Creating FBA Shipment Plans in Seller Central
What You’ll Learn
You’ll master the process of creating and managing FBA shipment plans directly in Seller Central, which is the critical first step in getting your inventory to Amazon warehouses. Understanding this workflow ensures your products are properly documented, routed to the correct fulfillment centers, and tracked from the moment they enter the Amazon system.
Key Concepts
Creating an FBA shipment plan involves navigating Seller Central’s Inventory menu, selecting products from your catalog, specifying quantities, and allowing Amazon’s system to automatically distribute your inventory across multiple fulfillment centers for optimal delivery speed. This process is essential because Amazon uses sophisticated algorithms to determine which warehouses receive your products based on historical sales velocity, customer location data, and regional demand patterns. Each shipment plan generates a unique shipment ID and detailed packing requirements that you must follow precisely to avoid receiving errors or fees.
- Accessing the Shipment Plan Creation Tool: Log into Seller Central, navigate to Inventory > Send/Replenish Inventory, and click “Send inventory” to initiate the FBA shipping workflow. This interface displays all active SKUs in your catalog and allows batch selection of products to ship simultaneously.
- Selecting Products and Quantities: Choose the products you want to ship and enter the exact quantity of units for each SKU, ensuring your physical inventory matches these numbers precisely. Amazon will warn you if you attempt to ship quantities exceeding your current inventory levels.
- Amazon’s Fulfillment Network Routing: After you select products and quantities, Amazon’s system automatically calculates the optimal split across its fulfillment centers—you cannot manually choose specific warehouses, but you can see the proposed distribution. This automatic routing typically divides shipments between 2-4 fulfillment centers based on geographical demand and inventory balance.
- Shipment Plan Review and Confirmation: Before finalizing, review the complete shipment plan showing destination warehouses, quantities per location, and expected arrival dates. You must confirm and accept the plan, which generates shipping labels and detailed packing instructions specific to each destination warehouse.
Practical Application
Today, log into your Seller Central account and navigate to the Send/Replenish Inventory section, selecting 3-5 products from your catalog and creating an actual shipment plan to review the warehouse distribution Amazon recommends. Document the shipment ID, destination warehouses, and quantities for each location—this information becomes your reference guide for the physical packing and shipping process that follows.