How To Create Your FBA Shipment Plan - Shipping to Amazon FBA 2021 | Step by Step Tutorial

[Music] what's happening guys today we're going to be going over shipping plans so specifically how do you prepare your products to ship them to amazon's warehouse so the first thing we're going to go through is exactly what you need to prepare before even creating the shipping plan and then we're going to dive into the shipping plan step by step so you know exactly how to do this you can even follow along and i'll show you the difference between case pack shipments and individual product shipments and then we can also go through labeling products so which labels need to go where and how do these codes actually speak to amazon how does amazon know what i'm sending how does amazon know when to ship what product when a customer buys from your listing so we're going to go through all of that and by the end of this you should be very clear on all these codes and how to send your own shipments so step number one is to have an active fba listing you have to have an fba listing so when you actually create a listing on amazon for the first time it's often going to be an fbm listing fulfilled by merchant means you ship from your house when someone buys from your amazon listing but you can convert that to fba and i'll show you how you can do that here so just going to manage inventory on seller central and find that listing that you want to change to fba another little pro tip here is you can see that this has a box where we can input a number and that's just a quick way to know this is fbm because if we can put in the number of available units that means we have that stock at home or at our warehouse so that is a quick way to see okay this is fbm this is obviously an fba listing because we can't put the quantity in there amazon will tell us what's available in their warehouse so that's just a quick way you can tell fbm from fba but here if you're converting fbm to fba go to that fbm listing click the edit drop down and then you're going to click change to fulfilled by amazon and pro tip number two here is that you can see if you click the drop down you can also copy listing and so what some sellers choose to do is they copy the fbm listing so now they have two fbm listings and then they change the duplicate one to fba just like we went through now in that way for the same asin for the same listing you have two fulfillment channels fbm over here which you can fulfill from your house or warehouse and fba over here of course which you send inventory to amazon for and the reason some choose to do that is they like to have the fbm option as well as perhaps backup or sending additional units to customers or compensating disgruntled customers etc but now you have your active fba listing and that's where you need to be for this part of the process so another question sellers often ask is how does amazon know which listing i'm sending inventory for like how is this all connected or even once my listing's live if a customer buys from my listing how does amazon know which unit to send them and this all comes down to codes so we're going to move on to step two here is to download the fnsku so there is one code that you can download from your fba listing before even getting to the shipping plan stage and that is the fnsku which stands for fulfillment network stock keeping unit and if we break that down a little bit fulfillment network really just means fba so in other words this is just an fba sku it's just an fba stock keeping unit so let's jump on screen i'll show you exactly how you can get that fn sku nice and early so you can send it on to your supplier and well before even starting the shipping plan so even before you create that shipping plan you can actually come to your listing and you can click the drop down and you can click on print item labels and when you do this you can see it opens up this page where you can print item labels and this is instantly going to give you that fnsku which is going to physically go on to this product and remember that physically links it to your digital listing to your asin so this is a quick way you can get it ahead of time so that you can have your supplier manufacturer apply these physically to your products during manufacturing they don't have to do this after manufacturing so this is a good way to save time but you can also get this code during the creation of the shipping plan which i will show you so the fnsku identifies every unique fba item so every single unique item in the fba warehouses has an fnsku physically affixed to it and asins are linked to those fnskus and so when i say the word asin i want you to think digital listing online listing and when i say the word fnsku i want you to think of a unique physical product fnsku physical product acen digital listing and so in this way every digital listing is linked to unique physical products through these codes every asin is linked to certain fnskus and that is exactly how amazon knows which listing you're sending products for and it's also how amazon knows if a customer buys from your listing your asin they know which physical products which fnsk use to send out to that customer and so that's how the whole system is linked asins or listings hold certain fnskus which are physically on those products and that's why it's so important you have your fnsku on all of your units it goes on every single individual unit step three is to send the fnsku to your supplier so because this code needs to go on every individual unit it's really beneficial if you get this to them during manufacturing rather than getting it to your supplier once they've manufactured now they have to go through every unit and do it one by one if they can do it during the manufacturing process it usually speeds it up a lot another thing some sellers do is they