Amazon FBA Inbound Shipment – How It Works and What’s Important

Amazon inbound shipment has become a relevant factor for sellers, but why exactly? Over 80 percent of third-party sellers on Amazon marketplaces use Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA). This large number reveals one important thing: Despite all the complaints, the quality of FBA is so outstanding that most merchants prefer to rely on this service rather than build their own logistics. Once an order is placed, receiving, packing, shipping, customer service and returns are all handled by the online giant, while the sellers themselves stay out of the processes altogether.

In this setting, the only thing that Amazon sellers still have to do is to deliver new items to Amazon’s fulfillment centers before they go out of stock. So far, it sounds fairly simple: Send your products to Amazon – sell them – make money. However, sellers have to keep a few things in mind in order to enable a flawless inbound shipment to Amazon.

How to Send Your Shipment to Amazon

Once you have created SKUs in Seller Central and activated “Fulfillment by Amazon” for selected products, it’s time to focus on their shipment to a particular Amazon fulfillment center. The basic requirements for such inbound shipments include a shipping plan, proper packaging of the products and shipping with professional carriers. Amazon indicates that sent goods are usually available for sale within three business days of delivery. However, during peak sales periods such as pre-Christmas, Black Friday Week, etc., it may take longer, which the sellers should keep in mind when planning and managing their inbound shipments to Amazon.

Now how does Amazon FBA inbound shipping work? There are basically 4 options for creating a shipment:

In general, it is essential for sellers to follow the guidelines of their shipping plan. For example, they should not send goods to other logistics centers than indicated. You can find detailed information here: Sending products to Amazon. If you would like to get an impression of how to send your first shipment to Amazon FBA, you can watch corresponding videos by Amazon Seller University starting with this one: How to Get Started with Amazon FBA and Send Your First FBA Shipment. 

By working with the right partner, merchants can manage their FBA products much more easily than in Seller Central. This also applies to Amazon inbound logistics. The Plentymarkets system, for example, clearly visualizes all relevant steps of the inbound process.

Amazon Inbound Process: Guidelines Sellers Need to Know

The requirements of the Amazon FBA inventory inbound process range from the right choice of boxes to weight and suitable packing material. In addition, depending on the type of shipment – for example, involving a carrier such as DHL, by truck, etc. – sellers need to pay attention to further guidelines. In the following, we would like to focus on the most important ones.

How to Pack a Shipment Properly

Amazon has clear guidelines as to how shipments to their logistics centers should be packed. of how shipments to a logistics center should be packed. Correct packaging is supposed to make the shipment intake easier and help avoid errors during this process.

In general, sellers should use a rigid, six-sided box with intact flaps. Acceptable standard boxes for inbound shipments to Amazon are regular slotted cartons (RSC), B flutes, ECT-32 (edge crush test), and 200 lb/inch² (burst strength) boxes. The packing material around each individual item as well as between the items and the box walls should be at least 2 inches thick. In case the products are shipped in the manufacturer’s package, it is not necessary to take note of the 2 inches.

Box Dimensions and Weight

In general, boxes containing several standard-size or oversized items must not exceed 25 inches on any side. Exceeding the 25 inches is only permitted if the box contains items that are longer than 25 inches. Moreover, the boxes must not be heavier than 50 lb. Again, the only exception is if the weight of a single item exceeds 50 lb. In that case, the seller has to attach a label that designates “Team Lift” on the top and sides of the box. For items heavier than 100 lb, the attached labels should indicate “Mechanical Lift”.

Following Amazon FBA inbound shipment requirements regarding both the box dimensions and weight is crucial for Amazon sellers, since contravening the corresponding guidelines may result in blockage of further shipments.

