Sending Your Products to Amazon FBA – Step-by-Step

Welcome to the bring your product idea to life podcast. This is the podcast for you if you're getting started selling products or if you'd like to create your own product to sell.

I'm Vicki Weinberg, a product creation coach and Amazon expert. Every week I share friendly practical advice as well as inspirational stories from small businesses. Let's get started.

Hi. So today I wanted to do another mini episode on how to send stock into Amazon.

So I'm talking about if you are planning on using Amazon FBA and you want Amazon to store your stock and fulfill your orders. Because this is something I get asked.

About quite a lot is, well, how do I do it? And another question I get asked a lot is can I choose the warehouse I send my products to? I'll answer that one really quickly. You can't.

Amazon will decide where your stock is held and it usually based on the warehouse with availability closest to you. But also they do obviously take into consideration that your products will be shipped all around the country and they'll plan that in as well.

So actually, who knows how exactly they decide, but short answer is they decide and you unfortunately can't choose.

Even if you have an Amazon doorstep, an Amazon doorstep, even if you have an Amazon warehouse literally on your doorstep, or one you drive past every day, it doesn't mean necessarily that your stock will get sent there. But please don't worry about that. Whatever warehouse your stock gets sent to really doesn't make much of a difference. So I'm going to do this.

It's going to be more of a tutorial, I guess. Obviously it'll be a little bit of an overview, but it's something I get asked a lot.

And I thought, you know what, it's one of these things on Amazon where the first time you do it, it might take you a little bit longer, but once you've done it once, every subsequent time will get a lot quicker. It'll be really easy. And I thought if I can help you out by getting you started, hopefully that's really useful.

So to send stock into Amazon, you need to set up what's called an Amazon shipping plan. And this is basically telling Amazon what you are sending in.

As part of this, you need to set the prep category for your product and ensure that for every product you're sending in, you have entered the size and the weights. So prep category means is there any further prep required between you sending your product in and Amazon sending it out?

So, for example, there are certain products that need to be sent to customers in a poly Bag, let's say, which I hope is not great for the environment. And I don't know why they do that, but that's one of the.

There are certain products that they say, actually if this is going to be sent to customers, it needs to be in a bag. And either you need to do that before you send it in, or you need to tell Amazon that they need to do that before they send it out.

So that's one example. If you're not sure any of this, by the way, of course, reach out, of course I can help you.

Then, in your inventory, you need to make sure that on the Offers tab, there's a bit of information about the size and weight of each individual product, and you need to make sure that's entered. If you forget, it doesn't matter. When you go to do your shipping plan, Amazon will prompt you for it and a box will pop up where you can put that in.

So don't worry, you can do that using setup. You also need to let them know how your items are going to be packed.

So, for example, let's say you're going to send in two different SKUs and you're going to send 10 of each. So you need to tell them, I'm sending in one box and there's 20 items, two, two SKUs, 10 of this one, 10 of that one.

They need to know what size the box is and how much the box weighs. And you can send multiple boxes.

So this is just an example, but they just want to know how you're packing what you're sending, so that when they receive boxes from you, they know, okay, this is what's inside this box, this is what's inside this box. And they can receive your goods promptly without any issues. And you can also set up templates, by the way.

So, for example, if you know that you're always going to be sending your products in boxes of 20, because perhaps that's how they from the manufacturer, or that's how they fit. And that's an example, by the way.

You can use any number you like, but if you think, okay, I'm actually, I'm going to send in this denomination, you can set up a template so you can save on Amazon a box of 20. Let's go for that example. This is the dimensions of that box. This is that what that box weighs.

Next time, all you need to do is tell them you're sending one box, two box, five boxes, however many boxes. But a lot of that setup is done because you've saved a template. If Your products have an expiration date.

So if they are expiry dated, you need to add the date, the expiry date of your products at this stage.

So before you send them in and then once you've done all of that, and I know it sounds like a lot, but I promise it does get quicker, you then find out the address of the warehouse that you'll be sending your products to. At this point, you're asked to confirm the shipping.

So are you going to be using Amazon Shipping or are you going to arrange your own courier if you use Amazon Shipping? And by the way, I think it's quite a good idea to do this for a couple of reasons.

One is that I think the price is usually pretty good and definitely competitive. It's no more expensive than using another courier.

The price of the shipping is actually deducted from your Amazon seller account and taken from the sales that you make. So you don't pay anything right away, but it'll be a deduction on your account.

And obviously once you start making sales, Amazon will just deduct that as a fee.

