Creating FBA Inbound Shipments That Check In Cleanly

A shipment to Amazon is a bundle of promises: this SKU, this many units, in boxes that hold exactly what you said, with labels a scanner can read, delivered to the address Amazon assigned. Receiving problems are broken promises, and nearly all of them are visible before the truck leaves your dock. Stranded units, slow check-in and quantity mismatches cost you days of sellable stock, and days are the whole game in a busy season. This article walks through the logic of an inbound shipment in the workflow Amazon currently calls Send to Amazon, so the steps still make sense when the screens change.

Pre-checks: confirm the listing before you pack

Packing starts in the catalog, not on the packing table. Every unit you send is matched to a listing, and a listing that is not ready to receive stock is the most common reason a shipment cannot be created or sits unreceived. Run through these checks first:

• Listing status: the offer must be active, set to fulfilled by Amazon, and free of any open restriction or dangerous-goods review.
• Dimensions and weight: the figures you enter drive the size tier and the fulfillment fee, and Amazon measures units at its warehouses. If your entries disagree with what it measures, the record can be corrected and your fees change with it. Weigh and measure a fully packed unit and enter what you measured.
• Barcode choice: decide before labeling whether each unit is identified by Amazon's own barcode (the FNSKU) or by the manufacturer barcode where the product is eligible. Confusing the two on one SKU is a classic cause of units landing in the wrong place.
• Prep requirements: check what the category expects for the item, such as bagging, protection for fragile goods or expiration date marking.
• Limits: confirm that your account has the capacity to receive the quantity you plan to send.

None of this takes long when you do it before the cartons are sealed. After they are sealed, a wrong barcode choice or a wrong dimension can mean opening every box.

How the shipment plan works

The workflow breaks the job into a few decisions, and understanding the logic helps more than memorizing screens. You choose the SKUs and quantities. You tell Amazon how the units will be packed: case-packed, meaning a fixed number of one SKU in every box, or mixed boxes holding several SKUs. You say who will prep and label the units. Amazon then proposes where the inventory goes. Depending on the products, the quantities and the placement option you pick, it may assign everything to one fulfillment center or split the shipment across several.

A placement option that sends all units to fewer destinations may carry a fee, while accepting a wider split may not. Neither choice is automatically right. Compare the fee with the extra freight and handling you would pay to deliver to several locations, and decide per shipment.

Box content: tell Amazon what is in each box

Receiving moves faster when Amazon knows what is inside a box before anyone opens it. The box content information you provide, in the workflow or through an uploaded file, records how many units of which SKU sit in each box. When that record is present and correct, the box can be received from its label. When it is missing or wrong, the box may be opened and counted by hand, which slows check-in and may carry a fee under current policy.

Two habits keep the record accurate. Case-pack whenever you can, so one entry describes many identical boxes. And pack to the record: if you change a box after entering its contents, correct the record before you print its label, because the label is tied to what you said was inside.

• Give every box its own shipment label for this shipment, and remove or cover old shipping labels and barcodes on reused cartons.
• Never mix units that belong to different shipments in one box.
• Keep each box within the maximum weight and size Amazon publishes, and use the special handling labels it requires for heavy boxes.
• Print labels on the stock and at the quality the requirements call for, and scan one to prove it reads.

Carriers: how the boxes travel

Small boxes travel by parcel carrier. Pallets travel by freight, either less-than-truckload or full truckload. In both cases you can use a carrier option that Amazon has partnered with, or arrange your own. A partnered option typically lets you buy the shipping inside the workflow, attaches tracking to the shipment for you and uses rates Amazon has negotiated. Your own carrier gives you more choice of service and price, but you become responsible for entering tracking numbers, meeting the delivery window and booking any appointment the receiving site requires.

Freight adds paperwork. Expect a bill of lading, pallet labels, limits on pallet height and weight, and a delivery appointment. Allow slack in the schedule: a missed appointment can push your delivery back by days. Whatever the carrier, keep your proof: a packing list, photos of the sealed boxes, the carrier receipt and the proof of delivery. These are what you will need if the counts later disagree.

Tracking a shipment to checked in

Delivered, checked in and received are three different events. Delivered means the carrier says the boxes arrived. Checked in means Amazon has scanned the delivery at the dock. Received means each unit has been scanned into inventory, and only then does it become sellable. The gap between delivery and receiving varies with the site and the season, so never plan a restock date around the delivery date.

Watch for three warning signs: tracking that stops moving, a shipment past its delivery window, and a shipment that stays at checked in far longer than your past shipments did. Do not treat a shipment as complete until it closes. Then compare received against shipped for every SKU.

When the counts do not match

A shortfall is not automatically Amazon's mistake or yours. Start with your own records: the packing list, the box content entries, the photos, the carrier receipt and the proof of delivery. If they show that you shipped what you said and the boxes were delivered, you can open a case about the discrepancy or a reimbursement request through the process Seller Central provides. Amazon sets eligibility conditions and time limits for these claims, so run the comparison promptly after each shipment closes instead of once a quarter. A shipment log with one line per shipment (date, units shipped, units received, difference, claim status) turns this from a scramble into a routine.

The short version

• Verify the listing, the dimensions and the barcode choice before you seal anything.
• Case-pack where possible, and keep the box content record identical to what is in the box.
• Choose the carrier on total cost and reliability, and book freight appointments early.
• Plan restock dates from received dates, not delivery dates.
• Reconcile every closed shipment and keep the proof for each one.
• Rehearse any new process with a small first shipment before sending a large one.