Consolidate FBA Inbound Shipments

Overview 

FBA Inbound shipments refer to the process of sending your products to Amazon’s fulfillment centers, where they will manage and store your inventory. Learn more about the initial FBA Inbound Shipments configuration here.

Typically, Amazon often splits your inventory across multiple locations. With the use of this workflow, you can consolidate your whole FBA Inbound Shipment to a single Fulfillment Center. In contrast to the Inventory Placement Service, this feature does not incur any costs.

Prerequisites

The following Client Settings must be enabled for this workflow:

• Enable Consolidated FBA Inbound Workflow
• Enable FBA Prepare Mixup By Seller And Amazon
• Enable FBA Prepare Guidance

To enable them, navigate to Settings > Client Settings > General Client Settings > Channels > FBA – General.

Consolidate an FBA Inbound Shipment

You can access this feature through the FBA Inbound Shipment Creation Wizard. The Wizard will guide you through each of the six steps of shipment creation:

• Shipment Details
• Products
• Prep Guidance
• Amazon Shipments (YOU ARE HERE!)
• Boxes
• Shipping

Key Terms

• Fulfillment center – the name and location of Amazon’s fulfillment center.
• Original QTY – the number of units for each SKU you originally added in Tab 2 of the wizard: Products.
• QTY to FC – in the first screenshot, this column shows how Amazon proposes to split up your original shipment. After consolidating (second screenshot), this represents the validation status for the selected location.
• Consolidation Status – displays the consolidation status for each of the proposed locations.

Functionality

On the Amazon Shipments step, you will see the fulfillment centers that Amazon has chosen for your items. You now have two choices, either confirm the shipment as suggested by Amazon or attempt to consolidate all items into a single Fulfillment Center.

Consolidate Items

To attempt to consolidate all items into one of the Fulfilment Centers from the grid:

1. Select your desired Fulfilment Center and click the Attempt Consolidation to this FC action in the right-hand corner.
   For an FC to be Eligible, all of the originally selected SKUs must be successfully previewed and included in that Fulfillment Center in the grid as shown above. If they are not, the Consolidation Status is considered Not Eligible.
2. Next, Sellercloud will attempt to consolidate the shipment to a single Fulfilment Center. The page will refresh to show you the updated results. If the attempt is successful, the whole Shipment is assigned to that location.
3. The Consolidation Status will update to Confirmed.
Several factors, including the Fulfillment Center’s capacity, the amount of inventory currently in storage, and Amazon’s ability to accommodate the desired quantities in the specified location, may impact the successful consolidation of your products at the chosen destination.

Confirm the Shipment

1. Review the products and their assigned FC.
2. Set the shipment to a Working status.
   The working status must be set within 48 hours of Amazon’s preview.
3. The shipment will be confirmed and the status will be updated on Amazon. 

Once your shipment is set to a Working status, click the blue arrow to proceed with the next step in the wizard: Preparing the boxes.

Consolidation Eligibility

In the process of consolidating FBA Inbound Shipments, there are certain limitations that should be taken into consideration. This is not an exhaustive list of exceptions, but it provides a general understanding of what to expect.

Case Quantity Enabled

• Having Case Quantity Enabled for the FBA Shipment will make it Not Eligible for Consolidation.

Amazon Product Size Tier

• If the shipment has both Standard and Oversize products (as determined by Amazon’s Product Size Tier), the shipment will not qualify for consolidation.