Tutorial: Ship Inventory to Amazon Fulfillment Centers in India

This tutorial describes how to ship inventory to Amazon fulfillment centers (FCs) in India.

Prerequisites

To complete this tutorial, you need:

• Authorization from the selling partner for whom you are making calls. For more information, refer to Authorizing Selling Partner API applications.
• Approval for the Amazon Fulfillment role and the Product Listing role in your developer profile.
• Amazon Fulfillment role and Product Listing role selected in the App registration page for your application.
• Listings that have been created.
• Knowledge of whether your items are eligible for shipment to Amazon's fulfillment network.

Workflow

The following table outlines the steps to ship inventory to Amazon's fulfillment network. This table is an illustrative example and does not include all of the optional operations.

Step 1. Create an inbound plan

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Note

You must update compliance details for each item you include in an inbound plan. You only need to update compliance details once per item and you do not need to update compliance details for every inbound plan.

Create an inbound plan by calling the asynchronous createInboundPlan operation. An inbound plan represents a collection of inbound shipments that contain items that you intend to inbound into Amazon’s fulfillment network.

When calling the createInboundPlan operation, you must specify:

• The originating address for the shipment
• The destination marketplace for the shipment
• A summary of the items the seller intends to inbound

The item summary must include the MSKU, quantity, who prepares the item (Amazon, the seller, or neither), and who labels the item (Amazon, the seller, or neither).

Make sure each item you ship meets Amazon's product packaging requirements. For packing requirements, refer to Packaging and Prep Requirements in Seller Central Help. You can retrieve and set prep categories for SKUs using the listPrepDetails and setPrepDetails operations. For more information, refer to Retrieve preparation instructions for an MSKU

A successful response includes an inboundPlanId, which is a unique identifier for the inbound plan. The inboundPlanId is equivalent to the workflow ID used in Send to Amazon, the shipment creation workflow on Seller Central.

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Note

The createInboundPlan operation generates initial shipment IDs for the shipments within each inbound plan. These IDs are different from the shipmentConfirmationIDs that are generated with the confirmPlacementOption operation. The shipmentConfirmationID is the identifier that appears on labels (for example, FBA1234ABCD). Both of these types of shipment IDs can be retrieved with the getShipment operation.

Check the status of an inbound request by calling the getInboundOperationStatus operation. A successful response includes the status of the request and can include a list of errors associated with the request.

Step 2. Generate and view placement options for destination fulfillment centers

Generate and view placement options for an inbound plan by calling the following operations:

• generatePlacementOptions
  • In the India marketplace, an inbound shipment is inbounded to a specific Amazon FC. To generate placement options for that particular FC, use the customPlacement body parameter in the API call. This parameter specifies which item and quantity combination from your initial inbound plan is shipped to which FC. Where your business is registered determines your fulfillment center eligibility. You can also retrieve eligible FC codes from your Seller Central account.
  • Check the status of your request with getInboundOperationStatus.
• listPlacementOptions
  • The placementOptions object in the listPlacementOptions response contains the set of available placement options for an inbound plan, where each placement option describes shipping options for each item in your inbound plan for the chosen destination fulfillment center.
  • When a placement option expires, you must regenerate placement options by calling generatePlacementOption. placementOptionId is required to generate transportation options with generateTransportationOptions, whereas shipment IDs are used to determine the contents of each shipment using the getShipment operation.
• generateTransportationOptions
  • The quantity of SKUs you provide in the request must match the quantity in the createInboundPlan request.
  • Check the status of your request with getInboundOperationStatus.

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Important

Sellers cannot provide packing information using Send to Amazon (on Seller Central) after confirming placement options. Sellers are not able to access API-created shipments on Send to Amazon during this step.

Step 3. Provide packing information

Determine the items to pack into each box by calling setPackingInformation. You must provide the following information for boxes you intend to inbound:

• The shipment ID of the confirmed placement option of each shipment
• The source of box content information
• Box information (dimensions, weight, and quantity of boxes)

A successful response includes an operationId that you can use to determine the status of the operation with getInboundOperationStatus.

Step 4. Confirm placement options

Select a shipping option by calling confirmPlacementOption. In the India marketplace, you must set packing information for all shipment IDs in an inbound plan before you call confirmPlacementOption. This operation selects the placement option for an inbound plan and creates confirmed shipment IDs for shipments in the inbound plan. To call confirmPlacementOption, you must pass the inbound plan ID and the selected placement option ID. This selection cannot be reversed. A successful response includes an operationId that you can use to determine the status of the operation with getInboundOperationStatus.

