Send to Amazon, step by step: creating an FBA shipment

Send to Amazon is the Seller Central workflow you use to tell Amazon a shipment is coming: which products, how many, how they're packed, and how they'll travel. It's the last step of stage 7 of the Amazon wholesale roadmap, after the supplier's cases have been checked, labeled and packed, usually at a prep center.

Even if your prep center builds shipments for you, it's worth knowing the workflow. You pay for the choices made in it: the placement fee, the freight, and any boxes Amazon has to sort out by hand.

Where our Amazon details come from. Amazon's detailed shipping help pages need a Seller Central sign-in, and we couldn't check their current wording, so we work from pages you can open yourself: the Send to Amazon guide and Partner Carrier page on sell.amazon.com, Amazon staff posts on the US Seller Forums and Amazon's developer documentation. Amazon renames buttons and moves steps around, so if your account says something different, go with your account.

How the steps on this page match Amazon's screens

Amazon numbers the steps on screen, and the numbers change with what you're sending. This guide follows the decisions in the order you make them. Here's how they line up, based on Amazon's Send to Amazon guide and an Amazon staff post on the US Seller Forums:

Before you start

Amazon's beginner's guide puts Send to Amazon under Inventory, then FBA, then Shipments, and says to have your ship-from address, product measurements, boxes, poly bags and a printer ready, plus a scale if you don't know the weights. You don't have to finish in one sitting: the Amazon staff post above says you can switch between up to thirty active workflows.

Three things have to be true before a product can go in a shipment.

The listing is set to FBA. Only SKUs you've already converted to Fulfilled by Amazon show up in the workflow. If a product is missing, that's the first thing to check.

Every unit is prepped and labeled. Amazon doesn't do this for you anymore.

So you, your prep center or your supplier bags, wraps and labels each unit before it goes in a box. The prep requirements guide covers Amazon's packaging rules by product type. For resellers, labeling means an Amazon barcode on every unit:

That barcode is your FNSKU label. You print it in Seller Central, including while you build a shipment. Send to Amazon can't see your units, so a missing label, or one stuck on the wrong product, only shows up when the warehouse opens the box.

You know what's going in each box. Count it before you start, not halfway through. The next section explains why the order matters.

Step 1. Choose the inventory to send

Start a new workflow and pick the ship-from address and the marketplace. If a prep center ships for you, its warehouse is the ship-from address.

Then choose the SKUs and the quantity of each. For a long list, Amazon's guide shows a file upload as an alternative to picking SKUs one at a time. Send to Amazon can also suggest restock quantities, which Amazon's announcement calls a guide only. Our reorder guide explains how to check them against your own numbers.

Two things in this step trip up resellers:

• The units per box are sellable units. If your listing is a two-pack, one "unit" in Send to Amazon is the bundled two-pack with its own label, not one item from the supplier's case.
• One expiration date per SKU in each plan. Amazon's developer documentation says a single inbound plan can't carry more than one expiration date for the same SKU. If two cases of the same product have different dates, send them in separate workflows. It comes up most with food and supplements; the grocery guide covers dates in more detail.

Step 2. Packing details and box requirements

This is the step that decides how smoothly receiving goes. Amazon's prep and packaging guide describes two ways to pack:

• Case-packed products share the same SKU and condition, with the same quantity in every box. They're usually packed by the manufacturer. A distributor's sealed case of 12 is a case pack, as long as you sell the product as a single unit.
• Individual products are sold separately but can share a box, in any mix of SKUs, quantities and conditions. This is how most mixed or small shipments go.

Case pack templates

For case packs, Send to Amazon lets you save a template with the box contents, box weight and dimensions, and prep and labeling details, according to Amazon's Send to Amazon guide. That suits wholesale: you reorder the same case packs again and again, so a template set up once saves typing on every shipment after it.

Pack individual units (mixed boxes)

If you send individual units, Send to Amazon adds a packing step (Step 1b on screen). It tells you which SKUs can be packed together, and you say which units go in which box. Some products can't share a box: Amazon's developer documentation says SKUs classified as dangerous goods can't be packed with other SKUs, so a hazmat product goes in a box of its own.

Box content information

Amazon wants to know what's in each box. Its developer documentation describes three ways to give it:

The same documentation warns that missing box information can cause defects in receiving and manual processing fees, and that Amazon plans the shipment split from unit information alone when it has no box details. So the box contents you enter also shape the placement options you get in the next step.

Box size and weight limits

Amazon raised the maximum box length for FBA in the US in 2025. Its announcement on the US Seller Forums lists these maximums, starting June 20, 2025:

In the same thread, an Amazon staff member added that the change applies to FBA shipments only. Boxes going to Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) still have to stay within 25 x 25 x 25 inches and 50 pounds.