actually work the fnsku into the package design so say you have like a customized packaging box with all your marketing material on it you can actually have the fn sku worked into that package design if you wish if you don't want it to be like a sticker on the polybag etc you can actually have it on the packaging design so long as it remains visible for scanning as soon as it arrives at the warehouse now another note here if you don't want to download it early as we went through you can also get the fnsku during the shipping plan stage so it's not a problem if you haven't done it yet or if you're ready at the shipping plan stage you can just download it during the shipping plan and then send it on to your supplier now pro tip 2 here because we're talking about before actually shipping the products and doing things early is to also ask your supplier can they equally pack your shipment so can they case pack your shipment which really means can you pack the same number of individual units into our big carton boxes and you put the same number of the same nature of units in those boxes so let's say we're sending our wood carving kits into amazon we could ask our supplier could you please pack the same number of units in every big cardboard box in this way we can have a case pack shipment because we have the same nature of units in every box and we have the same number of those units in each box and so when we ask him to put the same number of the same nature of goods in each box we're essentially saying same fnskus in this box and same number of those fnskus and in this way later we're going to be able to create a case packed shipping plan on amazon which in my opinion is a favorable shipping approach but this is totally not needed if you can't make that happen don't worry but it is something you may as well try and do now you are going to hear a lot of different terms like cartons cases etc but it's actually really simple the big cardboard box that holds your individual units that is always called a carton except when you have the same number of the same fnskus in each of those cartons when that happens amazon calls that carton a case so that's the only time but they're the same exact thing really just when it's the same nature of the same number of units it's called a case rather than a carton now the reason you'd want to do a case packed shipment is because it has faster receivable at amazon's warehouse instead of opening every single carton amazon actually looks at the first case and they say okay this is a case-packed shipment so we open the first box we scan one fnsku and we know okay there's another 49 in there there's 50 here and then we have another 10 boxes so we have 500 of this exact fnsku this exact nature product so that's why it's a little bit faster so obviously really beneficial for your simpler shipments where you're sending one type of unit or even if you're doing let's say two variations you could just do two case packed shipments in the same way but then if you do have a more complex shipment or with all different units or perhaps you're testing like 10 different products then of course you want to use individual products it's going to be much harder to case pack there's nothing wrong with that and we'll jump into that in a moment step number four is to get the shipment details so at some point your supply is actually going to complete manufacturing and at this point you need to get your products from them to the amazon fba warehouse but before you start that shipping plan which is going to be that connection you want to get a couple details from them and it's really seven pieces of information you want to get from your supplier slash freight forwarder in some cases number one is the number of cartons the big cardboard boxes number two especially if you're doing case pack but in all cases really is the number of units in each of those cartons number three is the weight of those cartons four is the size of those cartons five is the shipping company or shipping line are you using ups are you using tnt fedex etc six is the ship from address very often your suppliers address their manufacturing plant address and seven is the estimate ship date the least important but it's good to just have that i've seen that being asked for in shipping plans now and step number five is to create the shipping plan so once we have all of those details we can actually initiate the shipping plan and here's what you wanna do once you're in the manage inventory page you're just gonna go to the product which you want to send inventory for now remember you may have closed this listing if you ran out of inventory and you're trying to preserve ranking then you're going to see re-list here and this is not going to matter so long as there are not stranded units something that can happen is if you close the listing now you have units come back into stock let's just say they were units that were being tested by the warehouse or units that were returned by customers and so this number goes up in available and what happens then is those units are stranded because your listing is closed you closed it so in that case you will have to reopen the listing just for this duration of creating the shipping plan to be able to send replenish you can see here that has not happened we're still on zero so even if closed you're going to be able to do this as long as you don't have stranded units you're going to hit the edit drop down and then send replenish inventory so you can see on this page here we have the ship from address this is going to actually be your manufacturer's address or your supplier's address so here you can see we have individual products selected because here we can change to case packed these are the only two ways you can ship to amazon individual products as we're on here allows you to send in units in any