FBA – Getting Started

Overview

FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) is a service that allows businesses to store their products in Amazon’s fulfillment centers, where Amazon takes full control over the logistics of order fulfillment, including picking, packing, shipping, and customer service. You can manage your FBA Inbound Shipments and send inventory to FBA using Sellercloud, as well as use that inventory for Multi-Channel Fulfillment to ship your regular orders via FBA.

Before doing that, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the requirements and settings for this workflow. Learn more about all FBA-related requirements below.

Set Up FBA Warehouses

Sellercloud tracks inventory through warehouses, so you must set up a dedicated warehouse to track all FBA-related movements and quantity changes.

When adding items to FBA shipments, inventory will be reserved from your regular warehouses. Once shipped, your inventory is moved to an interim warehouse until it is received in your FBA Warehouse. To ensure everything is handled properly, make sure to create an FBA-type warehouse and assign it under your Channel Warehouses following the steps below:

1. In Sellercloud, go to Settings > Inventory > Add New Warehouse.
2. Enter your warehouse name, for example “FBA Warehouse“, along with its address.
3. Select FBA as the warehouse type and click Save.
4.  Next, go to Settings > Companies > Manage Companies > Select a company > Toolbox > Channel Warehouse > Edit.
5. Find the FBA channel row > select FBA Warehouse > Save.

Set Up the Interim Warehouse

1. Add another warehouse and name it Interim Warehouse.
2. Choose Interim as the warehouse type and click Save.

Allow to Use Qty for FBA Shipments

To create FBA inbound shipments using inventory from your regular warehouses, be sure to enable the option Allow to use qty for FBA and WFS Shipments. By default, you will be able to add items to your shipment even if they have no inventory in your catalog. This is sometimes done when you expect a purchase order to arrive shortly and would like to set up the shipment even before it arrives.

• • To validate inventory availability when adding a product to an FBA Shipment, enable the Client Setting Enable Validate Inventory for FBA and WFS Shipments. When enabled, the shipment will not Preview if the product has less inventory than the amount added to the shipment. Sub-setting Validate FBA and WFS Shipment Inventory per warehouse only can be enabled if you want to narrow the validation down to the ship from warehouse.
  • The product must be from the same company as the company you are shipping from; otherwise, you will see an “Unknown SKU” error message when previewing the shipment.

Additionally, the Ship From address on the FBA Inbound Shipment is pulled from the warehouse address, not the company address. Ensure that the warehouse address is filled in correctly.

Set Up FBA SKUs

Items added to an FBA inbound shipment must be Fulfilled by Amazon in your Amazon catalog.

Update Fulfilled by Amazon Status Individually

1. Go to Catalog > Manage Catalog > open a product.
2. In Toolbox, select Amazon Properties page > Actions > Change Fulfilled By.
3. Select Fulfilled By Amazon.
   • If the product is posted on Amazon, click Save. The Update on Amazon box is enabled by default and we will automatically notify Amazon of this change.
   • If the product is not posted on Amazon, uncheck the Update on Amazon box > Save. Next, Launch the product on Amazon as a new AFN listing.

By default, new items created in Sellercloud will have a Merchant Fulfilled status, but you can control this at the company level for all products as follows:

1. Go to Settings > Companies > Manage Companies > Select a company.
2. In Toolbox, select Amazon Settings > Product Defaults > set the Fulfilled By field to Amazon > click Save.

Update Fulfilled by Amazon Status in Bulk

Go to Catalog > Manage Catalog  > select products > click the Action button > Switch to AFN.
This changes the status of the products in Sellercloud and also automatically updates it on Amazon, so it should only be done for the products that are already posted on Amazon.

Get the Product’s FNSKU

When your products are set, make sure you have FNSKUs on your products. FNSKU (FBA SKU) is an Amazon product identifier used for FBA inventory. It’s required for each product that you add to an FBA inbound shipment.

Learn how to get a product’s FNSKU.

Set Up Kits for FBA

When sending kits to FBA, the inventory quantity of the parent must be independent of its components to be handled properly.

1. Go to Catalog > Manage Catalog > open a product.
2. On the Product Details page, go to the Kit tab.
3. In the Kit Details panel, select Independent from the Inventory Dependency On dropdown list.

Enable the FBA Workflow

If your Amazon Account Integration is fully configured and you have an FBA warehouse set, you can finalize the FBA workflow configuration by navigating to Settings > Select a company > Toolbox > Channels > Amazon Settings > General Settings. Click Edit and check the Enable FBA Workflow box. This enables the FBA Inbound Shipments feature, as well as the automatic download of FBA Orders.
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View Inventory Movements

To view the inventory movements related to your FBA operations, open the Inventory Movement page for the desired product. The respective quantity is noted in the grid under the FBA movement types.