ShipStation 101: FBA, Amazon, & ShipStation
Welcome one, welcome all! ShipStation 101 is in session this beautiful June morning and today, we’re discussing the relationship between FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon), Amazon, and ShipStation.
ShipStation integrates with FBA, FBA UK, and FBA CA, along with a bunch of Amazon marketplaces (CA, DE, ES, FR, IT, & UK). But we don’t actually recommend you use ShipStation to fulfill Amazon orders with FBA. Here’s why:
First, we start at the beginning, in Amazon. Within Amazon, there are 2 types of orders: Fulfilled by Merchant & Fulfilled by Amazon. Only the orders that you intend to ship using USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc.—Fulfilled by Merchant—should be importing in to ShipStation. Orders to be Fulfilled by Amazon should be handled within Amazon directly and when an order is marked Fulfilled by Amazon, it WON’T import in to ShipStation.
If an order comes in to ShipStation from your Amazon store and you send it to FBA from within ShipStation, we’ll absolutely send all the usual information (tracking number, service, carrier) back to Amazon but here’s the kicker: Amazon will NOT accept FBA tracking information from anyone BUT FBA. That means a third-party app, like ShipStation, can send the data to Amazon, Amazon just won’t push it onto the order. Amazon recognizes the tracking number as coming from FBA and thinks to itself, ‘Since this number’s an Amazon number, it should just come directly to us from FBA.’
Just to clarify, your orders will be fulfilled and sent out if you send them through ShipStation to FBA. The order in Amazon, however, will be missing the tracking number since Amazon won’t accept an FBA tracking number from third parties.
The links above will give you instructions on how to mark orders appropriately. Once you have them all set, everything will run smoothly!
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