Selling on Amazon US

How To Create Fulfillment & Removal Orders in Amazon

By Harriet
Reading Time: 6 minutes

If you’re using the Amazon warehouse, there are two fundamental things you need to be able to create: Fulfillment Orders and Removal Orders.

Being able to create these orders is critical if you are:

  • Using the FBA service (when you sell on Amazon and use their fulfillment services)
  • Or selling on a different platform (like Shopify, Facebook, Etsy, etc) and are using Amazon’s warehousing & fulfillment services

So this blog post is a crash course on Amazon Fulfillment Orders and Removal Orders. We aim to answer the following questions:

  • What are Fulfillment Orders and Removal Orders in the first place?
  • What are the benefits of using the Amazon FBA service?
  • When do you use Removal Orders?
  • How much is it going to cost you?

Fulfillment By Amazon – getting your products to your customers

First off, let’s talk about Fulfillment Orders. These are done through what is called Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA). This is an amazing platform that offloads a lot of work from you, the seller. It takes all the hassle out of shipping and is one of the main reasons why sellers start on Amazon in the first place.

Basically, you gain access to Amazon’s huge logistical network to get your products to your customers. You set it up, and then Amazon handles all the logistics around shipping to your customers.

Here’s the basic concept of the FBA:

  • Sellers ship their stock to Amazon’s fulfillment centers for storage
  • Amazon receives the stock
  • Customers order your items on Amazon (or even on a different eCommerce platform!)
  • Amazon gets to work and starts packing the orders
  • Amazon ships the items to your customer

And there you go, that’s a sale! What’s great is that Amazon even provides you access to their dedicated customer service team, and even manage any possible customer returns for your items.

What’s great is that, like we mentioned above, you can have access to FBA if you sell on a different eCommerce website. It’s like having a dedicated warehouse with amazing staff at your disposal!

Benefits of Using FBA

1. You earn the trust of your customers

Working with a company like Amazon means that your customers are assured of great service. Amazon is known for really speedy and hassle-free deliveries, and you are essentially tying your brand to them. This translates to earning the trust of your customers, because they know that you are working with a dependable logistics partner.

2. You provide excellent Customer Service (by using Amazon’s)

Transactions through FBA will have access to Amazon’s top-notch Customer Service. This gives your customers access to their representatives 24/7. This is assurance on both the customer and yourself that the transaction will go smoothly, and that you have a whole team keeping an eye on your order.

3. Hassle-free and reliable shipping

Shipping is hard. You have to consider a ton of factors – and all of these add up not just to time spent for you, but money spent as well. The thing is, despite all of this, customers expect quick, reliable, and free shipping nowadays. Doing this yourself, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing, will shrink your margins and dilute your focus. Let the pros handle it, and focus on more important parts of your business.

4. You can win the Amazon Buy Box

The Amazon Buy Box is a huge deal on the site, as it guarantees to win you more sales. Winning this means that people who look for an item gets to add your item to their cart first. The thing with Amazon is that they recommend sellers who can guarantee free and fast shipping – and of course, that’s where the FBA comes in. It’s understandable because it’s a way for the site to preserve the quality of the user experience. Essentially, this means that Amazon gives you the preferential treatment, and helps you get those sales.

So, how do you create Fulfillment Orders in Amazon?

First off, you will need a seller account, and you will need to ship your items to an Amazon Fulfillment Center. Check out our other resources like this one, or Amazon’s own website to help get you started.

Once you’ve set up the FBA and shipped your products to Amazon, you ready to get those orders!

One thing to note: like we mentioned, you can use this for orders on your other eCommerce platforms as well. You don’t need to have your item listed on Amazon’s website to use their FBA service.

