We’re getting closer that inevitable day, when Amazon Canada will make it mandatory for you and your prep company to box content details for your Canadian-bound Amazon FBA Inbound Shipments. For most of you who are shipping to Amazon in the U.S,, this is old hat for you, but if you don’t work on Amazon.com yet this will be new to you.
What does this mean for me and my shipments?
Currently, Amazon.com expects you to upload box content details by a spreadsheet, using specialized encoded bar codes, or by system data feeds by the back-end technical APIs (application programming interfaces).
Some software providers that you may be using in Amazon.com already support this. Most of those solutions do not automatically support Amazon.ca and therefore if you send products to Amazon.ca you need to start thinking about how you will deal with this going forward.
When you don’t include those details for Amazon.com, they will assess a per-unit fee that you will need to pay. In extreme cases, Amazon may begin to reduce inbound shipment privileges. While we haven’t heard of this occurring often, we have heard of cases where inbound shipment performance metrics were affected and only really discovered when other issues with an account resulted in a suspension or termination of inbound shipping privileges. Even if Amazon just charges a fee, the bigger problem is that it adds a delay in receiving your goods into active inventory. Even one day of lost potential revenue is unwelcome.
For Amazon.ca, it is optional right now. But Amazon has warned that this will be likely to come in 2020. So, the clock is ticking.
And, with the heightened awareness of the Amazon FBA strains we all saw during the COVID-19 pandemic response, we also have to consider that this would be more likely to be mandatory sooner rather than later.
So, what do I do about this?
You’re in luck with arbinon.com, because arbinon.com supports box level content feeds for both Amazon.ca and Amazon.com (and also Amazon.com.mx)!
Maybe now is a great time to explore a different system that can handle your FBA Inbound Shipment Creation for both marketplaces seamlessly.
Act now to get into our Preview Program and see for yourself. You can self-nominate on our new website.