Proper Labeling of Shipments

To facilitate a flawless FBA inbound shipment to Amazon’s fulfillment centers, all shipments have to be labeled properly. The corresponding guidelines include:

In addition, for a flawless Amazon FBA inbound shipping process, all items must have a scannable barcode. This can be manufacturer barcodes (eligible barcodes: UPC, EAN, JAN, and ISBN), Amazon barcodes (e.g. FNSKU) or a transparency authenticity code (for brand owners) to prevent product counterfeiting. More information about the requirements for Amazon inbound shipments can be found here: FBA product barcode requirements and Shipment label requirement.

Further Tips on Packaging

Amazon provides further information about what is considered suitable packing material by the shipping giant. Among others, the tape should be strong and designed for shipping.

Suitable packing materials:

Not suitable for packing:  

Finally, to check whether your shipment is packed properly, you can carefully shake the prepared box. In an ideal case, the content does not move.

You are currently viewing a placeholder content from Youtube. To access the actual content, click the button below. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers.

More Information

Unblock content Accept required service and unblock content

Avoid Mistakes: How You Shouldn’t Pack

There are a number of rookie mistakes that should be avoided, since many of them are not tolerated or can disturb the inbound shipment intake process of Amazon. These include, for example, the usage of point-of-sale containers that are considered part of the item being sold. Moreover, pallet-sized boxes with a removable lid (so-called “gaylords”) and bundling several boxes together are not allowed. Finally, the box surface must not be provided with strings or straps and over-wrapped with plastic or paper.

What Amazon sellers should additionally keep in mind is that the boxes are often stacked during shipping or in the logistics center. Hence, to avoid damage, it is essential to choose the right box size. If the box is too large, the empty space should be filled with a sufficient amount of packing material.

In general, products should be packed in a way that they are delivered intact and properly prepared to Amazon fulfillment centers facilitating a fast and flawless inbound shipment intake process. You can find detailed information about packaging guidelines here: Packaging and prep requirements.

What’s Inside? Information About the Box Content

Of course, Amazon’s Inbound and Outbound Logistics would like to know in detail what is inside any shipment. In particular, accurate content information should allow the delivered products to pass efficiently through the FBA network and to become available for sale faster. If this information is missing, Amazon will manually collect it when the shipment arrives at the fulfillment center – not for free though. The seller will be charged a per-unit fee of $0.15 from January to October and $0.30 in November and December. Moreover, by not providing accurate information about the box content, the seller does not only slow down the inbound process in Amazon logistics centers – thereby making it more expensive – but also risks getting his or her future shipments blocked.

Sellers should therefore rather choose one of the options available on Amazon. Basically, box content information can be submitted during shipment creation in Seller Central or via the Amazon Marketplace Web Service (MWS). Which method to use depends on the selected workflow for shipment creation.

Click here for more information and frequently asked questions around this topic: Provide box content information.

Parcel, Truckload or Container Shipment?

The type of shipment also has an impact on which guidelines sellers have to keep in view during the inbound process at Amazon fulfillment centers.

Information on truckload and ocean container shipments can be found here:

Truckload delivery to Amazon;

Seller requirements for LTL, FTL, and FCL deliveries.

How to Cancel an FBA Inbound Shipment to Amazon

It may happen that you have already initiated an inbound shipment, but, for some reason, would like to cancel it. To this end, you can click on “Void shipments and charges” at the bottom of the workflow page. Importantly, voiding cannot be applied to individual shipments, but rather will cancel all created shipments. Moreover, all FBA Box ID and carrier labels created for voided shipments can no longer be used. 

Whether you will get a refund of charges from Amazon partnered carriers or not depends on the type of shipment and the time-point. If you cancel small parcel shipments within 24 hours after having accepted the shipping settings and charges, you will get a full refund. For pallet shipments, however, you have a timeframe of only one hour, otherwise, you will void the shipment but not the carrier charges. 

For more information and frequently asked questions regarding this topic, click here: Send to Amazon: Change or cancel your shipment. 

