Amazon has sought to alleviate capacity constraints within the Amazon Fulfillment Center (FC) network by adding much larger warehouses in less expensive locations further away from the end customer that are capable of storing larger quantities of goods. These warehouses are part of the Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) network and only send full master cartons to FCs when inventory at those FCs falls below a calculated optimal quantity.

We utilized these warehouses for the first time in 2024 to help us meet our goals of having the right amount of inventory in Amazon's warehouse system to meet peak holiday demand, while working within our capacity limits for FBA and the physical limitations of the logistics systems that move our goods around from suppliers to Amazon.

With any new process there are unanticipated challenges and this one is no different. We're discovering some unexpected issues. One of these issues is discrepancies in the quantities of goods shipped vs. received at AWD warehouses and then ultimately Amazon FCs.

We see 3 significant reconciliation issues that Amazon has yet to solve for:

1. There does not appear to be a process by which we can request reconciliation of an inbound shipment to an AWD warehouse.

We count 14 inbound shipments from our suppliers to AWD warehouses between June and late October 2024. 7 of the 14 shipments have quantity received discrepancies. There does not seem to be an established path via support to request reconciliation of these shipments with discrepancies. Is there anything to be done about these discrepancies? Is there a report to pull somewhere that tracks inventory received in an AWD facility and then subsequent adjustments to that count?

2. There does not appear to be a process by which we can request reconciliation of a replenishment shipment from an AWD warehouse to an FBA FC. Well, there is a path and process, but it calls for an invoice and Bill or Lading related to the shipment. These documents do not exist. This is a holdover from the process by which a shipment from outside Amazon sent to an Amazon FBA FC could be reconciled. In that case, an invoice should be available/obtainable and a signed BOL would be available it the shipment was sent via LTL. But with a shipment from AWD to FBA FC, no BOL is made available to the seller and there is no invoice from a supplier because this is inventory that already exists in Amazon's distribution network. The closest thing to an invoice for this shipment would be an invoice (or invoices) that would cover the inventory originally sent to the sending AWD warehouse.

3. Replenishment shipments from AWD warehouses to FBA FCs complicate the process of reconciling inbound from seller or supplier to FBA FCs shipments. When we request reconciliation of a shipment from a supplier to an Amazon FBA FC that has quantity discrepancies, support is now asking us for invoices that cover AWD to FBA FC replenishment shipments involving the same ASINs that occurred during the same timeframe. Again, these documents don't really exist. Is support trained on AWD as it relates to reconciling shipments to FBA FCs?

At present we have 38 closed replenishment shipments that have quantity received discrepancies and no knowledge of an established path to reconcile these shipments. Some of these will eventually settle out with no discrepancy, but there are still more open replenishment shipments that will eventually close with discrepancies.

Is there a team working on establishing a set process by which reconciliation can take place for shipments to AWD or coming from AWD? Is this a known issue with a documented recommendation for how to engage with support in an efficient manner?