Connecting to Amazon Marketplaces, Amazon FBA, and Amazon Webstore

Ken Hughes

May 16, 2023 14:58

This article shows you how to connect Solid Commerce to your Amazon account and Amazon Webstore (if you have one). It also provides instructions for importing your Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) listings.

What we'll cover in this article:

Before You Connect to Amazon
Connecting to an Amazon Marketplace
Syncing Orders
Importing Live Listings
Importing FBA Listings
Connecting to Multiple Amazon Marketplace Accounts/Locals
Related Articles

Before You Connect to Amazon

Before you connect to an Amazon marketplace, or Amazon Webstore, you need to create a: Warehouse (or Vendor Inventory List), Market List, and basic Amazon fixed price rule.

We also recommend having a discussion with your Solid Commerce Implementation Manager about importing listings and orders before turning on the auto-import features.

Connecting to an Amazon Marketplace

1) Go to the Marketplaces> Sales Channel Connections > Connect More

2) Click on the Amazon tab.

3) Select your Amazon Marketplace Local (country) and populate an "Account Profile Name"

If you need to connect to multiple accounts, or add an Amazon Webstore, please review the Connecting to Multiple Amazon Marketplace Accounts/Locals section below before adding your second connection.

4 ) Click the Connect button in Channels Manager.

5) Login to Amazon Seller Central with your Administrators login

6) Select the correct Marketplace locale that you chose from step 3:

7) At the bottom of the Authorization page, check the "I direct Amazon to provide.." checkbox and click "Confirm".

8) After confirmation you will be re-directed to the Import Settings Page

9) Now you are ready to populate the settings

Syncing Orders

You can import your orders, even if you aren't importing your listings yet. However, without your listings, we cannot properly recognize the items in the orders. This can make fulfillment and shipping difficult.

If you don't want to import your orders yet, do not toggle the "Import Orders from Amazon"

If you are ready to import your orders, set the date and time to the present.

1) Enter the date and time in Pacific Time inside the State Date for Order Import field

2) Click the Save button.

Importing Live Listings

For an overview of what information imports from Amazon, please see Importing Your Amazon Listings and Amazon Data.

IMPORTANT!

We cannot import custom Leadtimes to Ship or taxable settings. The importing article above explains how to add them to Solid Commerce.

If you're ready to import:

1) Check the Import Items from Amazon box.

2) Select the correct:

Warehouse name
Market list name
Import pricing rule

Select a basic fixed-price rule as your Import pricing rule. If you would like to use automated repricing on imported listings, you will need to make a quick adjustment to your listings after they import. Then you can switch to a repricing rule.

NOTE on the "Automation Status for imported Items"

If you are new to Solid Commerce, we recommend selecting Start NOT Automated.
With the automation off, Solid Commerce won't communicate with Amazon. We will import orders, and track quantities internally, but we won't send quantity or price updates to Amazon.
Once you are certain your inventory is correct in Solid Commerce, and you understand how to manage inventory, prices, and listings, you are ready to turn the automation on.

To automate your products, go to your Amazon Market List in the Inventory Manager, select all of your imported listings, and click the Start Automation button.

If you need to import listings on an ongoing basis, return to this Marketplaces Setup page, and change the Default automation status to: Start Automated.

IMPORTANT!

Once you turn the automation on, you will want to make all quantity and price adjustments through Solid Commerce, not directly through your Amazon Seller Central account. The import is a one time process. We cannot continue to import new information if you make revisions directly on Amazon.

3) If you don't have any Amazon FBA items, click the Save button. You are finished with the setup.

Importing FBA Listings

Importing your Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) listings offers several benefits:

Solid Commerce can automatically reprice them.
You can list them to other marketplaces, such as eBay.

When you list to other marketplaces, we'll automatically send the orders to Amazon. Amazon will ship them to your buyer and send us the tracking, which we'll pass back to the original marketplace.

NOTE:

Amazon charges higher fees for fulfilling non-Amazon orders then they do for Amazon orders. Many people still save time and money listing their FBA products on other marketplaces. However, it's a good idea to understand the fees ahead of time.

To learn more about listing your Amazon FBA items on other marketplaces, please see Listing FBA Items on Marketplaces Other Than Amazon.

Here is how you import your Amazon FBA listings:

1) Check the Enable Fulfillment By Amazon box.

IMPORTANT: There's no need to enter a Warehouse Name or Market List. Solid Commerce will automatically create the Warehouse and Market List for you.