Amazon FBA and Inbound Shipment: Potential Errors

Not everything always goes smoothly. In the first place, errors can occur when shipments are not in line with Amazon’s guidelines. In this case, a lot can go wrong when it comes to shipment intake. According to the Inbound Performance Summary, possible problems include:

Sellers can avoid all these errors by carefully studying and following Amazon’s inbound shipment requirements. However, even in case a shipment is prepared perfectly, there are still sources of errors on which the seller has no impact. For example, an error can arise during the shipment processing by Amazon employees.

After Shipment Arrival: Controlling and Reconciliation

Once the shipment has been received at an Amazon logistics center, sellers can and should have a look at the details of the inbound process. For this, they can select “Inventory > Manage FBA Shipments”, go to “Track shipment” in the shipment creation workflow and click on the “Contents” tab. The latter now displays the status of all units received. Any discrepancies between the original shipping plan and actually received content can also be viewed here. If items are missing or damaged after the inbound process at Amazon, there is an option to request an investigation. In case any Amazon FBA inbound shipment is lost during the process, the seller will be refunded the value of the product.

You can view the status column describing the state of each product. The status “Action required” means that there is a discrepancy allowing you to request an investigation. To submit the request, select one of the available options under “Action required”:

In addition, Amazon often requires further documents, which can be uploaded by clicking on the “Choose file” button and then on the “Upload” button. These documents are supposed to help investigate possible errors during the inbound process at Amazon. Such documents primarily include the proof of inventory ownership (e.g. an invoice from a supplier) and, in the case of truckloads, the proof of delivery (e.g. a bill of lading). Additional information can also help find out the reasons for the discrepancies. In this regard, Amazon suggests:

Information type example	Description
Any known discrepancies	Did you or your supplier ship more or fewer units than you originally expected? Did you or your supplier ship the wrong product?
A description of the shipping boxes	Our team does a physical check of the fulfillment center, so information about the color, size, or any distinguishing marks on your shipping boxes can help us find them more quickly.
Product codes	Verify the UPC, EAN, or JAN on your products. Does it match the product code shown in Seller Central?
Any prep activity that was missed	An item that was not properly prepped before being shipped can cause delays in the receiving process, as we must prep the item for you.

Afterwards, the seller can preview the request, review the information and finally submit it.

Automatic Analysis of Amazon FBA Inbound Shipment Errors

Instead of digging through tons of shipments and units in Seller Central, marketplace sellers can have their FBA shipments monitored automatically. In particular, sellers with a certain volume of orders and a huge number of SKUs, need to keep their inventory up to date virtually all the time and thus quickly reach their limits in terms of time and staff. At the same time, it is not an option to simply accept that products are damaged or lost at Amazon without receiving a reimbursement. As we all know, nobody wants to burn through money.

With the SELLERLOGIC’s Lost & Found tool, all inbound shipments to Amazon can be monitored and analyzed automatically. For each error found, a separate case, which contains all the necessary information, is created and can be transmitted to Amazon with just a few clicks. The tool even provides the corresponding request texts.

In addition to the above described discrepancies during inbound shipment, the Lost & Found tool identifies Amazon FBA errors of further types, including:

These errors cost FBA sellers several thousand dollars a year on average. Lost & Found finds such cases up to 18 months retrospectively.

Conclusion: Inbound Shipment to Amazon

FBA is not as simple as it sounds. Although sellers can send their goods directly to a logistics center, following the guidelines regarding shipment dimensions, packing material, labeling, etc. are quite a challenge. The key here is to be well prepared or to work with professionals.

The same applies to the tracking of corresponding errors. If Amazon is responsible for an error, sellers are entitled to a reimbursement from the online giant, as long as the item is no longer sellable. To create the claims efficiently, sellers should definitely use a professional tool such as SELLERLOGIC Lost & Found.

Image credits in order of appearance: © Mike Mareen – adobe.stock.com / © Tobias Arhelger – adobe.stock.com / © JackF – adobe.stock.com / © ekkaluck – adobe.stock.com