configuration so if you have 70 units in one carton 50 in another etc you can use individual products really easily it's also very effective if you're sending different skus so maybe you have a red version and a blue version and a green version individual products is going to be the way additionally that's going to be good for different products all being sent in one shipment but we can also change to case packed so if you do continue with individual products later in the shipping plan you are going to specify the number of units in different cartons the different skus etc but in the case where you make sure that each carton has the same number of the same type of units you can use case packed shipments so we're going to change the case pack so you can see how this looks you can see it's a little bit different here we have to input the units per case because remember they have to all be the same so every one of our cartons in this case is going to hold 50 units so we're going to put that in there so the big cardboard box holds 50 individual units and then here number of cases so how many of those big cardboard boxes are we sending well in this case we're actually sending 10 and so of course 50 in each big cardboard box that's 500 units in this shipment so that's accurate and you're gonna see the total units over here so once you've selected that you can click on continue so at the top here you can once again see that we are on case packed and there is one sku in here one stock keeping unit because it's a case packed shipment all the same so over here we now have to choose who prepares this shipment this is who applies the fnsku to your product remember the upc doesn't have to go on the product but the fn sku has to physically go on to that product so you can have amazon do that at a fee for you or you or your manufacturer can do that if you or your manufacturer do it you're gonna select seller over here seller applies all labels seller prepares everything then there's also prep guidance which you do have to select and you're gonna click choose category and then from the drop down you can choose whether your product is fragile or glass maybe it's a baby product an adult product etc here we have no prep there's no prep needed on this it's not a specific or special product so select that and click choose so at this point it's again going to tell us it's a total of 500 units there's no preparation cost because we're not having amazon prepare the units with fnsk use etc we are doing that and we can click continue so over here again it just tells us who's labeling it's of course us the seller or our supplier remember amazon doesn't care if it's you or your supplier just that you are having that done so that's what you're going to select here and then here this is the second place where you can get the fnsku remember you are labeling or your supplier is labeling so you need those codes if you didn't download them from the listing earlier remember from edit print item labels under manage inventory if you didn't do that you can also get them here you click print labels for this page it's going to download and you're going to be able to send those on to your supplier to affix to the products remember if it's all the same sku it's one product then this label is going to be exactly the same on every one of those units something i always do as well is i note down the size amazon recommends here and i also send that through to the supplier now in this case i know my supplier already has the labels for this product so i'm not going to send it to them again remember your fnsku is linked to your asin so that's never going to change unless you put that product onto like a new listing this is not a label that's going to change but it is good practice to keep sending this to your supplier just to make sure and once we click on continue you can see you can name your shipment here and i do recommend you name this name it your product's name the amount you sent and the date that way you're going to be able to see okay this was this shipment just to make it easier for you because this is a lot more difficult to read or understand when you go back to it here we can see it's one sku 10 cases 500 units and this is going to be shipped to coventry in the uk so we already know which warehouse this is going to be going to but don't send them this yet we'll get the full address in a next step and we can approve shipments so here we see a summary this is your fba shipment id just under here and you want to also send this on to your supplier we've now created the shipping plan so we can click on work on shipment now at the top here again you can see the fba id over here i recommend you send that to your supplier also here is the ship 2 address just below here send them this exactly like this as well so they know exactly where this is going to be shipped to if you're using a freight forwarder send this to your freight forwarder this is exactly the warehouse where your goods need to go to then just down here you can see small parcel delivery i'm shipping individual boxes or less than truckload i'm shipping pallets so in this case we're gonna go with spd we're shipping those individual cartons or cases and we're going to be using ups in this case remember we asked our supplier for that so you can just find the service that you're using and select that and moving to step three here how will the shipment be packed well it's not all in one box it's multiple boxes so that's good i like to use the web form over here you can see it's really easy units per box while we know it's 50 in that configuration the number of boxes is 10 that gives us 500 units each one weighs 15 kilograms remember we got this info from our supplier and each of the boxes measure 45 by 35 by 46 centimeters again we got this from the supplier now we can confirm and this is the next label you're going to have to print this does not go on the individual units this goes on the big cardboard boxes your cases or cartons if you're doing individual products okay it goes on the big boxes again i would note the size here and send this to them and then what you're going to do is print box labels that's going to download and you want to send this to the supplier as well one note on this this is not the same on every box in this case we have 10 boxes this will be 10 unique labels so box one needs label one box two needs label two it's very important it's placed onto the boxes like that and that they don't just put say label one on all of them these are unique labels and you will have the same number of labels as you have boxes and once we've done that we're going to click on complete shipment once you've completed the shipment you will see here the number of boxes that you're sending and each has an area where you can fill in a tracking number and step number six is to manage and track these shipments so here's how you want to do this this tracking number may not be available yet it might be available as soon as your goods ship but it is also often the case that it's not available until you get those goods to the destination port so if you're shipping from china to the us only once it actually arrives in the us can you get these tracking numbers in a lot of instances so just keep that in mind it's not a major problem but input these when you do get them and remember your supplier or your freight forwarder is going to give you these once you do put them in here just click on save all now something you're going to do even before the tracking numbers is as soon as your supplier or freight forwarder tells you they have actually shipped the goods you are going to mark as shipped with this button over here so i also want to show you how you can work on multiple shipments or get back to the screen if you need but you can see here return to shipping queue so here you can see a whole lot of shipments and this one is ready to ship here's the status of all of these then here tracking id is missing of course because we have not put those in just yet but this page is really easy to get to you can simply go inventory manage fba shipments and you can see that brings us to the exact same page so very easy and then right over here you can work on the shipment you can either click on the title or you can say track shipment over here and you can see it brings us straight back to the screen that we were on and track shipments just next to this here's shipment events which is brand new by the way but here track shipment you can drop those in when you're ready then save all you would have already marked as shut as soon as that gets shipped and then your inventory is ready to be received by amazon and so once you've done all of that you're really waiting for amazon to email you and say your freight forwarder has checked in their trailer and we're busy receiving your units and at that time when the units are being received the available inventory on that listing is going to increase and when this gets to a reasonable number is when you want to reopen that listing so say this gets to like 30 40 units then we're gonna re-list this listing it's ready to sell again and that way we decrease out of stock time as well and pro tip number three here i think is if you get multiple warehouses so amazon says you're going to be sending to dallas and also to california and also to new york or something like that that's going to really split up your shipment now you have to have your supply of freight forwarder shipped to three different places in like three different batches really expensive and just really a mission so what you can do is what i like to do is simply delete the shipping plan and try again and usually by at least the third time and it really doesn't take much time you're gonna get a single warehouse you can ship to but there is another option if you're really struggling with it you can come into your settings in seller central come down to fulfillment by amazon and then on this page you can see inventory placement option you can click on learn more here you can see mine is on default on this account but here you can actually pay a small per item service fee and it will always give you one warehouse to ship to and then from there amazon will split it up across the country so if you're really having an issue with it which i i don't think you should be but if you are that is another option for you and happy selling if you guys enjoyed this please give me a like below i really really appreciate that and thank you guys for all the support lately please drop a comment below what is your biggest shipping gripe i'd love to hear and i do read all the comments so drop them below if you have future content suggestions also drop those below i do interact a lot there and i love hearing from you guys in fact your comments led to the creation of this little shipping series the last video we did was also on shipping i'll link to that up here for you as well but as always i hope you guys are making some very good progress drop any questions below and i will see you in the next video you

Channel: Dan Rodgers

Views: 72,292

Keywords: shipping plan on amazon, shipping plan amazon fba, shipping plan amazon fba 2020, shipping plan amazon fba step by step, shipping plan amazon fba 2021, shipping to amazon fba 2021, shipping to amazon fba 2020, fba amazon shipping, amazon fba shipping tutorial, how to create an amazon fba shipping plan, how to ship to amazon fba, fba shipment process, how to create an amazon shipment, fba shipment, how to ship to amazon fba step by step, Shipping directly to amazon fba from china

Id: TH0h7kU_FxE

Length: 24min 57sec (1497 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 23 2020