The shipmentConfirmationID is the shipment identifier that appears on labels (for example, FBA1234ABCD). This ID differs from the initial shipment ID generated by createInboundPlan.

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Note

The confirmPlacementOption response only includes quotes for transportation options that are associated with Partnered Carrier Program shipments.

You can review details related to the contents of a shipment in an inbound plan with the getShipment operation. getShipment requires the inbound plan ID and shipment ID. A successful response includes the following information:

• Placement option ID
• Shipment confirmed ID (the ID that shows up on labels created when you call confirmPlacementOption)
• Shipment ID (the identifier for a shipment prior to calling confirmPlacementOption)
• Amazon reference ID (identifier for scheduling fulfillment center appointments for truck deliveries)
• Selected transportation option ID
• Name
• Source
• Destination FC
• Ship date
• Estimated delivery date
• Status
• Tracking details
• Pallet information
• Contact information
• Destination region
• FC appointment details

Step 5. Generate transportation options for your inbound shipment

Generate transportation options by calling generateTransportationOptions. A transportation option is the available shipping modes and carrier options that are available for each shipment within each placement option. A successful response includes an operationId that you can use to determine the status of the operation with getInboundOperationStatus.

Review shipment and transportation options by calling the listTransportationOptions and getShipment operations.

In the request to listTransportationOptions, you must include the placement option ID and shipment ID for which you want to view transportation options.

A successful response includes all available transportation quotes for all available ship modes and carrier options. Shipping modes include:

• Ground small parcel
• Less-than-truckload freight
• Full truckload freight (palletized)
• Full truckload freight (non-palletized)
• Less than container load ocean
• Full container load ocean
• Air small parcel
• Air small parcel express

Carrier options include Amazon-partnered and non-partnered carriers. Quotes include:

• The cost
• A void window (the time during which a seller can cancel a shipment and receive a refund for their transportation quote)
• An expiration

In regions where fulfillment center appointments are mandatory, such as India, appointment slots are also provided.

Where the Partnered Carrier Program is available, sellers can take advantage of discounted rates by using an Amazon-partnered carrier for their inbound shipments. To use an Amazon-partnered carrier for an inbound shipment, select the transportation option where shippingSolution is AMAZON_PARTNERED_CARRIER. If a seller doesn't want to participate in the Partnered Carrier Program, they can choose the USE_YOUR_OWN_CARRIER transportation option.

After you call listTransportationOptions, you can review the details related to the contents of a shipment in an inbound plan using getShipment.

Step 6. Select transportation options

Select transportation options for each shipment in an inbound plan using confirmTransportationOptions. For Amazon-partnered transportation options, calling this operation confirms that the seller:

• Accepts the Amazon-partnered shipping estimate
• Agrees to allow Amazon to charge their account for the shipping cost
• Requests that the Amazon-partnered carrier ship the inbound shipment

You must confirm a placement option for your inbound plan before you call this operation.

To call confirmTransportationOptions, you must pass:

• The shipment ID
• Selected transportation option ID
• Contact information (needed for partnered carriers for Less Than Truckload (LTL) shipments)
• An estimated delivery date

A successful response includes an operationId that you can use to determine the status of the operation with getInboundOperationStatus.

After you confirm a transportation option, you cannot generate or confirm new transportation options for an inbound plan.

After you call confirmTransportationOptions, you can review the details related to the contents of a shipment in an inbound plan using getShipment.

Step 7. Generate appointment slots (self-ship only)

Amazon allows sellers to self-ship inventory to Amazon warehouses through their own transportation means or through third-party logistics providers. If they have decided to self-ship inventory to Amazon FCs, you can follow this step and the next step to generate available inbound slots at the specific FC, and view and schedule an appointment during which the inventory can be inbound into the FC.

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Note

Call getShipment to check if the amazonReferenceId for a shipment exists before you generate self-ship appointment slots.

Call generateSelfShipAppointmentSlots to generate appointments at the required FC from the inbound plan. You must provide the inboundPlanID and the shipmentId to generate self-ship slots. By default, a request without start or end dates returns available appointment slots for the next 42 days.

A successful response includes an operationId that you can use to determine the status of the operation with getInboundOperationStatus.

Step 8. View and schedule appointment slots (self-ship only)

View the list of available slots by calling getSelfShipAppointmentSlots with the inboundPlanId and the shipmentId, then schedule a slot by calling scheduleSelfShipAppointment with the inboundPlanId, shipmentId, slotId.

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Additional functionality

The Fulfillment Inbound API includes the following functionality not detailed in this guide: