Shipping Settings Automation
Shipping Settings Automation is an enhanced shipping template that automatically calculates accurate delivery promises to your customers based on:
- Your warehouse location
- The customers’ locations
- Up-to-date carrier transit time for the shipping services you use
When Shipping Settings Automation is enabled, you no longer need to manually estimate transit times to deliver products; Shipping Settings Automation does it for you by setting automated transit times that reflect carrier’s actual delivery capabilities for the shipping services you already use.
Enabling Shipping Settings Automation will not push you to select faster ship methods; it will show customers more accurate delivery promises, increasing the prospects of customer purchases and the likelihood your offers be featured.
Benefits of Shipping Settings Automation
Customers like to purchase products with fast and accurate delivery dates, which requires you to accurately calculate transit time and track the delivery capabilities of the shipping services you use. This may be hard to do by yourself, and consequently many sellers choose to set unnecessarily long transit times for standard deliveries or limit fast delivery regions, which leads to promises that look less attractive to customers. Shipping Settings Automation can simplify this process, with just a few clicks. By telling us where you ship from and what shipping service you use, Amazon will apply accurate transit times using the most recent carrier delivery performance data. When using Shipping Settings Automation, you no longer need to do your own calculations or track shipping service delivery performance, and your delivery promises will be more accurate and attractive to customers.
Shipping Settings Automation currently automates transit time calculation for the following seller-fulfilled ship options:
- Standard shipping for domestic and China-based warehouses.
- Prime shipping with one and two-day delivery from domestic warehouses.
- Premium shipping with one- and two-day delivery from domestic warehouses.
Enable Shipping Settings Automation
Steps to enable Shipping Settings Automation for Self-fulfilled Non-Prime Products
- From the Settings drop-down menu on the top right of Seller Central, click Shipping Settings.
- Go to the Shipping Templates tab.
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On the Shipping Templates tab, you can enable Shipping Settings Automation on:
- New shipping templates by clicking Create New Shipping Template, entering the Shipping Template Name (for example, "My Self-fulfilled Shipping") and choosing from either Per Item/Weight-Based or Price banded as your shipping rate model.
- Existing shipping templates by choosing the existing shipping template, then clicking Edit Template on the right side of screen.
- Turn on the Shipping Settings Automation toggle.
- Select your Ship-from location, and click Next.
- Select “I want to automate my Self-fulfilled (non-Prime) shipping settings” and click Next.
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On the Standard Shipping Automation Preferences page, you can enable automated transit time for Standard Shipping by:
- Selecting the carriers and shipping services you currently use in the Carrier Preferences section.
- Managing your Standard Shipping Regions by clicking Edit in the Region Preferences section.
- Click Next.
- If you are shipping from domestic warehouses, you can enable Premium Shipping region automation for Self-fulfilled One-Day Delivery and Two-Day Delivery. Select the carriers and shipping services you use in the Carrier Preferences section on the Premium Shipping Automation Preferences page. Click Next.
- Review your shipping settings automation preferences and click Confirm.
- Review and edit shipping fee for your shipping regions.
- Click Save template.
- Assign your Self-fulfilled SKUs to the shipping template.
Steps to enable Shipping Settings Automation for Seller Fulfilled Prime Products
- From the Settings drop-down menu on the top right of Seller Central, click Shipping Settings.
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On the Shipping Templates tab you can enable Shipping Settings Automation on:
- New shipping templates by, clicking Create New Shipping Template, entering the Shipping Template Name (for example, "My Self-fulfilled Shipping") and choosing from either Per Item/Weight-Based or Price banded as your shipping rate model.
- Existing shipping templates by choosing the existing shipping template then clicking Edit Template on the right side of screen.
- Turn on the Shipping Settings Automation toggle.
- Select your Ship-from location, and click Next.
- Select “I want to automate my Seller Fulfilled Prime shipping settings” and click Next.
- Select the carrier and shipping services for Prime Two-Day and One-Day delivery.
- Select delivery zone limit if needed. Delivery zone limit can help you manage shipping costs. For example, if you select zone 8 for UPS ground for Two Day Delivery, SSA will automatically calculate which shipping regions UPS Ground can deliver to in two days from your warehouse and within the scope of UPS ground zone 8. Leave Amazon’s default value if you do not have shipping zone restrictions. Click Next.
- Review Prime Shipping Settings Automation coverage and click Confirm.
- Review and edit shipping fees for non-Prime customers. (Prime customers will receive free shipping.)
- Click Save template.
- Assign your Prime SKUs to the Prime shipping template.
Shipping Settings Automation FAQ
For Self-fulfilled Standard Shipping
1. Will Shipping Settings Automation consider changes in carriers’ delivery performance to calculate delivery time?
Amazon tracks carrier delivery performance for the carriers you use and maintains accurate transit time from your ship-from location to different customer locations.
Additionally, with Shipping Settings Automation enabled your account health is protected from negative feedbacks due to late deliveries, and we will suppress negative feedback related to late deliveries on your Shipping Settings Automation orders, as long as:
- You shipped the orders on-time
- You provided valid tracking information
- You used the same (or faster) shipping service than what was used by Shipping Settings Automation used to calculate delivery promise, which can be seen on the Order Detail page and the Order API.
2. What are the order fulfillment requirements for Shipping Settings Automation orders?
You are expected to use one of the shipping services you enabled on your Shipping Settings Automation shipping template that can meet the delivery promise for your Shipping Settings Automation order. You can find the shipping service that was used to generate the delivery promise for your Shipping Settings Automation orders on the Order Detail page (or the Order API).
You can also use Amazon Buy Shipping to select any shipping service that meets your delivery promise. Note that, similar to order that are not Shipping Settings Automation orders, we will monitor your delivery performance and may add extra time to your delivery promise to protect customers if your On-Time Delivery (OTD) rate fails to meet the OTD requirement.
3. How does Shipping Settings Automation calculate the delivery promise if I enable multiple warehouses in my Shipping Settings Automation templates?
Shipping Settings Automation will calculate delivery promise for each warehouse and select the warehouse with the fastest delivery promise to the customer (typically the closest) to make your offer more attractive to customers.
4. How does Shipping Settings Automation calculate the delivery promise if I enable multiple shipping services in my Shipping Settings Automation templates?
For Self-fulfilled Standard Shipping, you can specify the shipping service priority rules for the shipping services you enabled in your Shipping Settings Automation template. For example, you can specify to always select the shipping service with the longest delivery time (likely cheaper) from your warehouse to the customer locations, or you can drag and drop to rank shipping service based on your preferred order. Shipping Settings Automation will follow these rules to select the appropriate shipping service and generate a delivery promise for you. You will find these ranking options and examples in the Shipping Services Priority section of the Shipping Settings Automation set up process, once you enable Shipping Settings Automation on a shipping template.
5. Will enabling Shipping Settings Automation increase my shipping costs?
No. Enabling Shipping Settings Automation should not increase your costs or require you to use faster ship methods because Shipping Settings Automation applies the carrier transit time based on the shipping service you specified. When you upgrade your existing shipping template to Shipping Settings Automation, it will reflect a more accurate estimation of the delivery time using the shipping services you already selected and use.
6. Will I need to reconfigure my shipping charges if I enable Shipping Settings Automation?
No. Once you enable Shipping Settings Automation, all of your shipping charges will remain the same on your template. Shipping Settings Automation will only manage your transit time.
7. If I changed ship-from location or my shipping services, can I update my automated shipping settings?
Yes; you can update your automated shipping settings at any time. Select the shipping template and click Edit Template. In the shipping template edit page, click Edit Information on the right side of the Shipping Settings Automation toggle. From there you can update your ship from locations and shipping services. After you click Confirm, Amazon will reflect updated automated shipping settings based on your Shipping Settings Automation preferences.
Shipping Settings Automation FAQ for Prime/Non-Prime Premium Shipping
8. How does Amazon automate Prime or Premium Shipping regions?
Prime or Premium Shipping eligible regions are automatically calculated based on where a shipment can reach within one day and two days; using your Shipping Settings Automation preferences, including your ship-from location, your shipping service, and your delivery zone limits (only available for Prime region automation). Amazon also helps you adjust the shipping regions periodically based on the latest shipping service delivery performance to ensure maximum possible Prime or non-Prime Premium Shipping coverage with high on-time deliveries.
If you enabled multiple warehouses, the Prime or Premium Shipping regions will cover all locations that your selected shipping services can deliver from each ship-from location for Two-Day and One-Day Delivery orders.
9. What are delivery zone limits for Prime Region Automation?
Delivery zone limits allow you to control Prime regions more precisely. If a shipping service’s eligible 2-day coverage spans across multiple zones, which results in varying shipping costs by region, you can control Prime shipping costs by matching the Prime regions to the carrier’s delivery zones. You can verify the shipping costs by zones on the carriers’ websites (UPS, FedEx, USPS). If you do not need to restrict Prime shipping, you can leave the Amazon default value in place. Note that the Prime badge will only be visible to customers in the regions that can be reached by your shipping service in 1 or 2 days from your shipping location.
10. How are the coverage percentages determined for Prime or non-Prime Premium Shipping?
Prime or non-Prime Premium Shipping coverage is calculated as the percentage of continental US population within the Prime or non-Prime Premium Shipping regions covered by your selected shipping services from your ship-from location.
11. Why is the Prime coverage determined by Amazon smaller than what I usually get?
We enable a region as Prime when the selected carrier can deliver on-time to all zip codes in that region. If we find that some of the zip codes in that region cannot be delivered to on time, we may turn off that region as Prime to protect the customer experience. However, as delivery speeds of shipping services improve, a non-Prime region may be upgraded to a Prime region.
12. What happens if I can’t buy the designated shipping services in Buy Shipping?
You will be able to use the designated shipping services in Buy Shipping if you:
- Buy the shipping label on-time and before the pick-up time for the shipping service; or
- Select the same shipping location in Buy Shipping as the ones defined on your automated shipping template.
If for any reason you fulfilled all requirements and still were not able to buy your preferred shipping service in Buy Shipping, you may buy the shipping label outside of Buy Shipping. When buying a shipping label outside of Buy Shipping, make sure that the selected shipping service can deliver the products on time. For on time delivered Prime orders, we will automatically ensure that such orders are not counted towards your Buy Shipping eligibility metrics and remove them from your defect report. It may take up to 4 business days from the date of the order for the change to reflect in your account. If you continue to see these orders on your defect report after 4 business days of receiving the order, you can contact us.
