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This article applies to selling in: United States

FBA Inventory Placement Service

By default, when you create a shipping plan, your shipment may be divided into multiple shipments, each directed to a different receive center or fulfillment center (referred to as distributed inventory placement). The fulfillment centers are selected based on the products you're shipping and where you are shipping from. By having your inventory spread across multiple fulfillment centers across the country, customers who buy your product may receive it faster than they would if your inventory was located farther away.

To better spread your products, Amazon may route your shipment through a receive center, which receives units and then reships them to other fulfillment centers in our network. Your products are available for sale as soon as we successfully receive them at any of our receive centers or fulfillment centers. Units that are being reshipped to other fulfillment centers are available for customers to buy, but customers may be shown a future ship date if no other units are available for immediate fulfillment.

You can choose to sign up for the Inventory Placement Service and send all of your eligible inventory to a single receive center or fulfillment center (see the Inventory placement exceptions section below). When the shipment arrives, it is split up and sent to different fulfillment centers for you. A per-item service fee applies for the Inventory Placement Service.

When you use the Inventory Placement Service, the destination receive center or fulfillment center is determined by Amazon. You cannot choose the receive center or fulfillment center to which you send your shipment. The destination chosen by Amazon may vary from shipment to shipment.

Inventory placement settings

To change your inventory placement settings:

  1. Under Settings, click Fulfillment by Amazon.
  2. Under Inbound Settings, click Edit.
  3. Under Inventory Placement Option, click Inventory Placement Service.
  4. Click Update.

Tip: Any in-progress shipments are not affected when you change your inventory placement option. The new setting applies only to shipments created after you update your settings. In order to apply this change to your current shipment, delete the shipping plan and then recreate it after you change your settings. To quickly recreate your shipping plan, in Shipping Queue, select Deleted/canceled, and then click the shipping plan that you want. On Send/Replenish Inventory page, at the bottom left, click Duplicate.

Inventory placement exceptions

If you sign up for the Inventory Placement Service, most of your standard-size items will be directed to a single receive center or fulfillment center. However, items in the following categories may be directed to a different receive center or fulfillment center even if you use the Inventory Placement Service:

  • Apparel
  • Jewelry
  • Shoes
  • Media
  • Commingled inventory
  • Oversize items
  • Amazon prep required
  • Amazon labeling required
  • Hazardous materials

Tip: When you add products to a shipment one at a time from your inventory list, the destination fulfillment center is reevaluated every time. For best results, choose all of the items that you want to include in a shipment at the same time from the Manage Inventory page, and then select Send/replenish inventory from the Actions on menu.

Inventory Placement Service fees

Standard size (per item)
1 lb or less $0.30
1-2 lb $0.40
Over 2 lb $0.40 + $0.10/lb above the first 2 lb
Oversize (per item)
5 lb or less $1.30
Over 5 lb $1.30 + $0.20/lb above the first 5 lb
Note: The weight used to calculate the per-item fee is the dimensional weight or unit weight (whichever is greater) for large standard-size non-media items weighing more than 1 lb and for all small, medium, and large oversize units. The unit weight is the weight of an individual item. The dimensional weight is the volume (based on length * width * height in inches) divided by 139.

Your participation in this service is subject to the Inventory Placement Service Terms and Conditions.

Case-packed products

Case packs refer to individually sellable units that are packaged together. To create a shipment based on case packs, choose Case-packed products under Packing type during the initial shipment creation step. You will then be able to enter the number of cases and units per case for each SKU in the shipment.

Note: FBA supports two packing types: 1) Individual Products and 2) Case-packed products. Select Individual products if your shipment consist of individual items with different SKUs and in different conditions. Select Case-packed products if your shipment consist of cases previously packaged by the manufacturer that contain identical items with matching SKUs in the same condition. Each case must contain the same number of items.

Amazon’s placement system will generally respect case packs and not require you to break a case pack into separate shipments.

Note the following rules for case-packed products:

  • All products in a box will have a matching SKU and condition and will have been previously packaged together by the manufacturer.
  • All boxes with the same product will contain equal quantities of that product in each box. For example, a case pack of 24 units must always contain 24 units.
  • The case pack limit is 150 units per case.
  • While receiving this type of shipment, the fulfillment center scans one unit from the box and the box is placed in inventory. There is no need to scan every unit because they are all the same.
  • In some cases, a manufacturer or distributor may package more than one case-pack into a larger box called a master carton. Master cartons do not qualify as a case-pack and must be split at the appropriate case-pack level.

Important: When sending individually sellable units in a case pack, you must remove or cover any scannable barcode on the case itself. Only the individual items inside the case should have scannable barcodes.
Note: A case pack is not the same as a multi-pack. Case packs are intended to be split and the contents sold individually. Multi-packs are sold as bundles or sets. A case pack may be sold as a multi-pack, but must be prepped according to the requirement for products sold as a set.
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