Here’s a quick step-by-step on how to do Fulfillment Orders on the Amazon Seller Center Account:

  1. Log-in to Amazon Seller Center Account
  2. Go to Inventory Tab
  3. Click Manage FBA Inventory
  4. From there, click the product you want to send out via Fulfillment Order
  5. Click the drop down – Action on 1 selected
  6. From the drop down, click Create fulfillment order
  7. Fill out shipping details
    • You can set an Order ID if you have a unique one (or Amazon will auto-generate it for you)
    • You can even add comments that would appear on the shipment’s Packing Slip
  8. Fill out details on how and when to ship it
    • You can ship it immediately, or hold it for up to 2 weeks
    • You can choose shipping speed: Standard, Two-day, One-day (note: of course the faster you ship, the more expensive it is. There’s also no Amazon Prime Shipping in the options here)
  9. Review summary before Placing Order
    • Estimated Fees – note that if you’re selling on a different platform, you will only be charged the Pick and Pack Fee. If you’re sending out an order via FBA, you do not have to pay Amazon the 15% referral fee. That’s 15% of your selling price that they take when they refer or sell the product for you. Fulfillment Orders will save you a little bit of money.
  10. Click Place Order – you will get a Success Screen, showing your summary and all the details of your shipment.
  11. The shipment will show up on the Manage Order Tab in your Amazon Seller Account.

How much will it cost me?

The cost of each shipment will be reflected right before you place your order. However, if you want to do some pre-calculations yourself, you’re gonna have to do a little more research.

Calculating the fees can be a somewhat complicated process. You need to consider Amazon’s Fulfillment Fee, as well as the Inventory Storage Fees.

This is a lengthy conversation and it’s too tough to get into the details in this article, but here’s a list of links to get you started (these are Amazon links, so make sure you log in to your Seller Account to access them):

Amazon Removal Orders – i.e. Getting your products back to you

Now that you have the basics for the Amazon Fulfillment Orders, let’s now get into Removal Orders. This is an important part of managing your inventory with Amazon, and you need to know when and why you need to do it.

Sometimes you will need to have an item returned to you. That’s where the Amazon FBA Removal Order Comes in. To retrieve your stock from Amazon’s fulfillment orders, you need to submit an FBA Removal Order via the Seller Central. Note that you also have to pay a removal fee for each item you’re withdrawing.

Item removals should be done due to a variety of reasons.

  • For example, maybe an item is not selling that much, and it’s just sitting there in the Amazon warehouse. Maybe you need to reconsider that item and get it back before you incur Amazon’s long term storage fees (for items in their warehouse for more than 12 months).
  • Or maybe there are items that have poor reviews or high customer returns. This could be because something is wrong with the item, and you need to pull that out fast before more defective items reach the market.

Amazon explains that removal orders shouldn’t be used to send stocks to your customers, or as gifts. The primary purpose of it is to return your inventory to you. Whatever the reason, it’s good to note that you have the option for item removals at your disposal.

How do you create Removal Orders?

Removal Orders are done completely via Seller Central. Here’s a quick step by step on how to do them:

  1. Log in to your account
  2. Click on “Inventory”, and then “Manage Inventory”
  3. Search for the item you want to remove.
  4. Click the “Edit” button at the far right of the item listing
  5. Select “Create removal order”. This will take you to a removal screen
  6. Enter the correct quantities for the removal, and proceed by clicking “Continue”
  7. Review and confirm the removal. Make sure to check the “Method of removal” to ensure that it says “Ship-to-address” instead of “Dispose”*.
  8. Click the “Place Order” button, and then you are done!

* Choosing dispose means that Amazon will destroy your items for you, and will charge you for the fee of doing so.

This is the basic process. You can also remove some items based on Amazon’s Recommended Removal Report, an automatic report that they do to help you manage your inventory. Check out this article from Amazon Seller Central for more details on the whole process.

How much will it cost me?

As mentioned, Amazon charges fees for item removals and disposals. The fee depends on the quantity and size of your items. Roughly, you can expect around £0.25 (or $0.25 in the US) – £0.50 (or $0.40 in the US)++ per unit for the standard size (up to 1,000 grams), and around £0.50 ($0.60) – £3.00 ($1.90)++ per item for oversized items (up to 5,000 grams).

Check out these links from Amazon for the full details:

***
Hopefully, this crash course on Fulfillment Orders and Removal Orders helped explain two very important concepts in Amazon Selling. We know there’s quite a lot to wrap your head around, but it gets easier with time and experience. It’s actually quite intuitive, as you’ll see when you actually do the Fulfillment and Removal Orders yourself.

At the end of the day, the benefit of learning all of these and going through the Amazon system is to make Amazon work for you. That way, you can focus on the other important stuff – selling, improving your product, or developing even more products.

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