NOTE:

Importing items from FBA is a two-step process. First, we import the FBA items without quantities. Second, we process a separate Amazon file to add the quantities. After your FBA listings import, it may take up to two hours for the quantities to be added.

Auto Send to FBA fulfillment

1) If you want to list your FBA products on other marketplaces, check Auto Send to FBA fulfillment.

2) If you check the Auto Send to FBA fulfillment box, select an Order fulfillment policy from the drop-down. This setting controls how Amazon fulfills and cancels orders. Your three options are:

Fill or Kill: This is Amazon's default option. If any product is found to be unfulfillable before Amazon starts processing the order, the entire order will be cancelled. If Amazon moves any fulfillable products to Pending status before finding unfulfillable products, they will cancel all the products that have not been updated to Pending status. All Pending products in the order will be shipped.
Fill All Available: Amazon will ship any products it can fulfill, and cancel any products it cannot.
Fill All: All fulfillable products will be shipped immediately. Unfulfillable products will be updated to Pending status. The order will remain open until stock arrives for the Pending items, or until you manually cancel the remainder of the order.

3) Click on the Save button

Switch to FBM when out of stock

When this option is enabled on your account, we keep your item in the regular Amazon Market List when we move it to the FBA Market List and Warehouse. That way it exists in both Market Lists instead of removing it from the regular Amazon Market List.

We also turn the Automation off in the regular Amazon Market List because we don't want to continually try to list the item as merchant fulfilled while your FBA listing is active. To relist the item as merchant fulfilled after you run out of inventory at FBA, you need to manually turn the Automation back on in your regular Amazon Market List, saving you some work.

Unfortunately, this feature will only help you with future listings. It won't move any items that are currently out of stock at FBA

Connecting to Multiple Amazon Marketplace Accounts/Locals

Information About Connecting to Multiple Amazon Accounts

If you use one Amazon login to access multiple accounts, or have a unified North American Marketplaces account, Amazon shares certain information across all of your accounts. When the ASIN and SKU in the various accounts/locals matches, Amazon shares the: quantity, condition, and leadtimes to ship. Amazon doesn't share the price between locals.

EXAMPLE: You have Amazon accounts in France (.fr) and Germany (.de) that you access using one login. You have an item with SKU: ABC123 which you list in both France and Germany. Both countries also share the same ASIN.

In Solid Commerce, you have a Listing Quantity Expression of lq-1 in your amazon.fr Market List, and a Listing Quantity Expression of lq in your amazon.de Market List. You have a quantity of 5 in you Solid Commerce Warehouse. According to your Listing Quantity Expressions, your quantity on Amazon France should be 4, and your quantity on Amazon Germany should be 5. Instead, your quantity on both France and Germany will match. This is because when we submit a quantity to Amazon France, Amazon will automatically update the quantity on Amazon Germany. However, the prices can be unique on both marketplaces.

NOTE:

With unified North American Marketplace accounts, you can only list the same SKU on both Amazon.com and Amazon.ca if the ASINs also match. If the ASINs don't match, you can use one of the two options listed below. With the European locals, you can list the same SKU across multiple marketplaces even if the ASINs don't match.

Two Options for Maintaining Different Quantities or Conditions in Different Accounts:

1. Use a different Warehouse ID in each Solid Commerce Market List. This means that each Amazon marketplace will have a unique SKU. Amazon recommends this approach.

Fortunately, we have an easy to use feature that ties the inventory of multiple listings to one product in your Warehouse. To learn more, please see Creating Multiple Listings for One Product (Product Merge).

2. Request that Amazon open a separate account for each local so you no longer share logins.

Amazon may charge you a monthly service fee for each selling account.

The Connection Process

To connect to multiple Amazon marketplaces, you need to create separate profiles and Market Lists for each account.

1) To connect to your first Amazon account, follow the steps in the Connecting to an Amazon Marketplace section above.

2) Log out of the first Amazon account before connecting the the next one.

IMPORTANT!

If you don't log out, Amazon posts the same Market Key for each local, which causes connection issues.

3) Repeat Steps in the Connecting to an Amazon Marketplace section above.

4) Continue to log out of each Amazon account and add new profiles until you have connected to all of your locals.

5) In the Inventory Manager, add a Market List for each Amazon marketplace you are connected to.

For more information on creating Market Lists, see Creating a Market List.