But also the other reason I think it's really good is that obviously their courier is delivering into the Amazon warehouse every day and night, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and your products will get in there quickly. You can use a different courier. So you can completely go ahead and think, okay, I'm going to use another courier.

However, first of all, you need to be sure that that courier knows how to deliver into Amazon because a third party courier actually has to book a slot to deliver their boxes, pallets, whatever they're delivering. And if you don't book a slot at the Amazon warehouse in advance, Amazon then won't let that vehicle in and your goods won't be delivered.

Also, it can take a lot longer because Amazon obviously give priority to their own vehicles. And I've heard of people booking couriers in the courier saying, well, the first slot we can get to go to Amazon is in three weeks time.

That's quite extreme, but it can happen. So I think if you decide for any reason not to use Amazon Shipping, and there may well be reason, reasons that you don't want to or you can't.

For example, they can only ship boxes, not pallets. If you're using Amazon, just make sure you're using a courier who understands what it means to deliver your stock to Amazon.

It understands what they need to be doing in order to make sure that your products are delivered safely and successfully. So once you've decided on your shipping and you've confirmed what career you're using. You then generate some labels.

So you have labels that go on each of your boxes, or if you're shipping palettes, you have palette labels as well. And you need to apply these labels to your boxes, your palettes. I think you could apply to more than one side if you can.

So I would personally print out the same label maybe twice and put it one on the top and one on the side or whatever, just to make sure they're absolutely there.

You don't have to put anything inside the boxes because your products that are inside the boxes are also labeled, because presumably you're using either your barcode or Amazon's barcode. So Amazon and also the barcode on the box tells Amazon what's in there. So everything should match up.

You don't need to put anything inside the box, but you do need to label the boxes with the labels provided by Amazon.

And then you can either get your boxes or pallets or whatever you're sending collected, or you can drop them off and from then on, it's just a case of them getting into Amazon. So there's a few different stages. Obviously, you'll know when your courier collects the packages from you.

They then get delivered to an Amazon warehouse and you'll be updated of that. Amazon will then scan the boxes as received and you'll get another email from that.

And then they will actually open your boxes and scan each individual item to check. So, for example, they just want to check that if you say there's 20 in this box, that there is 20, not 19, for example.

And so as I say, there's a few different stages. The time this takes can vary.

So sometimes you might go to bed and you wake up in the morning and you've got emails from Amazon saying, we've received your boxes, we've unpacked your boxes, we've checked everything in. All good. That can happen that quickly other times. So busy times of year. I'm recording this in November, for example.

It's busy now and it will take a lot longer because obviously the trucks need to get to the warehouse and they need to get unloaded.

Everyone needs to get scanned in and the products need to get scanned in and there'll be a lot more arriving, will take a little bit longer, but it's nothing to worry about. You should be able to see via the tracking where your products are at any stage. It can be frustrating, I'll give you that.

So especially if you've gone out of stock or it's your first shipment and you really want to sell. It can be really frustrating when you know that your items are Amazon and they just haven't unloaded them and made them available for sale yet.

What I will say is, unless it's like a really long time and I'm talking weeks, contacting them, ask them to do it quicker, in my experience, doesn't help, it doesn't do any harm, apart from I've never seen it work. So I think about whether you actually want to spend the time on chasing it up.

My best advice would be, and I know it's perhaps not helpful for you in that situation now, but my best advice would be send in stock as early as you can. So plan ahead, do some forecasting as best you can and try and make sure that you're not going to be in a situation where you are out of stock.

And if you are, perhaps think if there's something you can do in the interim, such as setting up an FBM offer where you're fulfilling your own orders to bridge that gap and make sure it doesn't affect your sales and your rankings.

If you need any help with any of this, and I promise you it's easier when it's done, you can log into Seller Central, you can take a look at this and hopefully it will all make so much more sense. If you do need any more help, you can always book in a power hour with me and this is something that we can definitely do together.

We can get all your templates set up so that when you do it in future it's a lot simpler and of course we can do lots of other things as well. And you can book that via my website vickiewinberg.com if you do need anything, you know where I am. Until then, I'm going to leave you now.

This is a short and sweet episode as these are all intended to be. Because let's be honest, while these are useful, some of this isn't super interesting, is it?

So there's only so long I can talk to you about shipping plans.

So have a lovely week and next week we can talk about something a bit different, hopefully a bit more interesting, which is how to get found on Amazon. So I will look forward to speaking to you next week.

Thank you so much for listening. Right to the end of this episode.

Do remember that you can get the full back catalogue and lots of free resources on my website, vickiewinberg.com Please do remember to rate and review this episode if you've enjoyed it and also share it with a friend who you think might find it useful. Thank you again and see you next week.