

Track Your Shipments

The Summary page and the Shipping queue contain every detail you need to ensure your shipped products successfully reach the FBA warehouse. For example, you can see the tracking number, expected arrival date and time, carrier name, etc.

Pay close attention to Shipment contents which clearly display the number of items that were supposed to reach the FBA warehouse and the items that actually reached the warehouse. In case there are any discrepancies, you can reconcile your inventory – add/remove items – to ensure it matches what was sent.

What Happens After Your Products Are Successfully Shipped to Amazon FBA?

After a successful inspection report, you can find your shipped products listed in your Seller Central account. Seller Central will further provide you with a detailed report of each product, including its quantity, condition and fulfillment date.

For example, you can track all your orders, returns, customer details and the delivery status of your products.

You can also look up the inventory levels of all your products and create restock orders if needed. In addition, you can track stock health data which will help you know how much spending or product sourcing is required to keep up with customer demand.

How to Ensure Your Inventory Is Always Up-to-Date and Accurate?

By outsourcing daily order and shipping management processes to Amazon, you free up much time that would otherwise be spent on manual inventory management.

And if you want to truly scale your Amazon business, you should spend that time wisely by dedicating more time to your business growth – reviewing your selling and pricing strategies, analyzing customer data, understanding their buying behavior, improving your Amazon rankings and so on.

And just like Amazon FBA inventory can automate and streamline those processes for you, the specialized Amazon FBA inventory management software SellerMobile can automate and optimize your entire e-commerce management.

So, here is the tried and tested combo to take your Amazon business to the next level.

• Amazon FBA carries on with managing and shipping your products, meantime providing detailed tracking information of your inventory performance in your Seller Central account.
• SellerMobile syncs with your Amazon Seller Central account to automatically analyze your sales performance data and provide you with data-driven suggestions to help you increase your sales and revenues.

Here is how the system works in more detail.

SellerMobile: The Only Missing Part of Your Amazon FBA Inventory Management

SellerMobile is an Amazon inventory management software that seamlessly integrates with your Seller Central account. Once you sign up on SellerMobile and integrate it with your Amazon account, automatic synchronization is put into action.

This means SellerMobile automatically spots and analyzes any change in your inventory; a new order, new return, low stock of items, etc.

Even if you don’t manually check your Amazon FBA data, SellerMobile is doing it 24/7. 

As a result, you get timely notifications and alerts (even if you’re logged out from your SellerMobile account) whenever you need to act. 

For example, you get restock suggestions so that you manage to replenish inventory before it goes low, or you get a negative feedback alert whenever someone writes a bad review about your business.

Here are the key features of SellerMobile to help you manage your Amazon FBA inventory.

SellerMobile Use Case #1 | Inventory Analysis

The inventory analysis feature monitors inventory levels, deliveries, sales and orders in a single dashboard for you. You can see your past lost sales, receive inventory liquidation reports, track your inventory across all distribution channels, and more with a single click. 

SellerMobile Use Case #2 | Restock

With SellerMobile, you get timely restock suggestions based on inventory levels and demand forecasts for each item of your inventory. This helps you minimize the risk of running out of stock, as it no longer depends on manual inventory tracking. The system tells you when and how much you need to restock. 

Moreover, there is a great feature to help you replenish your inventory. In parallel to getting restock suggestions from SellerMobile, you can add items to your Amazon FBA plan to maintain an optimal inventory level. 

SellerMobile Use Case #3 | Amazon Reviews

SellerMobile helps you get more customer reviews and improve your rankings. You can send 100s of product review requests automatically to your user base. The emails you send are Amazon approved to ensure you stay compliant with Amazon TOS. 

Every time someone leaves bad feedback, you will be notified instantly to act quickly and improve your service!

To Wrap Up

Managing a business on Amazon is no hard task if you are using the right tools. With the right toolset at hand, you can automate mundane tasks, focus on what matters the most and take your business to the next level!

Many sellers like you trust Amazon FBA and SellerMobile to make the Amazon FBA inventory management process easier and more efficient. If you want to join them, start working with Amazon FBA and integrate your Amazon account to SellerMobile now!