As your company grows and you branch into more sales channels, it only makes sense to make your product available through Amazon. It is the largest ecommerce platform in the world and used by billions of people. Shipvine is prepared to help you sell your products through Amazon in multiple ways, including FBA.

FBA stands for “Fulfillment by Amazon” and refers specifically to Amazon warehouses physically storing the product and shipping orders. If you wish to provide inventory to Amazon for FBA, there are some key steps to take with Shipvine in order to make it happen.

This article will work as a standard operating procedure for submitting Amazon FBA fulfillment requests to Shipvine. Please read carefully and complete each step as needed.

Before covering the step-by-step, here are some key points to preface:

1.       Amazon FNSKUs- depending on your UPC format, Amazon may require the product to be labeled with their own internal use barcodes, these are referred to as FNSKUs. Typically they will provide you with label sheets in PDF format in order to do this. Shipvine cannot use these label sheets. We do not have the proper printing materials to use them. Instead we will relabel the units as we process them, utilizing catalog metadata. Uploading this data will be covered in the step-by-step.

2.       If your product requires bundling, you will need to follow a separate process before submitting the FBA request. Depending on the size and complexity of the bundling, it may warrant a special project request.

Step-by-step procedure:

1.       If your product requires FNSKU relabeling, you will need to add the FNSKUs to the individual catalog items as metadata. There are two ways to do this.

a.       To add it to the individual SKU, click “edit” on the SKUs catalog page and enter the data into the pictured field, with “Amazon.FNSKU” in the name field and the new UPC in the value field.

b.       To upload the FNSKUs in bulk, go to this link and follow instructions to import a .CSV file: https://logistics.shipvine.com/metadata/import

                                                               i.      A template .CSV file is attached to this article, which you can use to get started.

                                                             ii.      The file should contain a header row with the following column names: MERCHANT; MERCHANT IDENTIFIER; METADATA NAME; METADATA VALUE

                                                           iii.      Note that the MERCHANT field needs to be formatted in the way your account is identified in our system. If you do not know your merchant ID formatting, please ask!

                                                           iv.      MERCHANT IDENTIFIER refers to the SKU.

                                                             v.      There is a maximum of 500 lines allowed per import file.

2.       Building the request. Now you may enter the request like any other. When it comes to ship method and addressing you may follow these guidelines.

a.       Since Amazon supplies shipping labels for FBA requests, the appropriate ship method for the request is domestic-routing. Once the order is packaged and "shipped", our system will print out a blank label to prevent us from sending it out the door. At that stage (the "routing ready" stage, in logistics), all box dimensions, weights, manifests, etc. will populate on the fulfillment request page. You may supply these to Amazon for shipping label generation.

b.       When using the domestic-routing method in this way, while we prefer the address to match the actual destination (it avoids confusion), it isn't strictly necessary. Amazon will be sending labels with the correct address. If you do not yet know what Amazon location you are shipping to, you may enter Shipvines address in this field.

                                                               i.      Please enter either the Amazon DC or “Amazon FBA” in the name field for identification purposes.

3.       Shipping the request. Once Amazon provides labels for the shipment you may forward them to us via email (support@shipvine.com) we will apply the labels and enter the tracking numbers into logistics for record.

a.       Shipvine uses 4”x 6” thermal-printed labels. Amazon does provide this format as an option. We much prefer these over full sheet labels.

b.       Once the labels are applied, the package(s) will be placed on the next available courier pickup.

Thanks for reading!