For the full rules, Amazon's post points to its FBA shipping and routing requirements page. That page needs a Seller Central sign-in, so we haven't checked its current wording. If one product is bigger or heavier than these limits on its own, read that page before you send it.

For wholesale, the usual problem is the supplier's master carton. A case of liquids or canned goods can weigh more than 50 pounds, and a carton sized for a distributor's pallet isn't always sized for Amazon. Weigh every carton. If one is over, split it into smaller boxes before you enter the box details.

Step 3. Choose a placement option

In Step 2 on screen, Confirm shipping, Send to Amazon shows the placement options your shipment qualifies for. This is where the inbound placement fee is decided.

An Amazon announcement on the US Seller Forums added two things that help here:

• The workflow shows whether your shipment qualifies for Amazon-optimized splits while you build it, with the requirements for individual units, case packs and pallets.
• Step 2 shows an estimated total for each option: the placement fee plus estimated shipping at partnered carrier rates. Amazon says these are for comparison, and you aren't charged the shipping unless you use the partnered carrier.

That total is the number to compare. An optimized split has no placement fee, but you're paying to ship to several warehouses instead of one. A minimal split ships to one place, and the units it applies to pay the fee. The placement fee guide has a calculator and a step-by-step way to compare the two once freight is counted.

Each option also creates one or more shipments. Amazon's developer documentation says confirming a placement option creates the confirmed shipment IDs that appear on your labels, such as FBA1234ABCD, and that the choice can't be reversed. Each shipment has its own destination warehouse, which is why one plan can turn into several shipments.

Step 4. Choose how it ships: partnered carrier, small parcel or LTL

Still in Confirm shipping, you enter the date you expect to ship and choose how it travels. Amazon's guide says the ship date lets Amazon plan for the arrival.

Small parcel (SPD) or pallets (LTL)

Full truckload (FTL) works like LTL with the whole trailer to yourself, and it's a different scale of business. For domestic shipments, the same Amazon announcement says the workflow compares small parcel and LTL and pre-selects the one it estimates is cheaper. Treat that as a starting point, not the answer, because your own carrier's rates may differ from the ones Amazon shows.

A rule of thumb from how the two are priced: splits favor small parcel. An optimized split sends boxes to several warehouses, which is easy with parcels but can mean several LTL shipments, each with its own minimum, and pallets that travel half full.

Amazon's partnered carrier or your own

Amazon's Partner Carrier program page describes the program like this:

• It covers small parcel, LTL, full truckload and intermodal shipments into FBA, Multi-Channel Fulfillment and AWD, within the 48 contiguous states.
• You pick it inside Send to Amazon: in Step 2 for small parcel, or in Step 4 for pallets.
• You choose from a list with cost estimates, and you print labels, pay and track in Seller Central.
• FBA and AWD shipments can't be combined, because they don't go to the same place.

When you use the partnered carrier, the shipping cost is charged to your Amazon account, and the clock to change your mind is short:

Your own carrier is the other choice. Many prep centers have their own freight rates, so ask whose rates you'll pay and whether they add a handling charge. With your own carrier, two things are on you:

• Tracking. You enter the tracking details in the workflow yourself (Step 5 below).
• Appointments and delivery windows. The Amazon staff post on Send to Amazon says only professional carriers can book LTL and FTL delivery appointments, through Amazon's Carrier Central. Amazon's developer documentation adds that shipments with your own carrier need a delivery window, seven days for a domestic shipment, so plan the ship date to land inside it.

What to budget for freight

Freight to Amazon is a per-unit cost, so it belongs in your numbers before you buy, not after you ship. In the Purchasing lesson of Apex University (at 3:49), Stef budgets shipping to Amazon at sixty cents a pound and says what he actually pays per pound usually comes in under that. That's his own rule of thumb with his own carriers. Use your rate once you have a few shipments behind you.

Step 5. Print labels and add tracking

1. Print a label for every box

   Step 3 on screen prints the box labels. Each one is unique: Amazon's developer documentation shows a box label number built from the shipment ID plus a box number, like FBA1MMD8D0U000001. That's why you can't photocopy one label and stick it on three boxes. Amazon would see one box three times.

2. Add the carrier label for small parcel

   With Amazon's partnered carrier, each small parcel box gets two labels: the FBA box label, which Amazon's warehouse uses to receive the box, and a separate carrier label for the trip, as the Partner Carrier program page explains. Put them on a flat side of the box, away from the seams, so neither one gets cut when the box is opened. That's our advice, not Amazon's wording.

