Having your manufacturer ship direct to your Amazon account is an incredibly easy process. We do suggest having them ship the first order either direct to you or a prep center initially, just to verify that the manufacturer complies with Amazon’s shipping policies.
We highly advise observing the following practices:
- Do not ship multiple products to Amazon. We generally suggest shipments containing a SINGLE product to prevent errors.
- Do not ship mixed cases to Amazon. This can cause confusion and lead to receiving issues on the Amazon side.
- Ship products in case quantity to prevent problematic splits.
This instruction set will be made with those principles in mind, and will simply serve as a walkthrough for setting up these types of shipments.
Step One – Log in to your Account
Step Two – Add the product to inventory following the same practices you use when creating any product that you will be selling.
Step Three – After the product has been added to your inventory go to “Manage FBA Inventory”
Step Four – Select the SKU that you would like to create a shipment for, then click edit and “send/replenish Inventory”
Step Five – This is the first step that will differ. You will need to change the “ship from” address to the manufacturers address:
In this step, we simply fill in the manufacturer or vendor information after clicking the “ships from another address link”.
Also, as indicated ship as “case-packed products.”
Step Five – Fill in the Case/Unit Quantities as suggested, like any other shipment.
Step Six – If the product requires labels, we have found it easiest to have Amazon label the product. Follow this diagram to do that:
Toggle that to “Amazon”.
Step Six – Enter the box weights and dimensions (you will need to get this from your supplier).
Step Seven – Complete the order, and save the “FBA Labels” & “Shipping Labels” as PDFs.
Step Eight – Give instruction for the application of the labels (e.g. do not apply across seams on boxes), and send the labels to the manufacturer via email.
If you are shipping via pallet, you will need to perform the SAME procedure listed above. The only change to this procedure is:
Step One – Click Work on Shipment
Step Two – Select “Less Than Truckload (LTL)” in shipping service.
Step Three – Select Amazon-Partnered Carrier
Step Four – Select Shipment Packaging
You toggle between multiple boxes AND everything in one box.
If you choose multiple boxes you will be prompted to upload box contents.
Step Five – Enter Pallet Dimensions and Weight
This should include the height and weight of the pallet. So, the height measurement should be taken from the floor.
In terms of weight, you can take the weight of the cases, add them together and generally add 50 lbs to incorporate the weight of the pallet.
Step Six – Set Shipping Charges, Freight Ready Date, Contact Person & Freight Class
We generally suggest setting the freight ready date to three days from the current date. This will give you time to receive and send the bill of lading to your supplier.
You can have it estimate the freight class, which is probably the best option. If you want to set your own freight class you can use the following resource:
https://www.freightclasscalc.com/calculator.php
Lastly, in terms of declared value, we suggest setting this as the actual cost of goods of your shipment, as any insurance would be based on that number.
Step Seven – Print Your Labels
Save these labels as a PDF and send them to your supplier. You should instruct them to add a shipping label to each side of the pallet.
Amazon is currently doing a beta on this service that will streamline the process further, and we will update once we are able to check it out!