3. Cover the supplier's barcodes

   Amazon's prep and packaging guide says to remove, cover or make unscannable any existing barcodes on the outside of your shipping boxes, for example with opaque tape or a black marker. Distributor cases often have a case barcode printed on the side, so this one matters for wholesale.

4. Build and label pallets (LTL only)

   For pallets, Step 4 on screen asks for the number of pallets and the carrier. With your own carrier, you print the pallet labels there. With the partnered carrier, you print them in Step 5. Amazon's pallet requirements sit on a Seller Central page that needs a sign-in, so check them there before your first pallet.

5. Enter tracking if it's your own carrier

   With the partnered carrier, tracking updates on its own once the carrier picks up the shipment. With your own carrier, enter it in the workflow: a tracking number for each small parcel box, or the PRO (freight bill) number for an LTL shipment, according to Amazon's developer documentation.

After it ships: statuses and receiving

You follow FBA shipments in the shipping queue in Seller Central. Amazon's developer documentation defines each shipment status, and these are the ones you'll see most:

Units only become sellable as they're received, so "delivered" isn't the finish line. That gap belongs in your restock math. Stef counts shipping to Amazon as one of three parts of the lead time, after the supplier and the prep center:

"If we include the lead time from our supplier, twelve days, the amount of time that it takes for our facilities to do all the prepping, let's call it three, and the shipping time from our warehouse or prep center to Amazon, we're gonna add that to four, we have a total of nineteen days of lead time."

From Stef's lesson (Restocking, at 1:35)

Those are one example's numbers. Time your own shipments from ship date to fully received, and use that in the reorder guide's lead time.

When a shipment closes, compare what Amazon received with what you sent, SKU by SKU. If anything is short, you'll want your box contents, the packing list, the carrier's proof of delivery and your prep center's receiving notes in one place before you contact Seller Support.

Put the quote into your landed cost

Send to Amazon is the first place you see the real cost of getting stock into Amazon: the placement fee for the option you picked, and the shipping estimate for the carrier and mode. Those are per-unit costs, so spread them across the units in the shipment and put them in your landed cost.

The calculator below does that. Here's where each Send to Amazon number goes:

• Shipping to Amazon goes in "Other costs", per unit. Divide the shipping estimate for the shipment by the number of units in it.
• The placement fee goes in "Or the fee Send to Amazon quoted", per unit. Divide the fee shown for the option you picked by the units in the shipment. It replaces our estimate from Amazon's table.
• The rest is your supplier cost per unit, the units in the order, the freight from your supplier to you or your prep center, and prep and labeling per unit.

Switch between per unit and the whole order to see both views.

If the landed cost comes out higher than you planned, you've learned it on one shipment rather than ten. The landed cost guide explains each line, and the first order guide covers sizing an order so freight and placement don't eat the margin. In Apex, Apex Green works out a landed cost for every product it matches on a supplier price list, with the shipping you set, and Apex Blue shows the landed cost on each purchase order. You see it before you place the order, not after you ship.

Common errors

These are the mistakes that cost money or hold up receiving, with what to do instead.

1. Confirming the placement option before the boxes are final. After that, Send to Amazon won't take new packing information, and you start over. Weigh and measure the real boxes first.
2. Boxes over the limits. More than 36 inches long, 25 wide or high, or 50 pounds. Supplier master cartons are the usual culprit. Repack before you enter the box details.
3. Box contents that don't match the boxes. Amazon receives each box against the contents you entered, and its documentation warns of receiving defects and manual processing fees when box information isn't provided. Count each box as you close it.
4. Copying box labels. Every box has its own label number. Print one label per box.
5. Mixing boxes between shipments. When Amazon splits a shipment, each shipment ID goes to its own warehouse. A box sent with the wrong shipment arrives at a warehouse that isn't expecting it.
6. Leaving the supplier's case barcode showing. Cover or remove any barcode on the outside of the shipping box, as Amazon's packaging guide asks.
7. Units without their own Amazon barcode, or not prepped. Amazon no longer preps or labels US FBA inventory. The FNSKU guide covers who labels and how, and the prep requirements guide covers bags, wrap and sets.
8. Two expiration dates for one SKU in one workflow. Split them into separate workflows.
9. Missing the void window. A partnered carrier charge can be voided for 24 hours on small parcel and one hour on pallets, then it's billed.
10. Forgetting tracking with your own carrier. With a partnered carrier it fills in by itself. With your own, it's on you.
11. Packing a hazmat item with everything else. Send to Amazon tells you which SKUs can share a box. Hazmat products also go through extra review before FBA accepts them, and the products to avoid guide explains why new resellers often skip them.